Breaking Point Read online

  Breaking Point

  David Alastair Hayden

  Contents

  1. Galen Vim

  2. Galen Vim

  3. Galen Vim

  4. Galen Vim

  5. Galen Vim

  6. Galen Vim

  7. Galen Vim

  8. Siv Gendin

  9. Vega Kaleeb

  10. Tekeru Jones

  11. Siv Gendin

  12. Siv Gendin

  13. Siv Gendin

  14. Galen Vim

  15. Oona Vim

  16. Oona Vim

  17. Siv Gendin

  18. Siv Gendin

  19. Galen Vim

  20. Siv Gendin

  21. Siv Gendin

  22. Siv Gendin

  23. Siv Gendin

  24. Galen Vim

  25. Kyralla Vim

  26. Siv Gendin

  27. Siv Gendin

  28. Siv Gendin

  29. Mitsuki Reel

  30. Siv Gendin

  31. Siv Gendin

  32. Siv Gendin

  33. Siv Gendin

  34. Kyralla Vim

  35. Siv Gendin

  36. Siv Gendin

  37. Mitsuki Reel

  38. Mitsuki Reel

  39. Siv Gendin

  40. Siv Gendin

  41. Vega Kaleeb

  42. Siv Gendin

  43. Siv Gendin

  44. Kyralla Vim

  45. Siv Gendin

  46. Kyralla Vim

  47. Siv Gendin

  48. Silky

  49. Silky

  50. Silky

  51. Silky

  Afterword

  Also by David Alastair Hayden

  1

  Galen Vim

  Ten days ago…

  A scream from the next cell woke him. His eyes peeled open on a small room dimly lit by a single sodium-vapor lamp overhead. The yellow light turned the congealed blood splatter across the floor and walls to tar. Acrid scents—copper, charred flesh, ozone, and piss—overpowered his senses.

  He gagged, spitting up foam onto the metal floor. Nothing else was left. The last contents from his stomach lay puddled less than a meter away, adding to the stench. He pushed himself upright. A flash of dizziness and he retched again.

  Galen squinted and rubbed his eyes, trying to bring his HUD into focus. It took a moment to realize it just wasn’t there. Tamping down panic, he formed thoughts into silent speech.

  “What’s happening? How long was I out?”

  Errol, his 8G chippy, did not respond. Fear washed over him. His heart hammered in his chest. He was alone, entirely alone. And the data on Errol…all the secrets he’d managed to uncover…all the layers of protection he’d set up around his girls…the Tekk Reapers must have everything by now.

  No. That could not have happened. He had executed the failsafe program just before the Tekk Reapers had crudely plucked Errol from the socket in his left temple.

  His panic subsided. His heart rate slowed. His girls should still be safe.

  The starship thrummed and creaked and hissed. Sometimes it even growled like a caged animal. How could machinery so crudely cobbled together function so well?

  The screams next door ended. Heavy steps thudded through the corridor toward him and stopped outside his cell. The door groaned open, and a monstrosity as much machine as man lumbered in.

  The cyborg’s eyes gleamed an electronic green. Both hands and one of his legs were steel smeared with grease and grime. The filthy canvas coveralls he wore were cut off halfway down the thigh of the metal leg as if he needed to show it off.

  Galen cowered when the Tekk Reaper loomed over him, but he didn’t back away or try to fight. There was no point. The cuts and bruises he’d gained trying to resist capture ached and throbbed. And he felt confident he was still suffering from a concussion.

  The cyborg stepped up behind him, grabbed him by the arms, and lifted him until he stood. He wobbled when the reaper let go, so it caught him and held him up.

  A second monstrosity entered the cell, this one far worse. The new reaper towered over two meters in height. Only his head and torso appeared organic, and the wires sprouting from his chest and twisting back into his gut suggested mechanical organs. His limbs were composites of metal and ceramic.

  He wore no clothes, save for a belt and a crimson cloak. Blackish blood stained his clawed hands and feet and dripped from two long scalpels tucked into his belt. Dark specks and splotches dotted his body.

  His gold eyes focused on Galen as he marched forward, an angry scowl on his face.

  Galen reached out with his empathic ability, trying to sense the emotions of the two Tekk Reapers. From the first, he sensed nothing. From the second, he picked up overwhelming rage along with a lingering sadness buried deep within his psyche, the sort of pain that insisted on being visited upon others.

  “Ambassador Vim, I am Captain Kroz of the Remembrance," the massive reaper said, his voice clipping as if the words were delivered over a poor radio connection.

  From a pouch on his belt, Kroz drew out a small metal disk, pinching it between his claws. “Seizing your chippy proved pointless. Your security program erased it fully in remarkable time.”

  “Special software,” Galen replied, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper. “Just in case.”

  “You have a remarkable mind, Ambassador. And a fighting spirit. Once you have told us what we wish to know, it will be my pleasure to harvest your brain and add it to our matrix to further our cause.”

  “Wouldn’t it be more effective…to let me believe I could escape with my life…in exchange for what you wish to know?”

  Kroz smiled grimly, exposing silver teeth. “You would know that to be a lie.”

  “Torture is a waste of time. I won’t tell you anything.”

  “Why would I risk damaging you further,” Kroz replied. “There are more effective ways to discover what I wish to know.”

  Kroz pocketed the blank chippy and took out a device that resembled a ship’s control interface circlet. The copper, half-moon circlet had studs on each end. One stud would attach to the skin of the right temple, and the other to the chippy on the left.

  This circlet, however, had an extended prong on the left end. It was designed to enter an empty chippy socket directly. That would grant it direct access to the brain's circuitry.

  Kroz placed it on Galen’s forehead, and the extended prong clicked into his socket.

  “What is this?” Galen dared ask.

  “Nothing that will harm you, Ambassador. Rest assured, the device will give us the knowledge we need. Fighting it will only make you suffer.”

  Kroz snapped his fingers, and Galen’s head twitched as a shock sparked through him from his temples and down into his neck. Then a numbing pulse beat rhythmically through his mind.

  As the mesmeric effect kicked in, numbing his senses and lulling him into a soporific state, he sagged in the reaper’s arms.

  His aches faded. The awful scents within the cell disappeared. Slowly, the horrifying visage of the Tekk Reaper captain and the blood-stained cell melted into darkness.

  "Don't reveal anything," Galen muttered silently to himself. "Keep the girls safe…keep them safe always…no matter the cost…"

  2

  Galen Vim

  Waves of images crashed through Galen’s consciousness as the key events, people, and places of his life unfolded in rapid succession.

  He saw his long-deceased parents—the overbearing father who'd lectured him incessantly and the overprotective mother who'd sheltered him from the world—and the palatial estate he'd wandered around as a lonely child.

  He relived the awakening of his empathic abilities and his father denying him access to t
esting and training because a secret empath would have an advantage over others when brokering trade deals. Once again he felt the joy of leaving the family business to join the Department of Interplanetary affairs.

  His heart surged with love as he recalled in glorious detail the day he'd met Myra and a few years later Kyralla’s birth. In excruciating detail, he went through Oona's birth and Myra's subsequent death. He remembered the confused doctors and medical cogs trying desperately to save his dying wife who slipped away with no apparent cause.

  He relived those heavy months of anguish and the years of depression that followed. And then he again experienced his confusion when Oona's hair fell out, and her eyes darkened as she transformed from his little girl into a hyperphasic messiah.

  The tense years that followed flooded his mind. Years of living aboard starships, visiting strange worlds, negotiating with governments and trade guilds. Those stolen visits with his girls, a few days here and there when traveling between destinations, and the two free months he’d spend at home with them each year.

  Every free moment away from them he spent studying everything he could about hyperphasic messiahs, tracking every lead, talking to every potential source of information, forging connections with devout believers in the Benevolence’s divinity. He’d done everything he could think of to improve Oona’s chances of survival.

  Early on, he’d acquired a critical item and a piece of information, passed down to him from another messiah family that had lost their child in a failed awakening. They gave him a portion of a datacard that had been divided into four sections a century ago. The other pieces were still missing, and they had failed to find them. If reassembled, supposedly the datacard would reveal the whereabouts of a carefully hidden genetics facility that held all the answers a messiah family needed.

  Two years later, using his family’s resources and contacts he made as a diplomat, he’d discovered a second piece. Eighteen months later, he’d found the third piece. Then, only two weeks before the Tekk Reapers had kidnapped him, he'd finally acquired the last two sections.

  That deal had been risky and had almost certainly brought him to the Tekk Reapers’ attention, but it had seemed more than worth the risk. He'd researched the broker carefully, though clearly, he'd missed something.

  All of that swept through his mind once and then a second time. During the third sweep, something or someone directed his thoughts toward the girls. Unable to resist, he focused on them.

  He saw fourteen-year-old Oona with her bald head, prominent cheekbones, and solid black eyes. She smiled broadly, and the alien-quality to her appearance vanished, revealing the gentle, kind-hearted girl she'd been since birth.

  He pictured tall, athletic Kyralla with her black hair, bright green eyes, and pale skin. She was so much like her mother—fierce, proud, and protective. He would have said that she was too protective of her sister, except that Oona needed guarding.

  For that reason, Kyralla had relentlessly studied martial arts. And she wasn’t without gifts herself. When focused, she could see a moment into the future. In all the families they’d learned about, any children born before the messiah had extraordinary abilities as well. His Kyralla was no exception.

  Eking out a scrap of willpower, Galen focused on keeping their names secret. Do not reveal their identities. Do not expose the planet they’re living on. Don’t even think of the sector. Though if they knew…if they knew he had a messiah child…it wouldn’t be hard to figure out that his brother was Pashta, and that the girls had to be secreted away on Pashta’s estate on Ekaran IV.

  The images of them faded away.

  His thoughts were then directed at the broker, a man named Samson, and Galen’s acquisition of the last datacard needed. He bent his mind away from the topic, trying to deny them any information about those cards. He couldn't reveal where he had hidden the datacard pieces.

  He pushed thoughts of the cards away, but then his mind was forced back toward them. He pushed again and again, but he was losing. He began to picture what the cards looked like. He started to envision what he’d done to hide them…

  No. He had to resist. He couldn't let the Tekk Reapers know where the data cards were. He had to do something. He had to find a way to fight their attempt to dominate his thoughts and emotions… Wait! They weren't controlling his feelings. Only his thoughts. That was how he could beat them. His spirit warmed.

  Galen focused on Myra giving birth to Oona then dying hours later. He opened up his empathic ability and focused it on himself as he embraced his pain, his remorse, and his anger. This was something no empath should ever do because it doubled the pain, and they could easily overwhelm themselves.

  The pain of his loss intensified, but he didn’t resist it. Instead, he wallowed in those memories, becoming more and more depressed and despondent until it became nearly unbearable. This was dangerous, Galen knew. It left him weak with all his willpower stripped away. If the Tekk Reapers worked with his negative emotions, he would crack like an egg and show them anything they wanted to see. But he was betting these machine-obsessed nightmares wouldn’t understand the subtleties of emotion enough to steer his downward spiral in the direction they wanted.

  Again and again, they attempted to direct his thoughts toward the information they desired, but he was no longer capable of rational thought. Their efforts failed utterly. The more he embraced the misery of Myra's death the less control they had over his thoughts because Galen could think of nothing save his pain.

  Suddenly, Myra vanished, and their efforts to probe his memories ceased. Darkness returned for a few moments, then awareness of his body and his physical discomfort. A pressure was removed from his head, and his mind cleared.

  Galen blinked. The grim cell on the starship came back into focus. As it did, the pain-filled empathic feedback loop he'd generated faded. Somehow, his empathy had been interlocked with the pulses from the mind-control device. Thankfully. Otherwise, he would’ve been a sobbing mess.

  Kroz ripped the circlet away and tossed it to the other reaper. Then he grabbed Galen by the front of his shirt and lifted him up so that their eyes met.

  “You filthy empath,” Kroz snarled.

  “Didn’t figure that out before…hunting me down, huh?” Galen attempted a defiant chuckle. “Is my brain useless to you now?”

  Kroz sneered. “On the contrary, empathic brains are even more valuable and are plugged into Matrix of Matrices.”

  Kroz flung him to the ground and kicked him in the stomach. The air whooshed out of Galen’s lungs, and he lay gasping. The cyborg captain stomped his massive foot into Galen's thigh. Pain lanced through his leg, and he would've cried out if he'd had the air to do so.

  The foot rose up again and sped toward Galen’s head. He cringed, bracing himself for the knockout, but the boot stopped just short.

  A wicked gleam entered Kroz’s eyes as he withdrew his foot. Galen immediately sensed the cruel malice in the Tekk Reaper.

  “Unfortunately, you haven't revealed to me anything I didn't know already, and the members of your security detail are woefully ignorant about your dealings. Therefore, I must take a different course of action to get what I want."

  Kroz eyed the other Tekk Reaper meaningfully. The smaller one bowed his head and rushed out of the room.

  Galen spoke as soon as he had the breath to do so. “I’m never going to talk, so you might as well kill me. Cut out my brain and do with me what you want.”

  Kroz laughed. “Nice try, Ambassador. It’s true that I’m impatient. It’s also true that I’m relentless. I will get from you what I wish to know, however long that may take.”

  The second reaper returned with a tablet-sized c|slate in his hands. He pulled at the corners and expanded it to the size of a living room viewscreen and attached it magnetically to the wall. He tapped the screen and backed away.

  The viewscreen showed another prison cell. Within that room, one of the four members of Galen's security detail crouched in fea
r, his arms wrapped around himself. The burly man's name was Russ. He was a former marine and not the sort of man who'd cower when faced with an enemy. But Tekk Reapers weren’t normal enemies.

  Russ had a wife and a child. Galen recalled Russ proudly showing him pictures of them when he’d joined the security team three months ago. Sadly, he would never see them again. That blame would rest on Galen’s soul for however much life he had left.

  Two reapers entered the room. Russ fought them in vain, his efforts failing after mere moments. While one held him in place, the other sliced off an ear. Then the reaper removed the other. Russ cried out, gurgling blood, as the reaper took his tongue.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Galen noted Kroz staring at him. He refused to look away. As best he could, he used his empathic ability to close off his emotional connection to others. It was imperative that he, at the very least, prevent himself from directly empathizing with Russ.

  “You may think us cruel from the stories you hear,” Kroz said, “but when we harvest parts we normally euthanize the donor so they will not suffer. This harvesting could be done much faster and without pain. All it would require is you telling me what I wish to know.”

  The reaper peeled off Russ’s fingernails, one by one, while the man screamed and cried.