Solbidyum Wars Saga 7: Hunt for the Reduviids (21 page)

“So, what’s going on here?  Are these boys bothering you, A’Lappe?”  I asked.

“No, not at all.  Believe it or not, Tibby, these boys are actually a huge help to me.  I find that when I explain to them what I am doing, they ask questions that I would never think of and when they do I often see things I am overlooking.  They are actually a huge help to me.”

“Really?  I said.

“Really!” he responded, “Is there something special I can do for you today?”

“Yes I need to talk to you about the special project I gave you and see if you’ve made any progress.”

“Ah, I see,” he turned to the boys and said, “Why don’t you two run along now.  I need to discuss some technical issues with Tibby.  Come back later; I’m interested in your thoughts about modifying the Cantolla Gates,” he yelled after the boys as they headed out the door.  Once they were out of sight he said, “Come with me to my office.”

Once we were in his office, A’Lappe closed the door and gave me a serious look, “I imagine you want to know the test results.”

“I’m guessing by your tone that they are not good,” I replied.

“Honestly, Tibby, I don’t know how bad it is, but it isn’t good.  After your crash on Goo’Waddle, when I had to reconstruct you, I had to use a lot of synthetic nerves to patch you.  In fact, I dare to say you probably have more artificial nerve tissue in you than any other living being.”

“Are you saying the synthetic nerves are starting to malfunction? How would that affect my memory, my brain doesn’t have artificial nerves?”

“No Tibby, it’s not that.  Your body is starting to reject the synthetic nerves by producing chemicals that inhibit the functioning of the synapses in your brain, specifically those related to memory.  Because the nerves are artificial, the rejection chemicals your body creates doesn’t affect them, but they do affect your own organic brain.  The longer it goes the more chemicals your body produces to try to fight the synthetic nerves and the worse your memory problems will become.”

“But certainly this problem must have existed with others before me; there must be a way of dealing with it,” I said.

“There haven’t been any reported incidents like yours before this, Tibby and it’s probably in part because the use of synthetic nerves has been limited to smaller areas of a person’s body.  You have hundreds of times more synthetic nerves than most people ever get.  The rejection factor may be because of that, or it may be that your Earth DNA is different enough for the rejection to occur.  I think I may be able to find a way to counteract the effect of the chemicals your body produces, or at least trick your body into thinking it’s winning the battle so it doesn’t produce as many chemicals, but I won’t be able to stop it.  Hopefully, we can arrest the condition with medication so it doesn’t get worse, but there are no guarantees.  It may be that all we can do is slow the process down.  I’m sorry, Tibby, but that’s how it is.”

I sighed and leaned back in my chair, “If not treated, how long it will be before I won’t not able to function normally?”

“Months, maybe a year or two, I can’t say for sure.  This is an uncharted territory, all I can do is make an educated guess,” A’Lappe said.

“But you think you can control it, or at least slow it down?”

“Yes, I am relatively sure I can at least slow it,” A’Lappe said.

“What about another surgery, and we replace the synthetic nerves with new cloned nerve tissue?”

“That has never worked, Tibby.  First of all, we’d need stem cells to produce the nerves and the rejection rate for natural nerves is very high and they often die before they heal.”

“Well, if it requires stem cells, I wouldn’t want them anyway.  I wouldn’t allow any fetuses to be killed to get me stem cells.”

“What are you talking about?  Fetuses killed,” A’Lappe exclaimed?

“Well, that’s how they got stem cells back on Earth!” I exclaimed.

“By the stars, what sort of backward planet did you come from?” A’Lappe practically shouted, “That has got to be the most barbaric thing I’ve ever heard.  I can see where they could harvest a lot of stem cells very quickly that way, but there are many ways to acquire stem cells and growing them in a lab without taking any lives.  Did they actually kill children to get stem cells on your world?”

“What they did was to take aborted fetuses from women who wanted abortions and they acquired the stem cells from the fetuses” I said.

“By the stars, that’s horrible,” A’Lappe said with a shudder, “and this was a sanctioned practice?”

“It was when I left Earth, but it was being highly contested by many citizens,” I answered.

“Well, have no fear. No fetuses will be harmed in your treatment, Tibby and no stem cells will be involved.  There is one other possibility, if I can diagnose how your body is identifying the synthetic nerves I may be able to turn off that indicator and stop the production of the chemicals causing the problem.  However, I cannot guarantee I’ll be able to do that.”

“Well, do what you can, A’Lappe and do it before I lose my mind altogether." 

“I’ll need to treat you once a week for now.  We can use the auxiliary med unit for your treatments.  Each treatment will last about 30 minutes. We'll be filtering your blood to remove the excessive chemicals and white blood cells in your system.  I’ll also be giving you an injection that will help slow down the rejection factor in your body to the synthetic nerves.  I’ll study the test results and see what treatment I can come up with to treat you. It may take me a few days.”

As I left A’Lappe’s office, I wondered if I should tell Kala about my problem, or if I should wait until she began noticing it.  I decided I would wait.  There was no reason to give her concerns when there was nothing she could do, at least not now.  Sooner or later though, I would have to tell her.  Kala was no fool and she would start seeing signs before too long.

The next day when I arrived in my office on the
MAXXETTE
, Marranalis was waiting for me with a list of names sent by Admiral Wabussie for the undercover agents to travel with Chief Banker Norcar as his representatives and employees to Epsirt.  All the individuals were highly skilled in numerous areas and I had little doubts that they would be capable of pulling off the guise of being Norcar’s representatives and servants.  They all were experienced at covert operations and if anyone could find out what was happening on Epsirt, they would be the ones.  Only three out of the staff of nearly fifty would actually be our agents and even the other employees working for Norcar would not know that the three were agents of the FSO.  I looked over the list of names and their qualifications and I was impressed with their skills.

If anyone had a chance of pulling this off, they would be the ones to do it.  Two of the team members were ex-troopers with excellent records and skills.  The third was a woman and a bit of a shocker, because not only didn’t she look like she could possibly be a spy, but because officially she had never been a citizen of the Federation.  When I say officially, I mean that she wasn’t born in the Federation and had only lived in the Federation for a short time before moving outside the Federation territories.  Her name was Báihuā and she had been one of the women in the Chinese Lunar colony.  She had a deep, but well concealed hatred of Ming, as he had been the one responsible for the death of her sister.

Báihuā had barely turned eighteen at the time we rescued the Chinese on Earth’s moon, she had been one of his concubine slaves and had survived by hiding her disgust and hatred of Ming, in hopes of one day being able to destroy him.  After Ming’s assisted escape from the prison on Megelleon, Báihuā had volunteered to go underground to try and seek out and destroy Ming in any way she could.  While most of the Chinese colony hated Ming, he did have a few loyal followers among some of them, Báihuā had served the FSO beautifully by infiltrating their ranks and reporting her findings back to Wabussie.  If Ming or any of his agents were on Epsirt and they recognized her, there was a fair chance they might try to contact her.

The memorial service for the fallen at the battle in Sector 2 went off as planned.  The ceremony was similar to the one held for Sokaia and those fallen in the battle at Kendrop and Gochian nearly eight years earlier.  It was customary where a large number of Federation troops had died and many bodies were impossible to retrieve or identify, that all remains of those who died were cremated together and placed in a single capsule for the service.  At the end of the service the capsule, along with the wreckage of the
PRIZAMET
and many of the other ships too damaged for repair or salvage, would be towed to the nearest star, where they would be placed into a trajectory that would send them into the star.

I sat on the stage in front of the capsule containing the remains of those who had died in the battle as Leader Tonclin gave a speech about the gallant actions of the men and women who had died here fighting the Brotherhood.  As he recounted the events that led up to the battle, I found myself staring at the capsule and my mind returning to the service for Sokaia and even further back to that of Captain Maxette, Reidecor and Lunnie.  All these people, so near and dear to me, who died because of the Brotherhood.  I was deep in reflection when I heard, “Tibby, it’s your turn to speak,” and I looked up to see Leader Tonclin bent over me looking at me intently.  He had apparently finished his speech.  I wondered how long I had been sitting there staring blankly at the capsule after he finished talking.  I looked about and saw thousands of faces staring at me.

“Yes, yes…,” I said and awkwardly got to my feet and walked to the podium.  I had prepared a speech, but as I started to speak, new words formed in my mind and I discarded all I had planned to say and let my mind voice its thoughts.

“It has been over twelve years since I arrived here in the Federation in a six hundred-year-old spaceship named the
TRITYTE.
  I met a group of people that I developed a great friendship with.  Today, of that group of early friends, nearly half are gone.  First Citizen Captain Maxette, who fought valiantly in the battle of the
DUSTEN
and saved the Federation at the cost of his life, there also was First Citizen Luinella, who willingly sacrificed her life to save thousands and to make the recapture of the
DUSTIN
possible.  There was Lieutenant Reidecor, a member of my personal staff, who died in the battle to recapture the
DUSTIN
and
Captain Sokaia, who was killed in the battle at Kendrop while recapturing the
HAPRIN
, as well as a small and wonderful boy named Tanden, who died cruelly at the hands of the Brotherhood, for no reason other than the greed of the Brotherhood.  And now I stand here today to say farewell to yet another great friend and colleague, Admiral Stonbersa. 

“I first met Stonbersa when I was seeking a captain for my personal yacht, the
NEW ORLEANS
.  He came with high recommendations by both Rear Admiral Regeny and Captain Maxette.  I was impressed with him from the very start.  He was a man with a deep love for space and the ships that navigated the voids between the stars.  He was a kind man, with a cool head and not prone to making emotional decisions, but instead on cool logic.  He was a man of tradition who didn’t hesitate to do what he believed was right.

“Admiral Stonbersa was Admiral of the Second Fleet.  His flagship was the
PRIZAMET. 
Shortly after the battle here began, Admiral Stonbersa gave the order for the
PRIZAMET
to launch its fighters to address the oncoming Brotherhood fleet.  The crew of the
PRIZAMET
was unaware that several cloaked Brotherhood ships were lying in wait for them to drop their RMFF shields.  Once the fighters began to launch and the enemy knew the shields were down, they fired torpedoes into the two hangar bays of the
PRIZAMET. 
Other torpedoes took out the bridge and the Gravity Wave propulsion system.  Admiral Stonbersa and those on the bridge died almost instantly in the attack on the
PRIZAMET.

“In recent years the enemy has taken on new tactics, asteroid-ships that are harder for us to fight and the ever feared Reduviids that terrorize our planets.  Today there are few people in the Federation who have not lost a close friend or relative to these evil men and women.

“Today we commend the remains of the thousands of men and women who died here to the stars.  However, they are not dead, because in each of us, a piece of them lives on.  As long as we remember them, they still live and that piece of them fights on in us.  Let us not abandon them in their fight against the Brotherhood, but rather let us fan the ember of their memory into a flame that grows ever brighter in us so that we may do these men and women justice by winning this war.  So that they shall not have died in vain and that their memories may live on in glory forever.”

I stood there a moment, staring once more at the capsule as the drummers began their funeral cadence and I realized I had paused longer than I intended.  I saw Captain Marranalis standing down in front of the capsule and I appreciated that he had given the order for the cadence to begin.  It was happening again.  I was having mini-blackouts of memory.  I turned and walked back to my seat.  I could see Leader Tonclin staring at me with a concerned look.  Next to him, Admiral Regeny sat smiling.  Later I would learn that he thought my momentary lapse into silence at the end of my speech was a deliberate ploy to garner sympathy and patriotism among the Federation and he thought it was splendid.  I didn’t correct his misperception.