Onslaught Sample Chapter
“Your life will be at risk.”
Two men stood at a viewport. Before them endless space, star-flecked darkness, the infinite black. Around them, the bustle of a deep space refinery, cargo crews loading shuttles, and the constant low-grade roar of an antimatter collider that no amount of soundproofing could ever entirely squelch.
The speaker was old, gray haired, with a craggy face and a garrulous voice, but straight posture and a physical fitness that defied his years. He wore eyeglasses and a tan uniform of baggy fatigues and a smooth, high-collared jacket.
The man to whom he spoke wore the same uniform but with pitch black hair and none of the crows’ feet and laugh lines of the first.
“I understand Elder Blocher. ‘Even to dying,’” the younger man replied. Those last three words came out smooth, practiced, rehearsed. They had the ring of a catechism.
Arvid Blocher, Elder of the Gentle Hand, passed over the recited slogan. “And to be honest, Wheeler, your life may be the least valuable thing at risk. Political power is shifting. Human Space is changing. Tau Ceti and Felicitas have both reached the stage where they might no longer need the Union.”
The Pax Aeterna had lasted so long, it was almost impossible to conceive of systems choosing not to participate in the Union.
“Hard to believe, Elder.”
“Hard to believe or not, it is true, Langston. I cannot emphasize this enough. If you put a foot wrong on Felicitas, they may stop paying for their Union policy. And in a world where no one pays the Union anymore, who pays for the Gentle Hand?”
“I will not fail, Elder.”
“It’s more than just success or failure, Wheeler. Bring the rogue in, yes. But be a diplomat as well. Keep Felicitas Corporation happy. Do not give them an excuse to stop paying.”
“Understood, Elder.”
“Langston, I’m going to be blunt with you.”
The younger man simply waited. He had a strong sense that he knew what was coming.
“Not everyone agrees about sending you alone. You have a history, Wheeler of the Union. This situation calls for a Hand in Full who lives and dies by the rules of our order. I know you don’t need to be reminded that more than half the Elders consider you the opposite.”
“I know, Elder.”
“Ven Tremmer believed in you. He never stopped believing in you. And I believe in you too. Together, those two things swung the Elders, but I still need reassurance that I’m doing the right thing.”
Langston Wheeler didn’t answer right away. Frankly, he wasn’t sure either.
Blocher went on. “The quantum entanglements that lead to the future are always nebulous, but I can tell something is coming. If you fail on Felicitas, you won’t be ready for whatever it is. Just remember: Ven’s outsize influence won’t carry your career forever. It can’t, anymore.”
“I still can’t believe he’s gone, Elder. And to such a stupid mistake.”
“And that’s the final warning I wanted to give you before you go to Felicitas, young man. There may be more to Tremmer’s death than meets the eye.”
Langston Wheeler looked askance at the Elder. “How so?”
“Tremmer was leaving Tau Ceti to go to Felicitas. Tau Ceti is wealthy enough to get by without the Union. So is Felicitas. Possibly the two could be rivals. Possibly the two could be allies. We just don’t know.”
“Surely you can’t be suggesting that one or the other assassinated him?”
The Elder of the Gentle Hand replied, “I suggest nothing, Wheeler. I only warn. We are sending you into danger. On the surface, you’re there to bring in a rogue telepath, itself the deadliest task we have to offer. But these waters run very deep. Do not let your guard down. Danger lurks in every shadow. If it strikes, it will be from the corner you least expect.
“Above all, Wheeler, remember the Last Reach. Bring in the rogue. Beware of interstellar intrigue. Do not anger the Felicitan government. And never forget, Wheeler. ‘Serve. Even to dying.’”
CHAPTER ONE
A century after humans first landed on this gleaming blue and white jewel, Felicitas now played host to more humans than Avenstar, more humans than the “Second Heart” of Human Space Tau Ceti, more humans even than Earth. The planet hovered on the edge of center stage, ready to lead, ready to be a new beacon in the pitch-black sea that belonged exclusively to humankind.
A standard corporation governed the world. Every shareholder got a vote in proportion to the value of their investment. They elected a board of directors. The Directors elected a Chief Executive Officer of Felicitas, Inc.
And Tia Dynn, a smile and a handshake wrapped around a mystery, was the youngest person in the history of Felicitas to hold that office.
Born and raised on Felicitas from parents born and raised on Felicitas, she might have been called 30.78 years old, in terms of how Felicitas orbited its star. In fact, there were political factions who preferred it. However, until they achieved their wish, Earth’s time and calendar were standard throughout Human Space. Tia Dynn was, by that measurement, celebrating her birthday.
She was 30 years old.
Inoffensive little bots orbited around her as she glided through the party like a luxury sailing yacht through crystal tropical waters. All over Felicitas and its satellites and moon, shareholders in Felicitas Corp would be immersed in the VR stream of the night’s festivities. Farther out from her accepted-but-not-loved constellation of cams, sycophants and rivals orbited Ms. Dynn as well, each jostling, positioning, competing for a moment of her attention. If one got it, he then politely withdrew to give others a chance. If there was anyone rude enough not to, aides from the Executive’s staff would ease them out of the way.
But by and large, Felicitas was a polite society, and few of the partygoers committed any such breach of the unspoken rules.
Dynn’s blonde hair glowed in the dim party light, like a main sequence yellow star of her own. The blue of her eyes and the red of her lips played with the light as well. Tall, slender, made of sweeping curves and subtle swells, Executive Dynn made the VR streamers fortunes. People would watch almost anything with her in it. She knew it, the stream producers knew it, and her political opponents knew it with the grumpy acceptance of a poor man looking at a rich man’s fortune.
She shunned the skintight one-piece outfits dominating the fashion scene in human space those days. Dynn, instead, wore a red dress, sparkling, flowing down to the floor in an elegant cascade. Such garments had not been in style for years, but her aides had plenty of data to show that her approval among the shareholders did not really move much up or down depending on what she wore, so she wore what she liked.
“You are so kind to offer, Canton,” she said, her smile speaking as loudly as her voice. “Why, that makes my night. Let me talk to my scheduler and find out. I’ll let you know.”
She had already used up “That’s the best birthday present” and “You make 30 years wonderful.” Her proficiency with finding ways to gently wave off suitors was almost as popular on the streams as was her beauty. Felicitan gambling dens offered interesting odds on which man from the upper strata of society might next win her nod for an evening out. Tia kept herself unaware of the state of betting, though she was well aware it went on.
Before another member of her human cloud could finally ascend to his long-awaited position at the head of the line for her attention, an aide tapped the Executive’s bare arm. She turned and smiled as the man thumbed his comm to jam the bots from hearing their conversation.
“The Gentle Hand is here, Executive. He is definitely not Ven Tremmer.”
The whisper in her ear obviously wasn’t what Dynn expected. She swiveled her head to face her aide. Waxon Kline’s longer tunics hid his girth slightly. Most of the hair had abandoned his head, and his jowls hung slack.
“Not Ven Tremmer? What do you mean? Who is it? How can it not be Ven Tremmer?”
“His name is Langston Wheeler, Executive. A much younger man. Much. As to how we got this young fellow instead of Tremmer, I have no idea yet.”
Dynn pointed directly at one of the bots and made a brushing aside gesture with her hand. At once, all the hovering little streamers whisked away. Stream producers saved a lot of money by simply programming their bots to obey her when she asked for some space. They could have stayed; however, guards from the Department of Protective Services would have simply destroyed the bots, and the streamers would have had to buy new ones. If they just backed off when she asked, streamers preserved their equipment, and Dynn would let them back in as soon as she could. Popularity was her most powerful political weapon; she was not about to let them leave her alone for long.
“Kline, we told everyone the great hero of the Union was coming! Ven Tremmer. The greatest living Gentle Hand. That’s half the reason this party is so big.”
“I know, Executive. To be fair, the Union never sent him here for your party. He’s here for something called a ‘rogue telepath.’ I never knew what one was until they mentioned it in their stream. Tremmer was coming for that, not for cocktails. Perhaps the replacement is better at hunting these rogue telepaths?”
If it were possible, Dynn would have stared at her aide even harder. “None of that is going to save me from the gossip, Waxon. Rogue telepath my foot. What even is a rogue telepath? Telepaths are all Gentle Hands. Who cares? Everyone with more than 10 shares is going to be sniggering about how ‘Dynn promised us the Union’s greatest hero at her party and only delivered some no name.’ Never mind the shareholders; the word’s going to get to TC.”
Changing tactics, she asked, “Has anyone else talked to the new one?”
“No one, Executive. He literally just walked in. I only got his name from the sublight’s manifest. He seems a bit standoffish.”
“Well, that, at least, sounds like a Gentle Hand. We’ve still got time. I have to be the first to speak to him. Point him out to me.”
“Over there by the door, Executive.”
Tia Dynn looked where her Chief of Staff pointed, and a low rumble that rose in pitch, like a purring lioness catching sight of prey, emanated from her throat. “You said he was young, Waxon,” she said. “You failed to note that he was…” That purr again.
The aide chuckled. “Forgive me, Executive. I am not as well versed in the attractiveness of males as yourself.”
Those blue eyes, so inviting and twinkling for the various men earlier, narrowed in feigned offense. Mostly feigned. “Did I just hear a remark upon my virtue?”
Waxon Kline offered a grin and a shrug by way of atonement. “You’re the one who’s been feeding this ‘Tia’s Quest for a Worthy Man’ garbage to all the streamers. You can hardly blame me if I watch your headlines. It’s my job.”
She sniffed delicately. “My ratings trend upward every time I go out on a date. It’s working. But never mind all that. What this does is offer me a way to solve the gossip problem about failing to get Ven Tremmer here.”
“Oh?”
“You go and find Thalif. Try to slow him down. I have to get to this ‘Langston Wheeler’ before he does.”
***
Her dress was like gravity, his eyes a falling star. It was red. Deep, dark red, like wine. And just like wine to the inside of a glass, it clung to her every curve. She combined the slender figure of youth with the elegant presence of a full-grown woman at the height of her power.
This could only be Tia Dynn, the Executive of Felicitas.
The briefing material identified her as being exactly thirty. She was the youngest person ever elected by the Board of Directors to helm the corporation that governed this planet. According to the background stream on her from the Tower of Diplomacy, she had first been elected to the Board in her mid-twenties and served one term before being elected Chief by the other Directors.
Her perfect posture and measured stride reflected that resume. Every person at the reception reached for her attention; to each, she gave it for one gleaming moment, as if there were no one else anywhere on this colony world. She flowed from one conversation to the next with perfect aplomb, as if the timing had been agreed upon beforehand. Had this been Tau Ceti, or one of the other systems governed by a monarchy, every eye that fell upon her would have pegged her as royalty. In a system governed by a corporation, no one could possibly be surprised that this was the CEO.
But usually, one didn’t expect a corporate executive to show that much skin. The nanosilk clung to her legs and led the eye upward like a rocket to a deep neckline and bare shoulders.
She caught him staring.
Langston Wheeler should have blushed and looked away. He had been trained from a young age in the discipline of controlling how he looked at a woman. He was wrong to ogle her. Called out, he should have been embarrassed.
He’d had that lesson broken over his head like a chair in a barroom brawl.
Lost in the moment though, intoxicated by his first sight of her, he forgot all that. When her eyes met his with an angle to her head that said she knew exactly where he’d been looking, Langston let one corner of his mouth twitch upward just enough for her to see in the dimly lit room and threw her a wink.
That smile crossed his lips above the stubble of his granite chin. In reply, she winked right back. When she did, her eyes pierced him far too deep to remain lost in the moment.
Those eyes: blue like a tropical sea, rimmed by long lashes. Her eyes ruined everything.
They were like a vortex in time, pulling him backward. Without his consent, without any warning, her eyes and golden hair sucked Langston to a different place, a different age, a different woman.
Reality pulled a bait and switch on him. Suddenly, he wasn’t looking at the Executive of Felicitas anymore.
He gazed, instead, at Cleo Sable, Hand of the Union.
Blonde hair. Blue eyes. The posture of one who owned the world. Elegant and regal, comfortable with power, any room she set foot in belonged at once to Cleo Sable.
…belonged at once to Tia Dynn.
Langston dragged himself back to the present, back to Felicitas, and back to the eyes of the real-world woman across the room. The resemblance was uncanny. As if someone had unearthed the forbidden art of cloning, the Executive of Felicitas was a carbon copy of the woman Langston could never forget.
The crowd at the packed reception ebbed and flowed. A tide of humanity rose between them. Suddenly, he couldn’t see her anymore.
Langston heaved out a sigh, like a sailor tossing cargo to lighten the boat in a storm. Saved by the whims of a packed ballroom.
The partygoers wore multicolored clothing festooned with jewels and ribbons. From the cutting-edge fashion of skintight one-piece suits to the more archaic seductiveness of dresses like the Executive’s, the garments communicated wealth and power, each in a subtly different way.
The bluntest boast of power, though, came from the plainest of clothes: Langston Wheeler’s tan uniform.
So high it brushed up against the stubble of his jaw, the collar of his jacket gave way to a smooth, flat, expanse of khaki that stretched over his neck, across his broad, muscular chest, down his flat stomach, and so far past his hips the hem of his jacket might actually have been lower than the hem of some of the dresses in the room.
Below the featureless uniform top, the pants were the same color but the opposite aesthetic. Instead of smooth and flat, they bulged with pockets, from the belt all the way down to the ankles, where they disappeared into black and tan boots.
It was the uniform of a Gentle Hand. Or — more formally since this was a formal occasion — of a Gentle Hand of the Union of Human Space.
Once, the first telepaths called themselves Archons, set about using their abilities to rule, and the gene for telepathy had almost destroyed humanity. The Gentle Hand evolved to oppose the Archons and control that gene. Through an ironclad principle of service drilled into them from childhood, through a lifetime of studying ethics and morality, and through a strict system of arranged marriages and controlled childbearing, the Gentle Hand ensured that the question of a “master race” was closed forever, answered in the negative. Telepaths were servants, never masters. Not ever.
Langston Wheeler went where the Union sent him. He applied the gifts he was born with to the good of humanity — the good of the Union. That rule infused every aspect of his life.
Langston would never choose his own wife. So gazing at the Executive of Felicitas with longing in his eyes could serve no purpose at all.
No more than gazing at Cleo had.
As if putting flesh on his fantasies, the Executive materialized beside him. The stunning blonde politician held two fat, round snifters of the famous Felicitan brandy. She pushed one into his hand.
The brush of her fingers tingled, sent little rivers of sensation racing up his arm.
“Welcome,” she offered, then held her snifter up, halfway to her mouth, watching the amber liquid climb the glass, waiting patiently for him to touch his to hers.
Felicitan brandy enjoyed a reputation throughout Human Space. Easy on the tongue, more than a hundred proof, with a hint of sweetness in the aftertaste, people on every colony world paid many Currency Units for each bottle. Made from Earth grapes transplanted here and grown near the equator, connoisseurs were said to be able to tell at exactly what latitude a bottle had been grown by taste alone.
Langston was more of a beer guy.
And alcohol was the least helpful thing he could add to his life at that moment. He was here to apprehend a rogue telepath.
Rogue telepaths were the hardest work a Gentle Hand could do in the field. By virtue of being telepaths themselves, rogues were nearly the only opponents who could match a Gentle Hand in battle. It was rare for a Hand to die in the line of duty, but when one did, there was often a rogue telepath involved. Usually, the elders of the Hand sent the absolute best to deal with rogue telepaths. Langston was supposed to have been here just to learn from Ven Tremmer, as he had been for most of his life.
Now he was here alone.
And if he would have to fight alone, he didn’t need his senses dulled.
The Executive’s eyes smoldered behind half-closed lids, and that old longing reared up from the closet in his psyche where he thought he’d locked it. It had been so long since he had enjoyed a moment of private conversation with a woman…
Not since…not since…
“The VR streams all say that Gentle Hands won’t get drunk, but I’ve never heard you won’t even touch it, not even the very best in Human Space.”
The smile that accompanied the prompt stretched wide and showed perfect gleaming teeth. Langston grinned back at her, touched her snifter with his, and let the chime of delicate crystal caress his ears. Then he sipped.
Warm. Electric. Subtle, but potent.
He wasn’t sure if he was describing the alcohol or the sight of her full, red lips kissing the rim of the glass, leaving lipstick behind, all while never breaking eye contact with him. His heart beat a little faster, and he felt a bead of sweat on his forehead. It definitely wasn’t just the alcohol.
She said, “Welcome to my world.”
He let his grin grow broader. “Somehow, I think wherever you are, it is entirely your world.”
The woman possessed the skill of making half her face smile, and she employed it then.
“I only say ‘mine’ because I live here,” came back. “I am but a servant, not an owner. Tia Dynn, Executive of Felicitas.”
He’d guessed her name long before. The images in the briefing streams were unmistakable. The scintillating golden hair, the broad smile, the graceful figure…these could not have occurred twice.
Except they had. They had occurred twice. The same features had once occurred on his great love.
“Langston Wheeler, Hand of the Union,” he replied, executing his most formal bow. “And if Felicitas Corp owns the planet, and you are the CEO of the corporation, I think it actually is fair to call you the owner.”
“You’re a Hand of the Union. You know better than anyone that we don’t own the world; we simply own the only policy on travel here. But why split hairs? It’s a great moment for Felicitas. You’re the first Gentle Hand to visit our world. We have waited a long time for this.
“Tell me, Langston, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
It could have meant “the pleasure of having a Hand visit her world,” if only she had spoken it instead of whispered it. If only she hadn’t batted her eyelashes. If only she had called him Wheeler of the Union, instead of Langston; that, too, tugged at the strings of his memory.
He gave her a thorough looking over, meant to be noticed. This was wrong! He knew it. He berated himself for it. Despite all that, he said, “It’s your company that’s the real pleasure.”
This time a blush snuck into her cheeks, and she looked away and to the side. “I’d also heard Gentle Hands aren’t interested in women who aren’t telepaths.”
True. So bitterly, painfully true. But it felt good to deny reality, if only for a little while.
“So far, we’re not doing very well with what you’ve always heard about the Hand,” he parried, easing in closer to her in a way that wasn’t a full step. The scent of her perfume tickled his nose — floral, heady, strong, indescribable. It had to be something unique to Felicitas and unknown on Earth.
She turned her head up to look at him, and still those lips wore the most inviting of expressions. “Well, I’ve also been warned that they can do magic.” Her voice came alarmingly close to a purr. “Putting a spell on me?”
“It’s not mag—”
And then the moment broke. Instead of a man alone with a beautiful woman, he was Wheeler of the Union, ordered specifically not to let his past upset the applecart here on Felicitas.
“Excuse me for interrupting, but you are a Gentle Hand, are you not? Yet, you look nothing at all like the famous Ven Tremmer who we were promised.
“I’m Ardo Thalif.”
