I wish I could describe what an AL session felt like, but other than some residual memories of flashing lights and weird low sounds, I couldn’t recall much of the process. Piettow once described it to me as akin to force-feeding someone. But instead of liquid food being pumped into my gullet, liquified knowledge was being pumped into my brain.
Honestly, it could have been anything. For all I knew, Piettow was teaching me how to fold origami—or make a soufflé. I had no idea.
When I awoke, Essida administered some more drugs, including a blast of hydria, which cleared my head immediately—and then some.
“You did great,” she said. “I think we set a new record in terms of how much info you took in.”
“How much time until the meeting?” I asked.
“Two hours or so. Gemma needs at least an hour with you, so Dr. Piettow’s just going to do some spot checks real quick.” As she started unhooking me from the sensor rig, Piettow came in and started barraging me with questions. I answered everything correctly, but I’d need to work on my delivery. It’s definitely unsettling when you say something without really grasping how you know what you are talking about.
After fifteen minutes of interrogation, he pronounced me ready to go and wished me luck. Ness walked me down the hall to another stateroom where my cousin Gemma had set up her own gear.
“Dynark’s Blood!” she exclaimed when she saw me. “What’s that jungle growing on your face? Please tell me it’s fake!” She tugged at my beard.
“Oww!”
“Ugh! Into the shower with you!” She shoved me towards the bathroom. “Let’s soften it up before I hack it off.”
“Have fun!” Ness called as I disappeared into the bathroom.
“I could use a little help in here,” I said.
“In your dreams!”
Even though Gemma said she’d need an hour to work on my appearance, she was done in forty-five minutes. I was shaved, my hair cut, stranded with a hint of gray, and styled. My skin was marked with some temporary and very subtle age spots, and some of my wrinkles were retouched—both on my face and hands. Finally, I was dressed in a very expensive suit that fit me perfectly.
When I looked in the mirror, I was staring at Sean Beck.
I hated what I saw, and looked away.
Gemma noticed my expression and smiled faintly. “I guess I did my job.”
“You certainly did.” Wallace stood in the doorway, looking me over. “Well done, honey. Did you check him against the aging projections?”
“Of course I did.”
“Terrific.” He took one last look at me and then motioned me to follow him. “We’re actually a little ahead of schedule, so we have time for a quick briefing session with Sainecourt. It’s all in your head, anyway. But it can’t hurt, right?”
“Whatever you say.”
“It just makes you look like you’re even more on top of things,” Wallace said.
I knew what he meant. Piettow had implanted all the pertinent information into my mind during the AL session, but it was all under the surface. A briefing session would get me thinking about the mission and bring it top-of-mind.
As we walked down the hall I caught a glimpse of a spaceport wall through a porthole.
“We docked already?” I asked.
“Yes. The Shima are coming to us. Two of them. Junior representatives of their trade council, based out of Lussix.”
“A job this big and they’re not even sending the big guns?”
“The big guns are three months away. That’s why they’re even talking to us.”
“Right.” The Shimese home world, Sekhbet, was on the far side of the galaxy, 150 light years away. Lots of hops.
Wallace led me into the liner’s conference room, finely appointed with an impressive carved lo’an table, wormcloth upholstered chairs that looked like they should be in a museum exhibit, and thick Palanese carpets that seemed to muffle all the sound in the room.
Ro Sainecourt sat at a projector at one end of the table. He looked up as I entered the room.
“There he is. Man of the hour.”
Sainecourt headed up our missions planning department and had been with the company forever. One of my dad’s trusted lieutenants. He must have been close to a hundred years old, and like Piettow, eschewed all but the most necessary bio mods. Every time I saw Sainecourt he looked older, and I wondered how much longer he’d be around. Still, he was as sharp as anyone. Sharper, really, because he had the unique ability to synthesize all the data his team collected into a straightforward, concise mission briefing.
“Let’s get into it,” he said, as he fiddled with the datapad that controlled his projector. “Executive briefing. Your eyes and ears only.”
Before I could even sit down, Sainecourt started in, peppering me with bits of information. Starting with the Kryrk.
It was a five-thousand-year-old religious artifact from Sekhbet, supposedly used by a Shimese prophet to smite an enemy kingdom by summoning a falling star that destroyed an entire continent. The word Kryrk roughly translates to “crescent” and in some of the Shimese religious texts the Kryrk is also referred to as “the crescent of the stars.” The object itself was indeed shaped like a crescent, either made of gold or a golden-colored crystal, and was “three hands long.” Shimese hands are longer than human hands, so Sainecourt’s team estimated the artifact’s size to be between 70 and 80 centimeters long.
For millennia, the Kryrk was stored in a temple on an island populated by the Shima’s caste of warrior-priests. Not much is recorded about the Kryrk until the year 1094 of the common calendar. That was the year of the Yueldian invasion.
The race is extinct today, but a thousand years ago Yueldian “Sky Reavers” terrorized the galaxy. They were an
