Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (6 page)

She was five foot even, appeared no more than ninety-six pounds despite the fact she had borne Estefan more children than any of the other women present.  Her figure wasn’t much altered after all the years he had known her either.  The surreal agelessness of her gave it away.  She was an Old-Timer as well.  This was the case for all very old, Old-Timer’s – the
ir inability to age always seemed to regenerate their bodies to somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-six years, regardless of what happened to them.  No matter how grievous the event, if they lived through it, in time, they would regress back to the body type they had in those tender years.  Their scars would fade and damage done flesh and bone would disappear, even the markings of child-birth would fade.  It was amazing to think that Mena had given him eleven children and yet, there wasn’t a single blemish belying that truth.  She looked no older than a junior in college, fresh from the library or the Student union or some study group.  Reality was far from it – very, very far.  Indeed, Mena was eleven years younger than him, but she was still over three hundred and seventy-three earth-years of age.

She was petite, small breasted with round hips curving into a round, bubble-butt and wore an insulation suit.  It was something one would wear underneath a Heavy-Enviro encase
ment when walking about a planet with more than three earth gravities.  Wherever she was, she was near one of the gas giants, only their gravity wells and heavy radiation levels required such personal fortification.

Estefan thought Mena was amazing all the same and he had loved every one of the eleven children she had given him.  He nodded slightly in her direction and she beamed.  Her nostrils flared below a proud ridge, her thick, pouting lips puckering to give him a “kiss”.  He shook his head back and forth at her.  Mena – no matter how bad things got – ever seemed to take anything too serious.  She would rather joke or poke fun.  She tried as much as she could to never let anything get her down.  When something did sap her vibrant, light-hearted nature it made them all run to her, scared, for only the most dire things were capable of affecting her spirit in such a way.  Her levity was her way of saying she missed him.  How could he not smile back?

At the same time though, he imagined all of them missed him to one degree or another.  He missed
them
, after all.  It had been some time since they’d all been together.  The women before the Keeper were actually spread across the Solar System as was their protocol whenever their group was entering a dangerous phase.  Since the meeting with Dr. Ahmed Carlos Ball had been deemed such, the Keeper had the girls –
his girls
- scattered before the wind.

Only Flavia had been
allowed to accompany him.  Occasionally, it irked the others that they couldn’t be beside him in times like this, but, in the end, each of them knew Flavia was his best protection.  She was his weapon and his shield.

At his side, the deadly vixen extinguished the fabric of her glow-shawl and the light (and heat) emanating from it vanished with a touch of her hand.  They were momentarily
plunged into darkness.  Within a few heartbeats, the Null-unit auto-sensed conditions for its occupants weren’t optimal.  It reacted.  Low-level, phosphorus light began to pulsate along the upper corners of the elongated chamber, emanating along the inverted corner where the walls met the ceiling.  They were bathed in pale blue, lighter color was washed out and darker ones turned into varying shades of black.

He waited for the light to gain in intensity until its cerulean properties changed more or less to white, and the true hues around them returned.  Of their own volition, he felt his eyes stray to Katie, who stood to leftmost from where he sat.

She was staring back at him intently; her hazel eyes were almost glaring above the high cheekbones of her angular face.  She had been emphatic about joining him and Flavia on this last mission.  He had forbid it, which had pissed her off something fierce.  She was about an inch taller than Mena and maybe weighed a handful of pounds more, but that was it.  She was light skinned with shoulder length, blonde hair (a color she always wore when she was angry with Estefan.  It was her way of protesting.  She knew he hated that color on her, she had programed it thus on purpose).  She was of a medium build with breasts fuller than Mena’s, though her hips were narrower, making her backside seem to protrude more, but the feature was more an optical illusion.  She wore clothes as if she’d recently been aroused from bed, but he knew she hadn’t.  She had deliberately stayed in bed all day, deliberately lazy, but deliberately alluring at the same time.  Her way of saying to Estefan, “Look what you missed today…”  The spaghetti strapped tank and fitted shorts clung to her curves so tightly, he could tell she wore nothing else underneath.  He could see every bump, every crevice, every bulge – she left nothing to imagination.

What a brat
, he thought as he forced his eyes to move from her sumptuous figure to the tall, voluptuous women standing next to her.  The projections made them seem close, but they weren’t.  They were hundreds of thousands of miles apart.  Katie was on Luna Prime, their sprawling headquarters upon the Moon, while Ramona was within an undisclosed orbital station five hundred miles above Earth.  Not even Estefan was privy to her exact location; another protocol in place to protect the integrity of the Synod.

She was wearing black heels over thigh-high nylons - the thick sort, looking more like socks – and a matching micro-mini skirt and loose fitting blouse.  She wore it with the neck hanging over her shoulders, draped down her back, so the unbutton front of it made a perfect “V”, exposing her ample cleavage.  The skin there appeared spongy and drew his eyes before he could stop himself.  She had cut her hair Cleopatra-style a few months back, her dark brown
, wavy locks had been replaced by obsidian glass, framing her broad face at ninety degree angles precisely where her eyebrows ended.  Her digital lipstick, mascara, and eye shadow matched her hair.  She looked like deadly viper hiding behind the veneer of an Emo-girl.  Her appearance didn’t quite match the intensity in her blue-grey eyes.  They were the only color about her, all else was black and white.

Even though, she was five hundred miles above him, Estefan could feel her trying to read his thoughts, his scalp tingled with the tell-tale signs she was using her Mutation to garner information from him.  Ramona was an Old-Timer like the rest of them, but she was also a Sniffer, a Human Celeste capable of discerning another Celeste’s Mutation through thought, which was most likely due to the fact she was also the most powerful Empathist the Keeper had ever seen.  With her mind, she could unearth, read, and sometimes even manipulate ones’ emotions.  By combining it with her Sniffer ability, she could come very close to reading minds, especially if the subject were willing.

At this time, though, Estefan was not, and that seemed to bother her.  She hated it when he withheld information from her.

Welcome to the club, my sweet Mona.  No one gets to know the whole truth this time
, he thought as he nodded at her and let his eyes flick to the small diminutive woman projected to her left.

The tiny woman was very far away from them currently, having been “exiled” to Dark-side Mercury 7, a secure facility the Synod had built in a stationary orbit above the planet Mercury.  The highly shielded base was forever moving in counterpoint with the rotation of th
at mostly metallic sphere, so it stayed in constant shadow, protected from the devastating Solar Winds of the Sun.

Her name was Tirza.  She stood there in what appeared to be a bathrobe and slippers, her hair bundled in a huge towel, towering
above her, made so, because she was so small.  For as long as he had known her, Tirza had been one of the shortest women he’d come to know.  She was dwarf-like in stature and being a Human celeste hadn’t changed any of that.  She was a mere four foot nine, even in the half-inch slippers she was wearing.  She had an oval face with smooth cheeks, a tiny angled nose and a squared, but delicate-boned chin.  Above those features, set close together, were large, ovoid eyes – dark brown – below thick, eyebrows, colored the same.

She smiled warmly at Estefan, flashing her fingers with lightning speed.  Being as old as they were
, their mastery of sign-language was complete, so much so they’d altered the delivery and structure of the signs over the years; thus, they’d practically invented a whole new method of communication only they could comprehend.  And, those they cared to teach as well, but they were in very short supply.

“Our daughter is well,”
she had signed.

Estefan’s face softened at the thought of the precocious, eight-year-old daughter he shared with the miniature woman before him.  Patricia was the youngest of his offspring borne to him of the Aegis Synod itself.  He had younger children, but they had come from other women and, therefore, had
lesser status.  Only those carried by the women before would be fit to rule beside them.  All the others were well cared for and were never left wanting.  They would always have a place within the Keeper’s vast holdings, but they would never be a part of the inner circle – never.

Leda, the woman next to Tirza, had seen others’ fingers flash and understood the message. She turned toward the smaller woman, her hands moving with alacrity. 
“Does she like Dark-side?”
she wondered with her fingers.

Tirza’s smile drooped. 
“She misses her brothers and sisters…”

Leda’s expression mimicked the other woman’s. 
“This will all be over soon, and then we can all be together again,”
she signed, trying to lighten the others’ mood.

Estefan let his eyes wonder over Leda’s three dimensional figure, ignoring the conversation between the two.  She was bathed in bright, artificial light, a sort not typically seen this late
in the twenty-fourth century.  It had been in abundance in the twenty-second, though, when exploration of the Solar System had matured enough that serious colonization began in earnest.  This light alone told the Keeper exactly where Leda was – Mars.  It had been one of the first planets extensively explored and settled; some of its earliest communities had bi-centennial ceremonies more than fifty years ago.  So, it wasn’t all that difficult to deduce where one might find ago-old technology in quantity.  Though he didn’t know exactly where she’d been hidden, he knew it was within the Martian permafrost, probably somewhere deep.

Leda was wearing insulated blue-jeans and a sleek, lapis luzi dyed parka, complete with a matching beanie and scarf, and a pair of sturdy looking boots upon her feet.  Even then, she made it look sexy, though Estefan couldn’t make out a single aspect of her body.  He could imagine her firm, perky breasts and small,
well-formed butt under the layers of clothing she wore, but that wasn’t what made her so appealing.  It was her carriage.  It was the way she held her chin when she turned to regard someone, the gesture of her hand, the splay of her wrist, the swivel of her hips when she changed position, the sway of her shoulders.  She was pure elegance to him and, to this day, he was amazed by the fact she was in love with the likes of him.  She always made him feel like a clod whenever she was near him, clumsy and retarded juxtaposed against her grace and porcelain features.

You should’ve been a Queen, my dear Leda… a pale skinned monarch with the features of a raven, so complex and cold, and yet so passionate and loyal underneath.  You have always been an enigma to me…

He realized, in that moment, she was looking back at him once again.  There was a searching expression on her face as though she knew he was thinking of her, but wasn’t quite certain she wanted to know precisely what those thoughts entailed.  He half-smiled lamely, feeling his earlier thoughts of inadequacy come to life.  Then, he smiled broadly when she began to frown. 
She thinks I am poking fun at her.
  He put his fingers to his lips and blew her an imaginary kiss, which made her freeze in place; look at him more directly with one eye than the other.

“I will tell you later,”
he signed and she nodded briskly, a silent gesture telling him he had better.

The woman to Leda’s left waved at him then, catching his attention.  Her exuberance and vivacity undiminished through the years
, though so many very bad things had happened.  It seemed to him, her indomitable spirit was impervious to crushing, because she had the uncanny ability to bounce back from tragedy faster than any of them.  She was always the first to explain the good and forget the bad.  She was first to encourage and mollify uncertainty with her light tones and infectious smiles.  She was the beacon they followed through the darkness, the glue of positivity keeping their unit strong, resolute in the face of adversity.

Her name was Sandy.  She was of medium height with the strong arms and legs of an athlete, full breasts and
broad hips, though none of that was in evidence now.  She wore a low-level environment suit, complete with a transparent Diatainium helmet, gloves and rigid boots.  Estefan could see the mid-length locks of her translucent russet-colored hair about her aquiline face and v-shaped chin through the head covering.  Her thin lips were made moreso by her grin. Her small nose bunched at its’ bridge as her light brown eyes sparkled with mirth.

She was far away too, recalled Estefan, his mood gloomier, because of the distance between them.

Though she had been sent away in secret, due to the delicacy of his meeting with Dr. Ahmed, there was another purpose to her journey, at the same time.  She had been sent to DeepCore Alpha, the ice-mining facility the Synod had helped fund on Neptune’s massive moon – Triton.