13
Blue Six Compound, Vega System
07.15.34
1242 Hours
He awoke to a throbbing headache and severe nausea. The first thing he noticed besides the pain was that the room he was in had no lights. It was pitch black. He got to his feet and stumbled about for a bit, trying to find a wall on which to prop himself. After falling flat on his face numerous times he gave up the attempt and sprawled himself on the floor. He racked his brain trying to remember what happened.
"I was...in a room...something hit me...shit, they must've drugged me. I wonder what they did to me...damn it I'm gonna puke..."
After vomiting heavily on the floor he remembered he hadn't eaten since lunch, which he remembered to be over 24 hours ago. Then came the dry heaves. Those were the worst. About 15 minutes later he felt well enough to stand again and did so with quite a bit of effort. Suddenly he was blinded with a spotlight pointed directly in his face.
"Shit...here they come," he thought.
"Ahhh. Mr. Devaro, are we feeling better now?" It was the voice of the Thrakan whom had picked him up. He was talking through an intercom.
"Go to hell. I knew you bastards would pull something like this."
"Oh really? Then why did you step into the room?"
"What was I supposed to do?"
"Whatever you wanted to. You have, er, had an unstoppable power, why didn't you take full advantage of it?"
"You twisted bastards, I know what you're doing. Using some lame-ass psychological mind game, you're pathetic. Come in here and face me."
There was a slight pause, then, "As you wish, Mr. Devaro."
The spotlight was taken out of his face and he once again returned to darkness. A few moments passed, then two doors slid apart, flooding the room with light. He had to shield his eyes from the onslaught of illumination. The Thrakan's figure was silouhetted against the light, making him look like some sort of heavenly being come to save him. But Sabre knew better.
"What's the matter Mr. Devaro? Are we not feeling well?" The Thrakan chuckled, sending chills down the human's spine.
"What do you want from me?"
"That's simple, all we want is your cooperation."
"Then why go through all this?"
"Because we can not afford to take any risks. You know as well as I do that we would have had to take some...preventative actions."
"What did you do to me?" Sabre asked in a low voice.
"Oh, Mr. Devaro, we did all sorts of things to you. I think you will be shocked to find out that you have been in this installation for three weeks."
Sabre's only reply was the stunned look on his face.
"That's right. Three weeks. I am not lying to you." The Thrakan began to circle him. "Are you sure you want to know what we did to you? You're memory was wiped for a reason."
Sabre wanted to kill the patronizing alien. He tried to raise his power level but found he was still far too weak to try anything of the sort.
"Tell me what you did."
"Ooooh, aren't we brave? Well, first we dissected you. We took you apart piece by peace. We kept your consciousness in a state of suspended animation while we picked at your body."
"Why did you do that?" The thought made him sick.
"We thought your transformation may have been something biological, something genetic."
"What did you find?"
"Nothing. We really didn't expect to, but or surgeons weren't going to pass up a chance to vivisect someone. After we put everything back in place and sewed you back up, we had a group of telepaths perform a mapping of your mind. We now know everything you do, Mr. Devaro. Every thought, dream, emotion, crush, enemy...anything and everything that has ever been in your mind is now known to us. You weren't very cooperative, though."
"What do you mean? Did I not take kindly to you invading my mind?"
"No, not really. In fact, we had to put you under heavy sedation just to allow our telepaths to work. You were quite violent, Mr. Devaro. It wasn't a pretty sight. You destroyed three rooms before we got everything we wanted."
"Did you like what you found? Was it worth it?" The human asked in a shaky voice, his rage beginning to surface. Why the hell didn't you just ask me!? What in the goddamned hell was so important that you had to do this to me!?" Jake screamed. Sabre was no longer the appropriate name for him. He was becoming that human who wouldn't amount to anything. He was losing control of his emotions, something he hadn't done in a long time.
"Ahh...do you now see why we didn't just ask you? You are very unstable, Mr. Devaro, you aren't as cool and calm as you seem to be. Your mind is very...troubled."
Jake knew this to be true. Not even Resa knew the extent of his inner turmoil. There had always been something dark stirring within him, ever since that day on Vertana Prime. He had always tried to suppress those memories, the terrible things that were done to him, the things he had done to others. But some days the nightmares still came.
"Does...does Resa know?" was all he could ask.
"You'll be happy to know that we keep all of our psychological anylizations confidential. Even yours. No, Lieutenant Resa does not know what really happened to your family, nor does she know what really happened to the people who murdered them. We may be morally bankrupt here, Mr. Devaro, but we are not cruel."
It was a great relief that Resa did not know about those horrid days of his past. She could never understand. He was afraid if she found out she would never look at him the same way...and he would lose her forever. Jake could never live without her.
"So, Mr. Devaro, I want to hear you tell the tale, in your own words, of the raid on Vertana Prime. Oh, we know your memories, but hearing you tell it to us makes it so much more...realistic."
The defiant part of the human tried to suppress his voice, but the rest of him had to tell this story; he had kept it to himself for far too long. He shifted his gaze downward, focusing his view on a point on the floor.
"It was cold...that's what I remember most, it was cold..." Jake began, the memories flooding to the surface. "It had been snowing for about a week...I was outside with my sister when I heard the sirens..."
"What set the sirens off?" prodded the Thrakan.
"It was those damned Danti pirates...I can still see their green ships...their insignias. They had been raiding the Vertana system for weeks, but had left our planet alone...no one thought they would be strong enough to...to take on the biggest colony in the system."
"But they were, weren't they?"
Jake had to focus hard to remember the next events, all the while his stomach was twisting in turning in anxiety.
"Oh, God, there were so many of them...I had never seen anything like it, not even in the movies...They blocked out the sun, it, it got real dark, like it was night, but it was two in the afternoon. Sis got scared and ran home, but I just stayed there...Damn it!" The broken human cried.
"What is it?"
"If I had gone back, I could have, I could've..."
"Been killed like the rest of them? You're friends, your family, all of them were killed together, weren't they? A lot of good you would have done. You'd have been just another corpse."
Jake was starting to lose his grip on reality. His memories were intertwining with the present and he was becoming delirious.
"When I came home, I couldn't see anything...it was so black...the door was open...I saw something on the ground, it was thick, dark, I could see it when the searchlights from the ships swept by..."
The human was shaking now, and tears started to trickle down his face. The Thrakan just looked on impassively.
"I followed the trail upstairs, into my parents room...then, then, oh God, then a light hit the window, I was blinded for a second, but for an instant...I saw them all...there was so much blood...so much blood...they had all been shot in the head, they were on their knees... they were begging for their lives and those motherfuckers shot them anyway!" Jake was really shaking now. His body was rocked in tremors, but his voice was still understandable. Tears were flowing freely down his face. It was fascinating, the brain had stopped registering the body's responses. His autonomic functions were in tact, but the rest of his body was not. The body was reacting to the emotions, but the brain was not.
"What did you do next?"
"I ran. I ran as far as I could. I had to get away, I couldn't end up like them...I had to avenge them. I hid in a cave for about a week, I came out only because I was starving. I...I found some food to eat back in the town, but I had to keep hiding from the pirates...I couldn't let them see me. They were garrisoning the planet, turning it into their base of operations...I wasn't going to let those bastards get away..."
The tremors had subsided now, as had the tears.
"And you didn't did you?"
"I was...too weak to fight them...they were really strong...I was only 10...but, but I found one of them sleeping...sleeping in my sister's bed. His gun was on the floor, he must've passed out...I think he was drunk...I picked up the gun, it was heavy, it must've weighed at least twenty pounds...I pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger. His head exploded off his shoulders, blood and, and brain matter sprayed all over the pink wallpaper...I had killed for the first time."
"How did you feel?"
"I, I felt nothing. It was so...strange...I couldn't make the connection that I had killed someone...I went back outside. It was early morning by then, and just like the guy in my house, everyone was sleeping. So I went around, shooting everyone I found. Men, women, it made no difference to me. They were all the same. Goddamed pirates. I had got about fifty of them before someone woke up. When the alarm sounded...I dropped the gun and ran...I was such a coward..."
"Really? You just killed fifty of those horrible people. That doesn't sound cowardly."
"Yeah...but they were sleeping. I hid for a few more days...back in the cave. They started to send out search parties...they were looking for me. I kinda watched them from in the cave...got a feel for their patterns. When I thought I had it down, I ran as fast as I could."
"Where did you run?"
"Into, into the woods. It didn't work though, I got turned around...I was back at the edge of the colony...that was where I found it..."
"What did you find?"
"I...I didn't know what it was at first...it was just a hole in the ground, I saw something shiny...I thought it could've been a gun so I went to pick it up."
"It wasn't a gun, was it, Mr. Devaro?"
"No...it was an anti-matter bomb. I had heard about them before, they said they were going to bury one in the woods...just in case something happened. There was an operator's manual, it was in Latin, the language our people used when we wanted to encrypt something. Heh, we all had to learn it in school. I read over the instructions...I learned how to use it, but..." his voice trailed off.
"But what? Were you afraid to use it?"
The tears started to come back. "Yes, yes, I was. I though maybe there could've been some survivors left...maybe they were hiding. I decided to use it anyway. It was small, you know. I could carry it real easy with two hands. I snuck back into town, they hadn't erected any real defenses yet...I put it in my room. I set the timer for an hour...and put it under my bed. Then I ran again. I ran as fast and as far as I could. I managed to reach some hills before I collapsed. I turned back to the colony and saw it."
"Saw what?"
Jake paused and remembered the next horrible moments. "The explosion. It was so bright I had to cover my eyes...I could see the shockwave. It moved so fast, it just vaporized everything...when I looked back...it was all gone. Everything. My home had just become an empty crater, because of me."
"But those pirates were going to turn it into there base anyway, and besides, wasn't everyone you cared for dead already?" The Thrakan said in a sarcastic voice. He knew full well that there were survivors of the initial raid. They had managed to establish a link with the local space force and were feeding info to them when the line went dead. No one knew exactly what happened until a few days ago. Now he was hearing it from the man who caused it.
"No, they weren't it. There were survivors...I didn't know, I didn't know..." Jake fell to his knees.
"Well, Mr. Devaro, thanks to your rather brash actions, you managed to kill all 20,000 of the invading pirates, but you also incinerated 2,300 of your fellow colony members. Oops."
Jake couldn't respond. He was no longer in the room, he was no longer in the past. His feelings of guilt and remorse were gone. He was now comatose. The Thrakan took note of this and left the room. Medics came in and took the zombie-like human to the infirmary. It was finally over, at least for the mental conditioning.
The Major was glad. He always hated this part. Breaking someone down like that was one of the most unpleasant things he knew of. To see someone so completely broken...it made him sick. But it was necessary. Now he would have time to heal. They would build him back up, make him better than he was before. They would leave the bulk of his core personality intact. Trying to radically alter a sentient being's mind had always led to...less than spectacular results. They would merely make him more suitable to military life.
The Major also knew this human was more than just a new operative. He was the strongest fighter in existence. His power readings were off the scales, yet they did not know how he had transcended to this new level of power. He was the only one that could tell them that. And another thing was troubling.
While the psychics were working their magic, they had come across a nightmare that he had experienced. What was so different about it was the fact that it was not generated by his mind alone. Something else, something completely alien had also been involved. While the exact details could not be revealed, they knew it was of some significance. It may have even been the trigger for the human's transformation. Only he could tell them exactly what had happened.
So, his recovery would begin. Resa, unknown to Jake, had been there the entire time. She knew what was going to happen to him because it had already been done to her. She was so scared for him it made her sick. She forced herself to watch everything that had happened though, she at least owed him that. Resa knew she loved him. She didn't know when that had happened, all she knew was that someday, she would share her feelings with him.
But there would be time for that later. Now it was time for the healing to begin, and the training to commence. They were to be partners now, mostly because they were so compatible. A new chapter in their lives had begun, just as another had ended. What no one knew, except perhaps Jake, was that something had been awakened. And when it came to find what had stirred it from its sleep, nothing would ever be the same. The seeds of a great war had been sewn, and soon the Destroyers of Worlds would come to reap the harvest.
Blue Six Compound, Vega System
07.15.34
1242 Hours
He awoke to a throbbing headache and severe nausea. The first thing he noticed besides the pain was that the room he was in had no lights. It was pitch black. He got to his feet and stumbled about for a bit, trying to find a wall on which to prop himself. After falling flat on his face numerous times he gave up the attempt and sprawled himself on the floor. He racked his brain trying to remember what happened.
"I was...in a room...something hit me...shit, they must've drugged me. I wonder what they did to me...damn it I'm gonna puke..."
After vomiting heavily on the floor he remembered he hadn't eaten since lunch, which he remembered to be over 24 hours ago. Then came the dry heaves. Those were the worst. About 15 minutes later he felt well enough to stand again and did so with quite a bit of effort. Suddenly he was blinded with a spotlight pointed directly in his face.
"Shit...here they come," he thought.
"Ahhh. Mr. Devaro, are we feeling better now?" It was the voice of the Thrakan whom had picked him up. He was talking through an intercom.
"Go to hell. I knew you bastards would pull something like this."
"Oh really? Then why did you step into the room?"
"What was I supposed to do?"
"Whatever you wanted to. You have, er, had an unstoppable power, why didn't you take full advantage of it?"
"You twisted bastards, I know what you're doing. Using some lame-ass psychological mind game, you're pathetic. Come in here and face me."
There was a slight pause, then, "As you wish, Mr. Devaro."
The spotlight was taken out of his face and he once again returned to darkness. A few moments passed, then two doors slid apart, flooding the room with light. He had to shield his eyes from the onslaught of illumination. The Thrakan's figure was silouhetted against the light, making him look like some sort of heavenly being come to save him. But Sabre knew better.
"What's the matter Mr. Devaro? Are we not feeling well?" The Thrakan chuckled, sending chills down the human's spine.
"What do you want from me?"
"That's simple, all we want is your cooperation."
"Then why go through all this?"
"Because we can not afford to take any risks. You know as well as I do that we would have had to take some...preventative actions."
"What did you do to me?" Sabre asked in a low voice.
"Oh, Mr. Devaro, we did all sorts of things to you. I think you will be shocked to find out that you have been in this installation for three weeks."
Sabre's only reply was the stunned look on his face.
"That's right. Three weeks. I am not lying to you." The Thrakan began to circle him. "Are you sure you want to know what we did to you? You're memory was wiped for a reason."
Sabre wanted to kill the patronizing alien. He tried to raise his power level but found he was still far too weak to try anything of the sort.
"Tell me what you did."
"Ooooh, aren't we brave? Well, first we dissected you. We took you apart piece by peace. We kept your consciousness in a state of suspended animation while we picked at your body."
"Why did you do that?" The thought made him sick.
"We thought your transformation may have been something biological, something genetic."
"What did you find?"
"Nothing. We really didn't expect to, but or surgeons weren't going to pass up a chance to vivisect someone. After we put everything back in place and sewed you back up, we had a group of telepaths perform a mapping of your mind. We now know everything you do, Mr. Devaro. Every thought, dream, emotion, crush, enemy...anything and everything that has ever been in your mind is now known to us. You weren't very cooperative, though."
"What do you mean? Did I not take kindly to you invading my mind?"
"No, not really. In fact, we had to put you under heavy sedation just to allow our telepaths to work. You were quite violent, Mr. Devaro. It wasn't a pretty sight. You destroyed three rooms before we got everything we wanted."
"Did you like what you found? Was it worth it?" The human asked in a shaky voice, his rage beginning to surface. Why the hell didn't you just ask me!? What in the goddamned hell was so important that you had to do this to me!?" Jake screamed. Sabre was no longer the appropriate name for him. He was becoming that human who wouldn't amount to anything. He was losing control of his emotions, something he hadn't done in a long time.
"Ahh...do you now see why we didn't just ask you? You are very unstable, Mr. Devaro, you aren't as cool and calm as you seem to be. Your mind is very...troubled."
Jake knew this to be true. Not even Resa knew the extent of his inner turmoil. There had always been something dark stirring within him, ever since that day on Vertana Prime. He had always tried to suppress those memories, the terrible things that were done to him, the things he had done to others. But some days the nightmares still came.
"Does...does Resa know?" was all he could ask.
"You'll be happy to know that we keep all of our psychological anylizations confidential. Even yours. No, Lieutenant Resa does not know what really happened to your family, nor does she know what really happened to the people who murdered them. We may be morally bankrupt here, Mr. Devaro, but we are not cruel."
It was a great relief that Resa did not know about those horrid days of his past. She could never understand. He was afraid if she found out she would never look at him the same way...and he would lose her forever. Jake could never live without her.
"So, Mr. Devaro, I want to hear you tell the tale, in your own words, of the raid on Vertana Prime. Oh, we know your memories, but hearing you tell it to us makes it so much more...realistic."
The defiant part of the human tried to suppress his voice, but the rest of him had to tell this story; he had kept it to himself for far too long. He shifted his gaze downward, focusing his view on a point on the floor.
"It was cold...that's what I remember most, it was cold..." Jake began, the memories flooding to the surface. "It had been snowing for about a week...I was outside with my sister when I heard the sirens..."
"What set the sirens off?" prodded the Thrakan.
"It was those damned Danti pirates...I can still see their green ships...their insignias. They had been raiding the Vertana system for weeks, but had left our planet alone...no one thought they would be strong enough to...to take on the biggest colony in the system."
"But they were, weren't they?"
Jake had to focus hard to remember the next events, all the while his stomach was twisting in turning in anxiety.
"Oh, God, there were so many of them...I had never seen anything like it, not even in the movies...They blocked out the sun, it, it got real dark, like it was night, but it was two in the afternoon. Sis got scared and ran home, but I just stayed there...Damn it!" The broken human cried.
"What is it?"
"If I had gone back, I could have, I could've..."
"Been killed like the rest of them? You're friends, your family, all of them were killed together, weren't they? A lot of good you would have done. You'd have been just another corpse."
Jake was starting to lose his grip on reality. His memories were intertwining with the present and he was becoming delirious.
"When I came home, I couldn't see anything...it was so black...the door was open...I saw something on the ground, it was thick, dark, I could see it when the searchlights from the ships swept by..."
The human was shaking now, and tears started to trickle down his face. The Thrakan just looked on impassively.
"I followed the trail upstairs, into my parents room...then, then, oh God, then a light hit the window, I was blinded for a second, but for an instant...I saw them all...there was so much blood...so much blood...they had all been shot in the head, they were on their knees... they were begging for their lives and those motherfuckers shot them anyway!" Jake was really shaking now. His body was rocked in tremors, but his voice was still understandable. Tears were flowing freely down his face. It was fascinating, the brain had stopped registering the body's responses. His autonomic functions were in tact, but the rest of his body was not. The body was reacting to the emotions, but the brain was not.
"What did you do next?"
"I ran. I ran as far as I could. I had to get away, I couldn't end up like them...I had to avenge them. I hid in a cave for about a week, I came out only because I was starving. I...I found some food to eat back in the town, but I had to keep hiding from the pirates...I couldn't let them see me. They were garrisoning the planet, turning it into their base of operations...I wasn't going to let those bastards get away..."
The tremors had subsided now, as had the tears.
"And you didn't did you?"
"I was...too weak to fight them...they were really strong...I was only 10...but, but I found one of them sleeping...sleeping in my sister's bed. His gun was on the floor, he must've passed out...I think he was drunk...I picked up the gun, it was heavy, it must've weighed at least twenty pounds...I pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger. His head exploded off his shoulders, blood and, and brain matter sprayed all over the pink wallpaper...I had killed for the first time."
"How did you feel?"
"I, I felt nothing. It was so...strange...I couldn't make the connection that I had killed someone...I went back outside. It was early morning by then, and just like the guy in my house, everyone was sleeping. So I went around, shooting everyone I found. Men, women, it made no difference to me. They were all the same. Goddamed pirates. I had got about fifty of them before someone woke up. When the alarm sounded...I dropped the gun and ran...I was such a coward..."
"Really? You just killed fifty of those horrible people. That doesn't sound cowardly."
"Yeah...but they were sleeping. I hid for a few more days...back in the cave. They started to send out search parties...they were looking for me. I kinda watched them from in the cave...got a feel for their patterns. When I thought I had it down, I ran as fast as I could."
"Where did you run?"
"Into, into the woods. It didn't work though, I got turned around...I was back at the edge of the colony...that was where I found it..."
"What did you find?"
"I...I didn't know what it was at first...it was just a hole in the ground, I saw something shiny...I thought it could've been a gun so I went to pick it up."
"It wasn't a gun, was it, Mr. Devaro?"
"No...it was an anti-matter bomb. I had heard about them before, they said they were going to bury one in the woods...just in case something happened. There was an operator's manual, it was in Latin, the language our people used when we wanted to encrypt something. Heh, we all had to learn it in school. I read over the instructions...I learned how to use it, but..." his voice trailed off.
"But what? Were you afraid to use it?"
The tears started to come back. "Yes, yes, I was. I though maybe there could've been some survivors left...maybe they were hiding. I decided to use it anyway. It was small, you know. I could carry it real easy with two hands. I snuck back into town, they hadn't erected any real defenses yet...I put it in my room. I set the timer for an hour...and put it under my bed. Then I ran again. I ran as fast and as far as I could. I managed to reach some hills before I collapsed. I turned back to the colony and saw it."
"Saw what?"
Jake paused and remembered the next horrible moments. "The explosion. It was so bright I had to cover my eyes...I could see the shockwave. It moved so fast, it just vaporized everything...when I looked back...it was all gone. Everything. My home had just become an empty crater, because of me."
"But those pirates were going to turn it into there base anyway, and besides, wasn't everyone you cared for dead already?" The Thrakan said in a sarcastic voice. He knew full well that there were survivors of the initial raid. They had managed to establish a link with the local space force and were feeding info to them when the line went dead. No one knew exactly what happened until a few days ago. Now he was hearing it from the man who caused it.
"No, they weren't it. There were survivors...I didn't know, I didn't know..." Jake fell to his knees.
"Well, Mr. Devaro, thanks to your rather brash actions, you managed to kill all 20,000 of the invading pirates, but you also incinerated 2,300 of your fellow colony members. Oops."
Jake couldn't respond. He was no longer in the room, he was no longer in the past. His feelings of guilt and remorse were gone. He was now comatose. The Thrakan took note of this and left the room. Medics came in and took the zombie-like human to the infirmary. It was finally over, at least for the mental conditioning.
The Major was glad. He always hated this part. Breaking someone down like that was one of the most unpleasant things he knew of. To see someone so completely broken...it made him sick. But it was necessary. Now he would have time to heal. They would build him back up, make him better than he was before. They would leave the bulk of his core personality intact. Trying to radically alter a sentient being's mind had always led to...less than spectacular results. They would merely make him more suitable to military life.
The Major also knew this human was more than just a new operative. He was the strongest fighter in existence. His power readings were off the scales, yet they did not know how he had transcended to this new level of power. He was the only one that could tell them that. And another thing was troubling.
While the psychics were working their magic, they had come across a nightmare that he had experienced. What was so different about it was the fact that it was not generated by his mind alone. Something else, something completely alien had also been involved. While the exact details could not be revealed, they knew it was of some significance. It may have even been the trigger for the human's transformation. Only he could tell them exactly what had happened.
So, his recovery would begin. Resa, unknown to Jake, had been there the entire time. She knew what was going to happen to him because it had already been done to her. She was so scared for him it made her sick. She forced herself to watch everything that had happened though, she at least owed him that. Resa knew she loved him. She didn't know when that had happened, all she knew was that someday, she would share her feelings with him.
But there would be time for that later. Now it was time for the healing to begin, and the training to commence. They were to be partners now, mostly because they were so compatible. A new chapter in their lives had begun, just as another had ended. What no one knew, except perhaps Jake, was that something had been awakened. And when it came to find what had stirred it from its sleep, nothing would ever be the same. The seeds of a great war had been sewn, and soon the Destroyers of Worlds would come to reap the harvest.