God's Dogs Book 2

Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.

Yousuf Karsh

The six planetary governors of the local space near the Cass home world had been doing business with each other for a long time. Two were Durani, the long-limbed, sour-faced humanoids that were sticklers for rules. The others were from other humanoid, or, rather than seeming specie-ist, starfish designed races.

They were meeting now by holo-conference.

“Maybe we let this one go,” one said. “The Cass are pretty foul creatures, and like weeds anywhere need routine cutting back.”

“There must be consequences,” another said with righteous heat. “The Cass are our responsibility to protect.”

“They did try to involve us, you know.”

“We shielded them, it is true, but the other option is to free them to prey on our shipping lanes and on our people.”

“I agree,” said another. “We must do something or the Cass may punish us. The clan leaders are meeting to decide on their course of action as we speak.”

A different one put in, “Whom do we punish? Penglai Foreign Service? That’s what the reports say, ‘Agents of Penglai Foreign Service.’ Their ambassador?”

“Yes. We frame one of her lieutenants for something to chip away their credibility and deflect attention from the Cass.”

“That is a simple solution that has worked for us in the past. People love a scandal. Who has access to the hallucinogenic Slice?”

“What is it?” one asked.

“It’s the next iteration of Exit,” another answered.

“Isn’t that the one that kills half of the people who take it?”

“Yes. Slice only kills a third, but the hallucinations are reported to be worth the risk.”

“It’s still outlawed.”

“Which is the point. We plant it, ramp up someone’s bank account, and provide an anonymous tip to the constables.”

Anaya was in her element. Teaching the children of the People about the galaxy they lived in, as well as providing practice sessions for their telepathic abilities, took her back to the years she was filled with idealistic purpose. She matured past the innocence of those years to an experienced acceptance of reality, but the idealism remained.

Sparky was the acknowledged leader of the gang of youngsters, whose collective curiosity about the galaxy seemed to flush out what emotions remained of their collective trauma.

“Yes, it happened,” Sparky told her when she questioned him about how they were doing emotionally. “We were tortured and made to hurt other beings, but you found us. Now we know there are good and bad things, and we can read energy to sort out which is which.”

“No nightmares?” Anaya pushed. “No intrusive memories?”

“They are fading. There’s too much to learn for us to dwell on bad things. We learned the lesson the bad things can teach us. Now we can learn more.”

“OK,” Anaya said and sat at her desk in the warehouse. It held the translation gear, including racks for the colored lights. “Now, let’s see what kind of reach you have. All of you go into your meditative minds. Find the place where you can sense the energy and thoughts of other beings. Then expand that bubble of awareness out as far as you can.”

Anaya let herself drop to that level as well and situated herself within the bubble to monitor their progress. They could easily reach the corridor outside and much of the warehouse area it connected to. They could also pick up the workers that buzzed around as they moved the goods onto and off of the shuttles that visited for those purposes.

“See if you can fly around the entire level we’re on,” she prompted. “It’s a big circle. You’ll end up back here.”

She added the last as one of the fears was they might get lost in the netherworld. It was an irrational fear, because simply breaking the meditation slammed one back into one’s own mind, but it was a fear that she took seriously. Fear limited one’s growth, whether it was rational or not.

“There are many kinds of bad,” Sparky commented into the telepathic link they shared. Since there were more people outside the warehouse area, their slow circumnavigation of the ring brought them into contact with many energy signatures.

“We call it ‘shades of gray.’ No one is all good or all bad,” Anaya explained.

“We can see that,” Sparky’s tone was excited. “But there is another difference.”

“Past and future,” Anaya pointed out. “People carry the energy of the bad things they’ve done as a hardening around their hearts. The bad things they are planning to do is like a dark cloud around their heads.”

“What about when they are in the act of doing a bad thing?”

“Like here?” She drew their attention to a robbery in progress.

“It’s their whole body,” Sparky remarked. “I see a dull red filling him up.”

“Do you also see the dark vortex that he lives in?”

“I do. What does that mean?”

“First notice his thoughts.”

“Yuck. Ugly thoughts. Angry. Revenge.”

Anaya commented, “And they can become addicted to it. Let’s move on. When we get back, I’ll explain the dark vortex you saw.”

They finished the journey and settled in their minds within their devil ray bodies in the cramped living environments she hoped to soon free them from.

“You know, from your own experiences,” she began, “that bad things happen to all of us. Humans will say about that, ‘When life knocks you down, can you get back up?’ All of you have gotten back up. You healed yourselves, learned lessons from the experience, and then turned your attention back to living your life. That is a good thing, in my view. But what would happen if you refused to get back up?”

Anaya could sense them talking among themselves as they considered her question. After a few moments, Sparky answered, “There was a time when we couldn’t get back up. We were in no shape to ‘live our lives.’ We had to heal first. But that’s not a refusal to get back up, is it?”

“No. Once you have healed, or had the opportunity to heal, you come to a choice point – to get back up or not.”

“We didn’t refuse to do so.”

“I know. I’m proud of all of you for that. What I’m asking is, ‘What happens to a person when he refuses to get back up?’”

“Why would you not?” Sparky’s energy showed confusion.

“Indeed. It is somewhat of an absurdity, but people do so – people like that man who was robbing the other man.”

“He didn’t get back up?”

“A long time ago, he decided to give up on his own life, live in the darkness instead, and punish others for his own misery.”

“That is crazy,” Sparky determined.

“I won’t disagree,” Anaya replied. “However, it is something you find in all races in the larger galaxy. Evil is a choice. Goodness is a choice. Bad people justify their choices by what life has done to them. Good people learn the lessons inherent in what life has done to them. For good people, they don’t even see ‘getting back up’ as a choice, really. They see it as what’s necessary to get on with their lives.”

“And the ones that don’t end up living in that darkness we saw.”

“Yes. If you sense the emotion in that darkness, you will notice it’s a hot, sticky, slimy feeling. We call it ‘shame,’ and shame is the feeling that goes with the belief that ‘I’m not okay.’ It’s a lie, of course, since all of us are children of the Divine Mystery, but they came to believe they were somehow not okay.”

There was a long pause as the People conferred among themselves. Anaya could sense the shifts as that conversation went on. Their confusion eventually resolved into a startled clarity. She smiled at that – a sad smile, because she knew what she had done to their innocence.

Then she reflected on her greater purpose. She knew, and now confirmed it with her observations of the People, telepathy wasn’t really the ability to read minds. That only happened when minds could sync up and both wanted the conversation. It was more that a telepath could pick up intention. The stronger the intent one ‘broadcast,’ the easier it was to pick up.

Anaya also knew, and agreed with the ambassador, that there was a potential threat to the Penglai delegation and/or the People. As such, she was preparing her five charges to scan for hostile intent. She was pleased by how quickly these students were learning.

The ASI Solomon buzzed into being on Satya’s bridge. Satya was still aboard the Sangalore merchant ship Wave Rider, and that ship was on its third voyage since the Satya was tucked into its main hold.

Solomon appeared in a holo-representation as a generic human in a brown ship suit.

“Well, Quinn, I found your gas giant, but so did the team that ransacked Clan Odic’s headquarters. You’ll be happy to know their information confirmed my own. The ambassador has the coordinates, but Anaya wants your team to take her and the children to their home.”

“Did we retrieve any more of them?”

“No. The ransacking did produce general locations for the ships they’re aboard. Two are raiding Sangalore shipping. The others are raiding elsewhere, and teams are in pursuit.”

“Thanks for the update, Solomon.”

“You’re welcome, but that’s not why I called. The grumblings against you are becoming stronger.”

“The Cass-friendly folks?”

“And their buddies. You never know when you might need a hit squad, and you’re messing with their access.”

Quinn smiled at that outcome and said, “The more they push back, the more public exposure they get. Right-minded people might not vote for them in the next election if they keep it up.”

“True. On the other hand, humans aren’t the most rational with tribal politics, and neither are the other races out here. If the ruling elite are ‘their guys,’ it matters little what kind of idiots they may be.”

“Yeah. And we catch flak for exposing their idiocy.”

“I see you know that pernicious dynamic.”

“Well, our training did tell us all dysfunctional systems operate with the same set of rules.”

“Micro to macro, it’s all a king of the mountain game.”

“Pretty much,” Quinn agreed. “Has this grumbling turned into a diplomatic crisis?”

“Not for the lack of trying, but no, not yet. Tau-14 won’t let it. Which means the Cass-friendlies will resort to more clandestine means.”

Quinn chuckled. “You never know when you might need a hit squad to take out a Coyote team.”

A few days after Solomon’s call, the Wave Rider was knocked out of FTL, and the operation was on. It went as smoothly as before. The raider and a conscripted cargo hauler were captured, and one more of the People was rescued. River and Pax were able to comfort the freaked out youngster.

After Quinn took care of the logistics of dealing with the two ships and the prisoners, he headed back to Jomeca IV.

“Securing from gate transit, captain,” Satya’s helm reported.

“Very well,” Captain John said from his command chair. “Send our IFF to gate control and shape our course to Jomeca IV.”

Quinn spoke up, “Our after-action report is ready to send to the ambassador.”

“Comm, send the AAR, and copy in Anaya. She’ll be happy to know we’ve got another of the children back. Also, let them know Jolene is still on patrol, and she will return here when she rescues the other one that’s supposed to be in Sangalor space.”

“Aye, sir,” was the comm-tech’s reply.

“What now, Quinn?” the captain asked.

Quinn, who was sitting at the secondary tactical station, said, “My guess is Anaya will want to return the children we have as soon as possible. She’ll want to set up communication with the People’s leaders, assuming they have them, and ask Congress for their protection.”

“And the Cass and their allies?”

“It’s their move.”

“I don’t see them gracefully conceding they lost this.”

“Nor do I.”

Anaya got the message that Satya was in-bound and hurried to the warehouse. Once there, she asked her charges to reach out to the youngster on the ship.

They were getting better at targeting their telepathic probes and they scanned in the direction of the gate. It was too far for them to pick up their newly arrived litter-mate. They could sense him – sort of – and Anaya encouraged them to patiently monitor what they could sense until it resolved into a clear hit.

The group was excited. Sparky told her, “We are getting better at this, Anaya. Aren’t we?”

“You are. It takes a while to figure out how to form an intention and hold it steady, and it’s a lot of practice to get good at it.”

“It is work,” Sparky agreed, “but we are motivated.”

“It is also different from what you have known. In your home, you swim through the clouds and enjoy each other’s company as you learn from your teachers at a leisurely pace.”

“I think that was what was so terrifying about our capture,” Sparky replied. “We were cooped up, isolated, and then they began hurting us. When do we go home?”

“Soon, Sparky. Just as soon as Quinn gets here and restocks his ship. We’ll put all of you on a bigger ship and take you home.”