“Take us out of here Katy,” said Jolo. And just like Marco said she would, the old ship made it topside and they made four quick jumps in succession, getting as far away from Montag as they could.
Home Again
A few jumps outside of Duval
Jolo pressed the button on the intercom. “Where is Jaylen?” he said.
The tall Vellosian stared back at him with calm eyes through the dirty glass window of the Argossy’s lower hold airlock door. “Must we speak like this?” He voice small and tinny through the small speaker.
“Start talking or I’ll send you out into space,” said Jolo through the comm, eyeing the red button on the wall that would suck the green creature out into the cold black.
“Don’t you want to know who you are?” said the Vellosian.
“I want to know where Jaylen is!” Jolo yelled.
“Please, Jolo, don’t do this,” said Katy, coming down the stairs into the cargo hold.
Jolo squatted down, his hands in his head. “All of this. Falkowski and his crew. The Leviathan. Was for nothing,” he said. Katy put her arm around him.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “There’s more going on here.”
“Yes, listen to her, Jolo,” said the Vellosian. “This is bigger than you.”
Jolo pulled out the Colt and put it up to the glass level with the green man’s head. “You don’t know anything about me!” yelled Jolo.
“My name is Merthon. And yes, I do know about you. I created you.” Jolo fired twice at the thick alacyte door but neither round penetrated. The Vellosian jumped back and Katy moved between Jolo and the door.
“Are you gonna shoot me, too?” she said. And Jolo lowered the gun. “Please let him at least speak before you dump him out into space. This isn’t like you, Jolo.”
“How would you know?” Jolo snarled. “You don’t know me!”
“Yes, I do,” she yelled right back. “I’ve watched you do the right thing every time,” she said. “You saved the people on Qualus. You allowed Marco to call you son, to love you, even though you weren’t sure. You tried to save the girl you loved.”
Jolo stood and pressed the green button on the wall and the door slid open and the Vellosian stepped into the hold. He sat on a small box and stared at Jolo and Katy like a teacher pondering two students.
Jolo holstered the Colt. “What do you mean, you made me?”
“My friend and colleague Jamis and I were pulled from Vellos before the BG destroyed the planet. At first, we thought fate had spared us, but soon we realized the Bakanhe Grana had taken us so that we could build them an army of synthetic beings under their control. They used one of the old Vellosian labs on Montag. We could not escape and could not get word to anyone in the Federation powerful enough to matter so we thought we would be forced to do the Emperor’s bidding and then be surely killed when he had no use of us.
And then there was an attack by the Fed on Montag led by none other than Jolo Vargas, the great Federation war hero. The BG were victorious and Vargas died. The Emperor celebrated your death and when other Fed marines’ bodies were simply recycled, yours was kept as a trophy in the hall of the Emperor.
It stayed there several days until one day it was gone. I got a hold of the body and went to work. I am a Vellosian, a Creator making a bio-synth army for the BG, yet they underestimated my abilities, did they not realize what I could do with you? They left Vargas’s body in stasis box in a pile of recyclable waste. I took your body and placed it in one of my growth tanks surrounded by thousands of other tanks. Once the recycle bot took your stasis container away no one was the wiser.”
“So who am I?” said Jolo.
“You are a mix of bio-synth and human,” said the Vellosian. He put his hand on Jolo’s face. “You are your own man, but there is a large part of Jolo Vargas in you as well. Your body knows who you are.”
“So I’m no better than one of your synths?”
“No. You are much more than that. You have all of their powers. And you have your humanity. That frail and wonderful quality the BG consider a weakness, yet makes all of you so confounding and wonderful.”
“What about my father? He thinks I’m Jolo.”
“Well, you are Jolo. Mostly. And why should he not love you and accept you.
“And what of the girl, Jaylen. The one I knew on the gunboat?”
“I’m sorry,” said Merthon. “That was… that was a contrivance. A planted memory that never was. A piece of the other Jolo that I used for your mission.”
“Mission?”
“Yes, the mission to save Jamis and me and then help prove the BG are not the Fed’s allies.”
“So you put me in a coffin tube and blasted me off that little dirt clod of a planet heading straight for Fed space just knowing I’d come back for the girl.”
“It was a Racellian escape pod.”
“So tight I couldn’t scratch my ass!”
“But you made it home. I knew you would. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I used your humanity against you. Uh, for us. For the Federation. You must help us, Jolo. Only a former Federation hero can sway the powers that be.”
“I guess you miscalculated on that last part. The Fed have me pegged as a spy.”
“Yes, but you made it. And you saved me and now you know the
