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  Dekker’s Dozen:

  The Seed Child of Sippar Sulcus

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  Dekker’s Dozen:

  The Seed Child of Sippar Sulcus

  by

  Christopher D. Schmitz

  © 2019 by Christopher D. Schmitz

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine, or journal.

  The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.

  PUBLISHED BY CHRISTOPHER D SCHMITZ

  please visit:

  http://www.authorchristopherdschmitz.com

  For those fans at conventions who kept requesting new Dekker’s Dozen story… even more is on the way! These characters keep me awake at night, demanding I continue telling their tales.

  Author’s Note:

  The Dekker’s Dozen series involves occasional elements of time travel that can confuse some of the events. Those familiar with The Last Watchmen will have encountered the minor character Ezekiel who works to preserve the fabric of reality by traveling through time via arcane technology. A Waxing Arbolean Moon adds some further details to the chronology and all prior to the events of The Last Watchmen.

  The Last Watchmen represents the original time-stream as A. Its ending makes it clear that a B stream exists. Some events of The Last Watchmen happen in both. A Waxing Arbolean Moon takes place prior to the split of the time stream but also prior to the existence of chronology B. A Waxing Arbolean Moon and Weeds of Eden both happens in the A& B lines and function as prequels to both the Last Watchmen timeline and the new, ongoing timeline (timeline B). It may sound confusing as I’m trying not to give away spoilers for any of the stories.

  I originally began writing Weeds of Eden as a bit of a writing exercise and wanted to demonstrate some character elements and backstory from The Last Watchmen while I worked with some new story outlining software for a future project. I figured some familiar and well-loved characters would be right at home for me to whip up an 8k-9k short story over a week so I could experiment with the software elements and have a product people were asking for at conventions. Yeah… ten days later I had written more than twice that, completed the short story which became the first in a series of three, and sketched notes for a follow-up novel (tentatively called Austicon’s Lockbox).

  Hopefully the preceding graphic helps keep the timelines organized for the reader. Because Ezekiel is pivotal to The Last Watchmen but not necessarily the future stories, Weeds of Eden is perhaps the most logical place to begin reading this series. (If you want my recommended reading order, at the time of writing this it would be: Weeds of Eden, The Last Watchmen, and then A Waxing Arbolean Moon.)

  I’m super excited to get back into the Dozen’s world! If you guys keep requesting stories, I’ll keep writing them.

  --Christopher D Schmitz

  The Seed Child of Sippar Sulcus

  Dekker’s Dozen #000.99 A&B

  0065 P.I.S.W.…

  1

  Leviathan slowly pulled the blade from Kheefal’s back.

  The surprised mercenary stared down at the weapon as it protruded from his chest and watched the tip sink back through from behind before he collapsed. Dawning recognition spread across his face and he caught sight of his own reflection in the glossy, ebon mask that covered the assassin’s face.

  Kheefal collapsed into a leaking heap of warm flesh. As a psychic, Leviathan felt his prey’s mind darken as if it was a lamp on a dimmer switch.

  Leviathan cocked his head and watched the man’s blood spread across the floor forming a sticky puddle; the light in the man’s eyes went out. The phenomenon had always fascinated him.

  His curiosity finally sated, Leviathan cast his gaze across the laboratory. It had been hastily set up during his victim’s relocation. He did not know much about the equipment or items which lay haphazardly around the workspace. Leviathan did know, however, about the object his master wanted him to collect. It was valuable enough to warrant murdering a thousand men like Kheefal, or more.

  For the second time now, he’d killed powerful men in order to obtain this large seed—but this time, he’d finally succeeded. It seemed ironic to him that such a powerful and rare thing had gone unnoticed by intergalactic powers for so long. The plaque from the seed’s containment pod laid on the table. It read unknown species—new flora discovered 0064PISW: Ganymede, Sippar Sulcus Mt.

  He slid the seed into a secure pouch on his belt and left the label behind. Those who needed data on the whereabouts of its discovery had already scoured the moon for any sign of additional seeds, a vain effort.

  Leviathan turned slowly. He felt the sobs before his ears heard them. A man in a white lab coat sat hunched on the floor. Making himself small, he cowered in the fetal position and peeked over his knees in terror.

  The psychic barely got a reading on the man, his mind had been so fractured by some kind of fresh trauma. It leaked pain from his mind. Leviathan only got flashes from the scientist, but his coat had been embroidered with the name Dr. William Meng, and he’d created the genetically modified beasts that had been killing and kidnapping the rural populace of Galilee, a planet in the Trappist system’s habitable zone. This man had created them: specimen GRRZ.

  Behind his jet mask, Leviathan narrowed his eyes and glared at the quaking mess of a man. He attempted sifting through the shattered psyche and found pieces of useful information. Meng certainly created these beasts—but not on his own. He’d done so using clone samples and the metamorphic properties borrowed from the Arbolean seed.

  Leviathan snatched the man and dragged him along. He did not know his master’s exact plans. Prognon Austicon always had a great many machinations at work, and so, at least for now, Meng seemed like a possible asset.

  2

  Leviathan sensed them before he saw the crew of silver-haired men. In his psychic senses, they glimmered differently than other people. Leviathan had been around a long time. He knew what it meant when he detected folks this way: they were Azhooliens.

  He hung back and peered ahead, keeping the feeble Dr. Meng behind him a length. Beyond the Azhooliens, another presence approached which burned bright.

  An elderly woman in layers of mustard yellow cloaking entered the clearing where six Azhooliens waited. Leviathan knew her as Acantha and he had seen her most recently present at Zarbeth’s interrogation, when the Krenzin servant helped them locate the missing seed.

  Nearby, a collection of poorly constructed lean-to buildings housed stolen goods and equipment for the thugs’ gang. The piles of weathered refuse seemed to indicate this was a regular meeting place for the local mobsters.

  The gang stood defensively as the woman strolled directly into their midst; she began questioning them about recent shipping invoices their shell company had handled. They laughed, until Acantha struck one in the torso. Her nerve strike dropped the big man to his knees and the old woman snatched him by the neck and tore his throat out. He collapsed, gurgling on his own blood.

  “The shipping invoice,” she insisted again, calmly, rattling off the numbers.

  The Azhooliens had pistols in hand in a flash while she coolly stalked between them, sizing them up.

  “We don’t know
anything,” one of them spat. “Tell her, Ayaan. We’re just low-level enforcers—we wouldn’t know anything about shipments or business things.”

  Acantha turned to the one they’d identified as having some kind of authority.

  Ayaan’s eyes moved to the blood dripping from her fist and he blanched as she stepped closer. “But maybe you have some additional insight?”

  He typed the manifest number into his handheld data unit. “It’s the Harvel. Just some old Class C frigate from Earth. Carried a bunch of foodstuffs we can’t get locally, plus some other odds and ends. Nothing of value beyond regular trade.”

  “Where is the seed?” she asked bluntly.

  Ayaan scrunched his face with confusion. “What seed?”

  Acantha stared into his face. Finally, she put her hands behind her back and paced a circle within the zone that the mobsters had hemmed her within. “Something was taken from one of my counterparts, a Krenzin emissary: a seed. It has significant value to me.”

  Ayaan held his hands up. “No seeds on that shipment. Just food and machine parts. We didn’t even handle the transfer docs: it all went through MEA customs. We just unloaded the boxes and put ‘em on delivery trucks.” He glanced aside at the data readout. “Looks like products mainly went to a Jagaracorps warehouse.”

  “That’s why I am here.” She looked at them sternly, keenly aware that they were toying with her. They thought she was a mere human, some old woman. “You are connected to their R and D. You supply them with human test subjects for human experimentation.”

  Ayaan glared at her, wild-eyed. “I don’t know what you think you…”

  “This seed is worth more than all your lives put together and I would kill you now if I did not require information so urgently.” She spoke firmly and with authority.

  “Just get another seed,” one of the lowly thugs quipped.

  “There is only the one, and it is too powerful—it alone can supplant the barren tree of my sacred grove. If my people cannot acquire the seed, then it must be destroyed, along with any knowledge that it ever existed,” she hissed the threat. “There is only one way I let you live. I must know the location of the seed, the name of the man who has it, or whether or not a man clad in all black is on Galilee.”

  After a moment of tense silence, she stepped towards Ayaan.

  “Wait! Wait. I may know a name. Meng. Doctor Meng. I don’t know his first name—but I was on a crew two months ago that delivered him a test subject. Guy worked for Jagaracorp. That’s all I know. I don’t know anything about the rest of it, but he had a seed. Real frankenstein stuff… dead seeds, live seeds. I dunno—some kind of psycho botanist. This might be tied to him.” He rattled off a few coordinates that Leviathan knew would lead to a different location… the previous lab Meng had operated out of.

  Acantha nodded slowly. Then she launched forward and attacked her informant.

  Ayaan screamed as she slipped behind, taking his wrists into a painful submission grip. The mobsters opened fire but she used their leader as a living shield and pushed to her next victim.

  In a flurry of motion, she picked the criminal gang apart, demonstrating a terrifying ease and prowess. “No loose ends,” she hissed to the last member of the gang as he laid on his back, gasping for air, and then she crushed his windpipe.

  Far behind the scene, Leviathan bristled in the trees. The women in yellow must have been watching for any kind of Druze activities after they had learned of Kheefal’s destination. He and his master often used the Druze and their resources to further their own ends; they were fanatics, an underground terrorist movement devoted to Austicon with a religious fervor.

  The irony in Acantha’s words rang deep. Each one in her coven had a tie to a specific tree—the seven members of the star-flung Arbolean race. If she sought to replace the corrupted member of that grove, Prognon Austicon’s tree, that could expel him from Dodona. It would create significant problems for his master. It might even be enough to finally kill him.

  Leviathan had known all along that it would be a race to beat the woman and her coven to the Ganymedic seed, but if he was discovered here, and in possession of the prize, the Red Circle would finally have proof that Leviathan and Austicon worked against their wishes and for their own purposes.

  Leviathan could not let that happen. He quickly planned a different route back to Earth. His arrival ship was owned by the Druze, who also had legitimate business operations as well. He would feed them an alternate mission, one promising glory for their cause… one that would not end with any survivors that Acantha could interrogate.

  He could attack her now and hope to kill her unseen—but if she got a message to their superiors, the fallout would be severe. Leviathan glanced back at Meng who huddled against a tree like a lost child.

  Without yet knowing the scientist’s value, it was impossible to gauge any additional success on this mission. Leviathan touched his pouch where he’d deposited the seed. The mission had already proved successful. Risking that to kill Acantha, no matter how much pleasure it would bring him, was a fool’s gambit.

  He watched her depart, leaving the bodies of dead Azhooliens behind in a bloody circle. Acantha would live… for now.

  3

  Dekker sat alone in his private chamber. He had no windows and a single, impenetrable door blocked any unauthorized access.

  Oddities and ancient treasures adorned the walls around his bedroom. He’d been collecting items for a decade, and so had his father before him. Artifacts from various cultures, many rumored to have mystical power, sat within cases and propped up on displays.

  He sat on his bed with the Book of Aang laid open. Dekker turned the pages, fascinated by the book’s contents. He’d hoped that it would shed some light on the mysterious origins of the Reliquary, his prized gun. Only a small percentage of the book was dedicated to the legendary item.

  Part of the old tome functioned as a journal. Aang was a monk who had lived nearly five hundred years ago. His notes detailed receiving a vision which led him to a life of unrequested adventures. The journeys led him to a cache of ancient scrolls which he transcribed through the pages of his book. Part of the monk’s recordings told stories and other parts seemed like a reference manual.

  Following the MEA’s great purge of all religious artifacts several decades ago, the book might’ve been the most priceless thing they’d pulled from the Azhoolien haul a few months back during their mission to Galilee.

  Dekker would have thought the book nothing more than fits of imaginative fairytale fodder except that some of the items referenced were in his collection: the Reliquary and the Ring of Aandaleeb, amongst them. He furrowed his brow at one of the entries that appeared to be only a string of numbers and gibberish; below it, a triangle bisected a circle. The title of the page indicated it was another of the monk’s mystic scrolls, but the remainder of the page remained blank besides a date.

  A folded sheet of onionskin paper slipped out from between two pages. Dekker unfolded it and stared at the item. The circular sheet looked like a razor-thin cross section of a tree trunk.

  He stared long and hard at the item, unable to make sense of its presence or purpose within the book. Age stains from the parchment paper had rubbed off in such a way that Dekker could tell it had been left in that spot for a long time—though its placement at the end of the information about the reliquary didn’t have any obvious connection.

  The whole book seemed like a puzzle box and he wondered about the possibility of red herrings.

  An earlier chapter on ancient legends seemed a better fit for the item, the Tale of the Red and White Trees. He scanned the tale which seemed oddly familiar and parabolic. It detailed the Jewish legend of humanity eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, except in this narrative, the tree also fractured. It split into seven pieces and those new shoots tried to destroy mankind before they could exit the Garden of Eden. After the Hebrew God Yahweh sent his people away to a new land, the trees tri
ed again to overthrow mankind, but were prevented by an appointed messenger.

  The myth ended with a new prophecy attributed to Sabrael the Watcher. Dekker rose his eyebrow at the name. He’d never heard of most of the apocryphal information in The Book of Aang, and he was very well versed in cult and occult archeology.

  Sabrael’s prophecy indicated two things: that Sabrael was the guardian of the Tree of Life, which Yahweh appointed at the end of the Jewish tradition, and that a number of divine seeds had been scattered by the Great Gardener. One of these seeds would sprout as a child and create a new Eden, supplanting those fractured seven. Those original, cosmic trees would, no doubt, take offense to that.

  Several other stories filled the pages, including alien visits to ancient Akkadia and other tales. Mostly they involved heroes either using the reliquary or being used as pieces in divine games of good versus evil.

  A few pages in the back of the codex revealed some seemingly random things, including a crude sketch of an old man who wore a smoking contraption on his back. The charcoal sketch filled the entire page and Dekker felt like he’d seen him—or his image—before, but he couldn’t quite place him. The image’s simple caption labeled him as Ezekiel.

  Dekker looked over at his wall where the reliquary sat upon a mounting rack. A bandoleer hung adjacent to it boasting six cartridges. Each marked with ancient symbols. His lips tightened. Only these six cartridges remained. Long ago Dekker memorized the prophecy handed down to him by his father, Jude, and by the old priest, Diacharia, before him. Double loading the reliquary is like calling down the finger of God. A triple load could destroy everything, like a bucket of divine wrath…