Blood Betrayal Read online

  “What? Know the pleasures of women?” Cor’El asked in a voice showing that he still wanted to anger his father.

  “No, dammit!” Cor shouted, and he stopped himself short of saying anything else, taking a deep breath to calm himself. “That would have happened eventually anyway, though I am troubled by Dahken Marya’s approach of you. She is a Dahken and a grown woman, and she’ll make no more advances toward you. Or she and I will have… a problem.

  “No, you know of what I’m speaking – what you did to the Dahken today cannot happen again.”

  Cor’El gratuitously rolled his eyes to the left with a sigh and said, “None of them were hurt, not permanently.”

  Cor’s blood began to boil again, but he tamped it down. “Unacceptable. You’ve known your whole life, almost since you were born, how different you are from everyone else in this world, just like me. A responsibility comes with that; we can’t just flaunt it to whomever we want just because we can.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Cor’El disagreed dryly, and his face showed the complete disinterest in the subject at hand.

  “Because it’s wrong! No one in this world controls the power that we do. Maybe one day they will, but for now they do not. It is up to us to help build the best world we can for everyone.”

  “We’re the strongest. We should build the best world for ourselves.”

  “No,” Cor forcefully replied, “that is the thinking of every tyrant, of every enslaver the world has ever seen. I will neither think that way myself, nor tolerate it in anyone around me, even my son.”

  His son almost leapt from his disheveled bed to stand in front of him, less than a foot away. Cor was still a few inches taller than the boy, but the difference would likely disappear in the next few years. An observer would not question in any way the relation of these two, their gray skin a perfect match for each other, and the younger’s face certainly had the strong chin and firm jawline of the elder. At the same time, the shock of golden hair and almond shaped silver eyes differentiated them greatly.

  “Well, I’m tired of tolerating the way you treat me,” Cor’El sneered.

  “I treat you like a father treats his son,” Cor replied firmly. “In fact, I’ve been far too easy on you. You’ve lived your whole life in luxury with no want, whatsoever. I almost never force you to do anything. You have no idea how easy your life is, how hard the struggle of life is for people in this world. I was raised on a farm -”

  “Where you worked from sunup to sundown,” mocked Cor’El.

  And that was it. The anger came up through Cor’s gut like so much bile, and before he could calm himself, his right hand opened, came up and struck his son firmly across the left side of his face. The flesh slapped loudly, and even stung Cor’s palm as his son’s face turned slightly in the direction of the blow. He should’ve felt sorry immediately, and perhaps later he would, but Cor’El had pushed him too far.

  “You do not interrupt me!” Cor thundered.

  His son turned his face back toward him, a fiery anger burning in his irises, just like his mother’s did so often. The two stood locked in a silent contest for some moments, before Cor turned and strode to the door leaving Cor’El’s rooms. He stood at the heavy oaken door, the same kind that could be found throughout the Crescent, considering it for a moment as he rested his hand on the handle.

  “You’re young,” Cor said to him, his voice raised just enough to carry to the next room, “one day you’ll understand what I’ve been telling you your whole life.” He paused to open the door. “And son, don’t you ever act that way toward me again.”

  “Mother does.”

  “Your mother is my equal, and in the end, she and I are united in all things,” Cor replied as he exited the room.

  “We’ll see about that,” Cor’El answered.

  But Cor was already gone, and he didn’t hear the comment as he had closed the door behind him, on his way to a small series of rooms that made up a subfloor in the Crescent, a place he went when he really needed to be alone, to think.

  Dahk

  The lab was quiet, too quiet for Doctor Harold Brown’s liking. It was empty of course, because the only persons who may possibly appear would be those he thought up. Or maybe those his subconscious decided to bring up for his amusement or torture. He briefly considered Christina; she could certainly find a way to amuse him for more than a few minutes, but in the end, it would be pointless. That was the prison he had allowed himself to be put into, that all of his cohorts had been put into, and all of them had slowly lost their minds to it, becoming gods, if nowhere else than in their own minds.

  Doc wouldn’t have it. He played the part for a while, generally still did, but he continued to create within his Vault the old labs, beaches and persons of his past. It kept his mind sharp, kept his mind from degrading into the fantasies of godhood, though the slow passage of time tried to drive him insane for a different reason. It of course helped that the memory in his section of the facility was exceptionally well shielded, preventing some of his zeroes from flipping to ones and vice versa. That was a real world, physical explanation of what was happening to his former friends and coworkers anyway.

  He couldn’t stand the silence any longer and walked over to one of the old style computers and tapped the touchscreen to wake it up. Doc started to navigate through the massive music libraries, sorting by genre and category, just floating his way through until something caught his eye. He selected an oldie, a virtually ancient thrash metal song about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and turned it way up loud, the way it was meant to be played. It had always been a favorite of his; the hard and fast guitar riff pounded out the rhythm of galloping horses.

  I wonder if it’ll disturb the neighbors, he thought with a wry smile.

  The song had just progressed to an interlude where the beat slowed substantially and the lead guitar began to cry when it finally happened, the event Doc had been waiting to occur any time in the last few months. A ship, a big one, dropped out of Steingartner space into normal space a mere three hundred thousand kilometers away from Rumedia and began its trek under normal thrust toward the planet.

  Doc paused the song just as the lead singer began to enumerate the ways in which the Four Horseman hand out judgement and accessed the communications network with his passcode. It was a matter of only a few seconds before Admiral Zheng’s familiar face, a face wholly unchanged by the passage of time appeared on the screen. Doc wondered for just a moment if the man’s lack of apparent aging was a result of the time dilation effect that comes from faster than light travel or if Zheng had yet again copied himself.

  “Good morning, Admiral.”

  “It is almost fourteen hundred hours standard time, Doctor.”

  “I know, but it’s just after sunrise local time. You’re late; I expected you two years ago.”

  “The issues I am dealing with are none of your concern, Doctor. How are we proceeding?” Zheng asked, his limited patience for small talk having abruptly abated.

  “We’re very close. The boy’s basically convinced that he’s the most powerful being in the world, and –“

  Zheng interrupted, cutting to the heart of the matter, “Is it true? Is he the most powerful being in the world?”

  Dahk chuckled, “Oh, absolutely, but we need him to prove it to himself. He needs a little push.”

  “Explain.”

  “I’m not a psychologist, but… His cold understanding of his power, and others’ lack of it, has helped create in him an almost sociopathic view of the world around him and the people in it. I’ve helped him to realize that no one has the right to tell him what to do, and that he should be ruling. He feels inferior to his father, as most male children do, and he doesn’t understand his father’s decision to not rule himself. That has turned into resentment. Also, he loves his mother intensely, to an unnatural degree. You couple that with his resentment towards his father, and you have a wonderfully vile Oedipus complex brewing. Of cours
e, I may have helped that along a bit. I’ve been working on him for four years now, acting as a friend while actually just reinforcing his complexes and psychoses.”

  Admiral Zheng digested this for a moment. “You seem to have an excellent understanding of psychology, Doctor.”

  “I read a lot,” Doc replied quickly, and he swore, for just an instant before it disappeared, that the corners of the admiral’s mouth turned upward in a smile at the joke.

  “Excellent work, Doctor, what is the next step?”

  * * *

  Dahk reached out through the morning sunlight to Byrverus. It was one of those cool spring mornings. Trees swayed gently in a warm breeze that worked to push out the cold air from overnight. Water beaded on blades of wet grass as the green plants reached toward the warmth of the sun. It was early yet, but by mid-day it would be a warm spring day, the first herald of summer still a couple months into the distance.

  He found Cor’El awake, but still in bed, and Dahk rolled his eyes, mentally at least, at what the Dahken boy was doing. He sighed inwardly and reminded himself that he was fourteen once, and he might have set a new world record in the activity. He waited a few minutes, so as not to embarrass the boy, and then took hold of his consciousness to bring him back to the darkness of the Vault.

  “Welcome back,” Dahk said, his voice coming from no physical manifestation.

  “Where is the white room?” Cor’El asked.

  “Oh, it’s around here somewhere,” Dahk said enigmatically, causing the young man some annoyance. An old rock ‘n roll song popped into his head, something about a white room with black curtains. Dahk “shook” his head to clear it. “I’ve brought you here to meet someone.”

  “I am naked,” Cor’El stated impassively. He certainly was, and it really just dawned on Dahk that the boy was truly growing into a young man. While he was far from well-muscled, the core was there in broadened shoulders and the absence of baby fat.

  “Yes. Yes, I… know… Just imagine yourself wearing clothes. There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “Did you…?” Cor’El asked, sudden embarrassment crossing his face, but quickly turning to something else, anger perhaps.

  “It matters not.” Matters not? Why am I talking like this? Dahk thought. “I haven’t much time, Cor’El. These visitations are becoming increasingly difficult for me to manage. I need to introduce you to Vice Admiral Zheng Huojin.”

  Cor’El looked about with some confusion in the dark vault before turning to behold a relatively short man with features not too different from a Tigolean, except his white hair was cut close to the scalp, almost shaved. The Iron Chinaman had apparently chosen to shave his goatee in the few minutes he waited for Dahk to make the connection, and he wore a dress uniform, complete with pressed slacks and a black wrap tunic covered in medals. Dahk thought Zheng must look very strange to the young Dahken, to say nothing of the fact that the man was only about five and a half feet tall, slightly shorter than Cor’El, but his hologram seemed closer to six feet. Zheng’s shoes clapped together as he launched into a crisp and precise salute, his right hand held to his head as straight and narrow as the blade of a deadly sword.

  “I am Vice Admiral Zheng Huojin. I greet you with the utmost respect,” Zheng said.

  Cor’El did his best to mimic the salute. “Dahk has told me of you.”

  “That is good. Cor’El, I cannot speak with you long. This communication costs great amounts of power,” Zheng said, and annoyance would have crept onto Dahk’s face if he had one, as it was his power that was being used, not Zheng’s. “I am here to see if you are ready.”

  “Ready?” Cor’El repeated the word.

  “Yes, ready to take your rightful place as ruler of this world and others. I need your strength, Cor’El.”

  “Dahk has told me.”

  “The stars are full of people that want to everyone to live differently, and this creates so much strife and death. I know you have seen it on your own world. Your own father has caused so much trying to make people live ‘free’, but there is no freedom in such. Everyone’s ideals are different, and this causes more conflict. Surely, it is best if the people with the power to do so rule all and tell them how to live. Think of the lives it would save!”

  Dahk watched as Cor’El nodded ever so slightly while the admiral spoke, his eyes downcast toward the cloaked floor of the Vault as he considered the words. He also noted the hardening of Cor’El’s jaw when the admiral mentioned Cor, and at first Dahk feared that Zheng had overplayed his hand.

  Dahk ignored the presence standing outside his Vault doors. Only he heard the shouts and demands for entry, only he heard the pounding on the great, rusted iron doors that he kept sealed against everyone. The man was meant only to observe and record, not interfere in any way. Frankly, the Chronicler was beginning to piss him off.

  “But it will not be easy,” Zheng continued. “Many will stand in our way, because they don’t understand the good that will come from our rule, but we must ignore them. Normal men are nothing to us, Cor’El, they are bugs to be stomped upon, dust to be blown away by our cleansing breeze. We are gods, and when they challenge us, we must make them go away, and feel nothing for their loss, for they are nothing to us. It is the power we have, and the responsibility we bear.”

  “There is only one I love, and I’ll make her understand,” Cor’El said quietly, his eyes still pointed downward, but then Cor’El looked back up at Zheng. “I will help you. What do I need to do?”

  “Before you can conquer the stars, you must conquer Arcturus, Rumedia as you know it. Before you can conquer Rumedia, you must conquer your homeland. You must take it, you must rule. You need no one’s help to do what you must, and if one stands in your way, you must crush him. Prove you can do this, and we will meet again.”

  The Chronicler Paul Chen

  The Chronicler saw everything including the admiral’s ship, Lin Zexu, as it approached Rumedia, but seeing and having the power to do anything about it were two completely different things. Monitoring station resources, he knew that Dahk had reached out to the admirals’ vessel, but the communication stream had been encrypted and too short to break. He even knew that the “god” brought part of Cor’El’s consciousness into his Vault, but he was locked out from observing what occurred inside.

  Paul Chen shouted for entrance, beat on the iron doors to no avail. It made no sound inside the vault and only left him with sore hands covered in brownish red flakes of rust, the only sign that he even tried. He continued to demand entrance even well after the entire meeting ended and Zheng’s ship settled into its orbit, but Dahk refused to acknowledge his existence. Paul sat on a cold floor he could not see, his back up against the iron doors, and banged his head up against them once. It should have been godawful, brutally painful, and he noted with interest that the lack of pain only made him even more frustrated at his impotence.

  He turned his head to the right and shouted, “Go fuck yourself, Doc.”

  He sighed and stood up, stretching his virtual back as he did so, and decided he had only one potential ally in this. Paul checked on Garod’s Vault and found it unlocked. Entering, he sought out Garod upon his platinum throne in his usual white and gold robes. Today the god wore one of his younger faces, a fair haired man no older than twenty five, clean shaven with a strong chin and jawline. His eyes were closed.

  “Jared, I need you,” Paul called.

  “I do not know that name,” he replied softly, and yet his voice boomed at the same time.

  “It’s your real name,” Paul explained. “You’ve just forgotten.”

  “Then, do not remind me. Leave me in peace, Chronicler.”

  Paul expected to be thrown from the Vault then, but nothing happened. He took that to mean that he still had a chance to reach the man inside the mental image he now saw.

  “I’ll call you Garod if I must. I need you, Rumedia needs you. Dahk is up to something.”

  “Dahk is always up to so
mething,” Garod sighed, his eyes still closed. “I’ve long grown tired of his machinations.”

  “Then help me stop them,” Paul pressed.

  “When I say I’ve grown tired of them, it means I no longer care to stop them. Or anyone else’s, for that matter. Dahk has long schemed, millennia ago with the creation of his people he started. None of it matters now. Rumedia will go on.”

  “No, it won’t,” Paul disagreed, and Garod opened his eyes for the first time.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t be sure,” Paul admitted, bringing a look of annoyed dismissal to Garod’s face, “but Doctor Harold Brown is up to something. Over the last seven years, he has been in touch with Admiral Zheng at least twice. I don’t know exactly what they said to each other, but --”

  Garod interrupted, “Then it’s not important.”

  “Dammit, it is important! Wake up, Doctor Jared Lance!” Paul shouted, and his fervor surprised even himself for a moment. “There’s still got to be some of you left in there. You haven’t lost it all, you just wish you have.”

  Something passed over Garod’s face, a wave of relief combined with understanding, recognition or perhaps remembrance. His blue eyes changed gray, his hair turned to a brown so dark as to be almost black with dashes of gray with a full beard to match. Black slacks with a gray golf shirt and a white lab-style overcoat replaced the robes, and the platinum throne was suddenly gone, a white leather office chair in its place.

  “Jared,” Paul continued, “it has something to do with the Dahken Cor’El, Cor Pelson’s son. I am sure Doc has introduced the kid to the admiral.”

  “To what end?” Jared Lance asked. “Why would the admiral care about this boy?”

  “It must have to do with the ‘experiment’,” Paul reasoned. “What was it, really? What was it all about?”