Mindguard Read online

  Mindguard

  by Andrei Cherascu

  Copyright © 2014 by Andrei Cherascu

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover Image by Andrei Cherascu

  Cover Design by Andrei Cherascu

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places or events is entirely coincidental.

  For Ioana,

  Because our minds are one.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: April 4th, 2049

  Chapter 0

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  A New Life

  Prologue: April 4th, 2049

  The human mind is unpredictable. Had it not been this way, humanity would have died in its infancy.

  Kinsey Ayers, A New History of Old Earth

  Doctor and Mrs. Whitman Caine were having tea on their porch. It was the first Sunday of April. After an unseasonably cold month of March, the warm weather and cloudless sky proposed an evening of lazy outdoor leisure.

  Had they known then, that they were about to change the course of human history, they would still have had tea on the porch, because it was five o’clock and it was Sunday. These moments of quality time together were of a sanctity that could not be unsettled, even by the end of the world as they knew it.

  “Would you like to try again?” Dr. Caine asked, noticing that his wife had just finished her tea and placed the empty cup on the wrought iron table.

  It’s such a lovely day,” she answered. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it happened today?”

  “Well, there’s one way to find out.”

  Excited, the scientist got up and went inside to fetch Carly her sketch board. It contained every single drawing she had made since the start of the project. He handed it to her and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

  “I’m going to be in the dining room,” he said, winking.

  “The dining room,” she replied, biting her lower lip like she always did when she was intrigued.

  After he left, she made herself comfortable in her rocking chair, tightly tucking in the blanket that covered her legs. “The dining room,” she quietly repeated. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting the air out slowly. Then, she focused her gaze on the blank page in front of her.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Caine was sitting at the dining room table. He had already picked out the object and was intensely staring at it. It was a mug they had gotten from the Christmas Market in Vienna, more than seven years ago. He was trying to focus on the object’s every detail: its shape, color, its weight, the way it felt in his hand.

  He concentrated on it as if his whole life had been reduced to that single moment, his entire world contained within that one fragile object. Not even the tiniest detail could be allowed to go unnoticed. After ten minutes, he had to stop. He felt physically tired, as if he had been running all that time. When he heard his wife enter the room, he set the mug aside and said a short, silent prayer. He turned towards her. He smiled when she handed him the sketch. She returned his smile and shrugged, like a teenager handing her crush a valentine.

  “Well?” she asked.

  It took a few moments for her husband to find his words.

  Chapter 0

  Two great discoveries have shaped the course of human history more than any others before them. One must be continuously developed and supported, its potential harvested, for it can become the culmination of all human endeavors. The other must be discontinued and outlawed, before it becomes humanity’s undoing.

  President Manmohan Mukerjee at the inaugural summit of the Interstellar Federation of Common Origin, 2110

  Faint flashes of lightning, followed by an almost imperceptible drone, announced a Muench-Henriksen gateway, somewhere above the sky of Aanadya. A few seconds later, the spacecraft made its spectacular appearance through the thick, gray-brown clouds, like an ancient god descending from primeval heavens.

  Tamisa was in awe. She had never seen an Enforcement Unit vessel before. It was much smaller than the enormous Mylonas cargo crafts, but no less impressive. Its unusual design made it look like some sort of flying container, as if it had not been meant to carry human passengers, but toxic waste. The enforcers were not known for their aesthetic sensibility.

  Crouched in her hiding place, an empty wooden crate behind one of the hangars, Tamisa could only see part of the proceedings. She was fifteen now, too old and too big to get a clear vantage point and, at the same time, remain safely concealed. She was starting to become too old for many things, and yet she felt even older.

  She looked at Kaye Wright. From her position, she could only see the back of his head. He towered over the rest of his staff. The welcoming committee consisted of representatives of the Union of Workers, a few members of what passed for press in the city of Tuson, and a number of guards.

  As the ship slowly descended towards its landing spot, Wright seemed more and more agitated. He was pacing, constantly looking around, as if he feared an ambush, turning from time to time to yell at his staff. She hoped he wouldn’t turn around one hundred and eighty degrees, or she would risk being seen; that would mean certain death.

  She had entered the spaceport through her ‘secret door’, a hole in the fence she had discovered a few years earlier, while roaming the hills close to her home. Now she barely fit through it. Because climbing the barbed wire fence was not an option, the spaceport would soon become off limits, robbing her of one of her only forms of entertainment: observing the ships that left this wretched planet and daydreaming of one day leaving in one of them.

  Trespassing was prohibited; many men had died for less. But it was Tamisa’s only link to her dream, and she felt her dream was worth risking even her life. She had escaped death once before, but it could not be avoided forever. Not on a planet like Aanadya.

  She thought of her father’s ridiculous ‘accident’. She knew all along that it had been Wright’s men. They didn’t try very hard to hide their gruesome murder. As a scientist dispatched to the Institute for Genetic Research in Tuson, her father had been branded an ‘outsider’ by the Union of Workers, and had immediately triggered the paranoia of Kaye Wright.

  In lieu of an actual government, the Union was the reigning political power. Aanadya was just on the verge of the Taut Desert, not yet integrated within the Interstellar Federation of Common Origin. Kaye Wright, the Union’s Lead Representative, was the most dangerous man on the planet, an unpr
edictable psychopath prone to fits of violent rage. He made no secret of the fate that awaited people who opposed him in any way. It was common knowledge in Tuson, that if you ever ventured into the Gupa hills, you would be hard pressed to find a spot of ground that did not serve as a final resting place for one of his detractors. To Tamisa, he was the quintessence of evil and the personification of life on this barbaric planet. Since her father’s death, she had but one thought that consumed her every moment: escape.

  As a biologist, working in genetic architecture - a field regarded with suspicion since the Great Mindwar - her father had always been an outsider, both on Aanadya and elsewhere. A man with few friends, he had always found company in books, a trait which Tamisa had inherited. She had read about other planets, places with lush jungles full of colorful forms of plant life, or barren wastelands of quiet solitude, which offered some of the most beautiful sunsets to ever have inspired painters. She had read about ice worlds, whose skies presented lightshows that rivaled in beauty the Aurora Borealis of Old Earth. By comparison, Aanadya was a complete piece of shit.

  It was a barren wasteland without the beautiful sunsets; the high pollution was to blame for the thick clouds that covered the sky almost all the time. Sometimes there were lightshows caused by the toxic smoke rising from the factories, but they were creepy and ended in thunderstorms. There was little plant life on the inhabited part of the planet, and the only wildlife around were skinrats and a species of dog that you couldn`t even pet because it was covered with a disgusting exoskeleton.

  The population consisted mostly of miners and factory workers, ruthless and dangerous brutes with little regard for anything but their physiological needs. For any young woman, the place was a prison, a dangerous dungeon that held the promise of a future lost in drug addiction and rape. For Tamisa it was hell, plain and simple.

  In this pit of devils, her father had been the only angel. Since his death, Tamisa decided that she would rather join him than face the prospect of a future on Aanadya. She needed to find a way off this planet, though travel was extremely difficult for unmarried women and impossible for people under the legal age of nineteen. However, she was determined to find a way, even if she had to hide on a Mylonas cargo craft.

  She was frustrated that her stepmother, Melody, did not share her enthusiasm for leaving. Since her husband’s death, Melody had been in a state of severe depression. The subsequent years of alcohol and substance abuse made it very hard for Tamisa to get through to her. Much of the time she was unresponsive, and when she was sober, she was very apathetic. Tamisa realized early on that she was on her own.

  On this day, however, hidden among her enemies, she felt a glimmer of hope. The Enforcement Unit was scheduled for an official visit in Tuson. It seemed that Commander Anderson himself had requested a meeting with the Union of Workers, much to the concern of Kaye Wright.

  Rumor had it that the enforcers were planning a military intervention on Aanadya, in order to install an interim government on the planet in preparation for the next enlargement-wave. Talk of integrating Aanadya into the IFCO had been going back almost a decade. The establishment of the institute where her father had worked, as well as the Taut Desert Observatory, had been intended as the first steps toward this supposed integration, but it never happened. From time to time, rumors of an Enforcement Unit intervention would pop up only to prove false, so Tamisa was prepared to be disappointed.

  A few months before her father’s death, there had been talk of the enforcers wanting to build one of their Academies near Tuson, complete with physical training grounds. The plans never materialized and people were saying that Kaye Wright tried everything in his power to prevent it from happening. The mere presence on Aanadya of an outfit under the command of Thomas Liam Anderson would have seriously crippled Wright’s power.

  Anderson was a decorated war hero, High Commander of the most efficient and well organized military in the history of mankind. A skilful strategist, his razor-sharp intellect and dedication to maintaining peace were the only reasons that the IFCO was not falling apart, consumed by petty conflicts instigated by people like Wright.

  Tamisa had read a lot about the commander. Her father had been a great supporter of the Enforcement Unit, and he had greatly admired Anderson. For that reason, she too felt a special affection for the man, though she had only ever seen him in pictures. She held a secret hope that the enforcers would show up and just open fire on Kaye Wright and his posse, punishing them for their many heinous crimes, though she knew it was just wishful thinking.

  As the doors to the ship opened, Tamisa held her breath. She couldn’t wait to catch a glimpse of the commander. A threatening growl startled her. She almost let out a scream, revealing her position. One of the dogs that roamed the grounds of the spaceport had just discovered her. It must have been scavenging for dead skinrats. When it noticed Tamisa, it raised its muzzle in the air and bore its teeth.

  Tamisa was not afraid of the mutt; they almost never attacked people. She was, however, terrified that the growl would attract the attention of one of the guards, and that she would be discovered. Her deafening heartbeat almost covered up the creature’s grumble.

  Sure enough, one of the guards turned around and noticed the dog. Tamisa closed her eyes and held her breath, hoping that it would somehow magically turn her invisible. She heard the guard yell at the dog to scram. The animal obeyed. Tamisa could hear its footsteps backing away from her.

  Though her eyes were closed, the girl had a clear picture in her head: the guard would see her. He would come over, grab her by the arm, drag her through the dirt and throw her at the feet of the man who had given the order to kill her father.

  None of that happened. When she dared open her eyes a few seconds later, she saw everyone, including the guard in question, staring at the enormous doors of the ship. They had opened to reveal Thomas Anderson himself, joined by a handful of his men.

  Tamisa had a clear view of the famous commander. She had until now seen only a few images of him. He was unchanged from news articles a generation old - a testament to the extensive life-prolonging genome interventions he received on a regular basis. It was known that Anderson and a select few of his men were some of the very few privileged citizens who could benefit from such procedures. Their experience and knowledge were considered fundamental to the well-being of the IFCO.

  Though almost three centuries old, the man appeared no older than sixty, and he seemed to be in damned good shape even for sixty. He had been in command of the Enforcement Unit ever since its creation.

  He was now hurriedly approaching Kaye Wright, who had placed himself in front of a microphone to speak.

  “Greetings,” Wright said cautiously. “I would hereby like…”

  Tamisa never got to hear the rest of his speech. Her clear view of the back of Wright’s head suddenly became an equally clear view of his surprised face, when Anderson twisted his neck, killing him on the spot. It had all happened so suddenly, and Anderson had approached Wright so quickly, that the Leader of the Union never had a chance to even take a step back. His inert body hit the ground with a thud that had the effect of snapping everyone out of the shock of the moment.

  “No way!” Tamisa said in disbelief.

  Before Wright’s guards could react, the enforcers activated their respective neurostunners, sending Wright’s men falling to the ground like so many flies - not dead but far from comfortable. Anderson calmly took the microphone.

  “By order of the Council of Presidents of the Interstellar Federation of Common Origin there has been a change in administration on planet ST1.4077DYA, informally known as Aanadya.” His voice was calm and pleasant, the voice of a grandfather reading bedtime stories.

  “Kaye Wright’s rule has been declared unlawful. Upon close investigation of his criminal activities, he has been sentenced to death by the Council of Presidents. His associates will be appropriately prosecuted. The planet will be placed temporarily under the admini
stration of a regent proposed by the Enforcement Unit, until the Federation forms a government that will prepare Aanadya for IFCO membership, as part of the upcoming enlargement wave. This is good news, people. I will address the press, as well as the people of Aanadya’s capital city of Tuson, in forty-eight hours in Marken Square for more information. Until then, we ask for your patience and cooperation.”

  As Anderson spoke, his men just calmly and systematically disarmed the paralyzed guards. An enormous land vehicle appeared from the spacecraft and the Enforcers proceeded to board it.

  “Forty-eight hours,” Tamisa thought. That was how long she had to somehow try and make contact with Anderson’s Enforcers. This was her window of opportunity to leave Aanadya and never come back. Unseen, she darted from her hiding place and ran for home as fast as she could.

  PART 1: THE MIND

  Chapter 1

  Sanity is nature’s sole gift to man. For the mindguard, it is a tool of the trade.

  Sheldon Ayers, Guarding the Trade: A study of the Mindguard’s Methods

  “Been a while,” Maclaine Ross said cheerfully, as he stepped through the hand carved oak door into the spacious home office of his longtime friend. He was genuinely excited to see Sheldon, after almost eight months since their last mission together.

  He missed spending time with his old friend. In the last few years, the eccentric mindguard had grown increasingly withdrawn, cutting down on field missions in favor of his research and writing. Ross was sure that his business partner was equally happy to see him, though you could never tell with Sheldon; the man’s face rarely changed expression. If the eyes were truly windows to the soul, then Sheldon Ayers’ windows had always been shut, with the blinds pulled down. For a few seconds the mindguard seemed confused, as if he were not expecting Ross, even though their meeting had been scheduled two days in advance.