The Fate of Terra Ch. 16

They lived in an environment that kept them interested and challenged them intellectually, physically, and emotionally. Most of all, they got to travel among the stars. She backed off Aurora's face and looked down at her sopping wet features. Smiling, she leaned down and gave her other sister a kiss, tasting her own juices. 'Yes,' she thought. 'Life really was perfect.'

* * * * *

Tika heard a chime indicating that the strange fleet of warships had traveled beyond the range of her probe's sensors and breathed a sigh of relief, powering up her suit's functions. She'd turned everything off to avoid detection almost as soon as she'd gotten out of range from the slave auction. Then she'd walked to the room she was renting under a false name and hoped she wouldn't be discovered. She shivered as she recalled the scenes that had prompted her flight.

With shaking gloved hands, she unclipped her helmet and threw it onto the bed. She'd been assigned to this backwater sector of the galaxy to infiltrate the slave rings that had been gaining notoriety of late ever since an important noble's daughter had been kidnapped from her yacht and sold last cycle. The central alliance, consisting of twelve of the most powerful systems in the spiral arm, generally frowned on the institution of slavery, but everyone knew this crackdown was simply a political message.

'Still,' she thought as she began removing the rest of her gear, 'it's nearly twenty-seven rotations by the fastest messenger sloop to reach Alliance territory.' She knew her mission was merely an excuse to get rid of her. Among those of her race, she was unique. Her armored jacket clunked to the floor and she waved her arms, and the retracted black feathered wings that lined them.

She sighed in relief. Among Harpeians, the brighter your feathers were in color, the higher in the caste system you were considered as it signified your ability to attract potential mates. At least, that's the reasoning their race had always followed. Apparently, there hadn't been anyone born with black feathers for 5,000 cycles and it just so happened that the previous one had started a civil war that had plunged their world into darkness for over a hundred cycles.

'Lucky me,' she muttered darkly. She had been an anomaly since her mother was bright red and her father forest green with a bright golden plume. They had essentially disowned her from birth as the highest disgrace that could've befallen them and she had taken an Alliance career path at the earliest opportunity. Tears threatened to fall from her orbs of obsidian as she thought about her parents.

It turned out that just having her in the same sector was too embarrassing for her beloved mother and father --despite giving birth to her younger sister who'd been blessed with a coat of brilliant yellow- and they used their influence to get her assigned as far away as possible (something that had been depressingly easy to do after she'd chosen to become a cipher agent). She sighed morosely and cupped her smooth breasts before letting them drop in frustration.

This job had had the potential to be equal parts dangerous and boring, but that had all changed when a mysterious new race had come onto the scene and done things that seemed unbelievable. How such an advanced civilization had flown so completely under their radar would be the subject of much debate, she was sure. She uploaded her suit cam's recorded data along with her full account of what had happened and sent her probe off towards Alliance space, certain that her findings would have them sending a scout ship to bring her back to give her report in person.

In the meantime, she intended to learn all she could about the mystifying newcomers. For all the power they had displayed, the most impressive evidence they had left behind was a puzzling number of reports filed in their wake. The operations chief discovered they couldn't transfer the credits that had been deposited when the strangers had docked. Then security footage failed to show how a number of killings played out.

This was alarming because she had checked the footage herself and discovered that it hadn't been looped or replaced. They were the actual recordings, but other the people that had carried out the crimes were ghosts or something was indeed missing. In fact, there was no trace of any kind that she had come to expect in the case of a hacker. She felt a shiver run down her spine. The more she learned, the more uneasy it made her.

Just then, an alert popped up on her holo pad and she found that someone was using quite an advanced code to infiltrate the station's systems. She frowned. Anyone good enough to develop this wouldn't have tried to use it on a public terminal that wasn't designed to transfer such quantities of currency. She shrugged and began suiting up again. Perhaps she could find out what their motivations were after all.