Monk by Gregg Vann

Author:Gregg Vann [Vann, Gregg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silver Rocket Press

6

Conflict

See the truth, and you will see me.

* * *

The Buddha

It was her brother.

I found out during my initial briefing with Brother Dyson—right after gaining awareness for the first time on Bodhi Prime. I’d learned even more from reading the incident report filed by the magistrate’s office.

It had been Idra’s brother!

He’d come to the hotel room to tell her the sad news in person, just after finding out that his daughter had been stillborn. Idra was consoling him—innocently sharing his sorrow—when I burst into the room and attacked them, heaping misery on top of misery…and killing her.

My Idra.

After the attack, her brother had been forced to endure months of physical therapy, emerging from the ordeal partially crippled, but alive. Despite this good fortune, his sister and child were gone. And I knew that his own survival brought him little solace.

A navigation alarm went off—pulling me away from the regrettably rich tableau of morbid memories, and freeing me from the deep pit of recollection where I’d been wallowing for almost three days. I slapped the offending switch and shut it off, and then pulled up the display to check the ship’s position. I was approaching Volas, right on schedule. The thought of returning to the planet unnerved me. But it wasn’t outright fear, I noticed, more like an uncomfortable uncertainty. And as time continued to pass, I realized I was growing less and less certain about anything.

The planetary defense agency had granted me a standard clearance to land on Osala—no special instructions or escorts. It was the same open authorization that any visitor would receive, and quite different from my bellicose reception on Blenej.

Or was it?

I was directed to land at the exact same platform where I’d been killed—vaporized while trying to escape Volas after the murder. I wondered if it was a subtle attempt to send a message, or simply because my ship was an odd size, and this was one of the few hangars in the city that could accommodate it. My database was full of events where the universe demonstrated a bizarre propensity toward coincidence, so I tried not to read too much into it.

The landing gear flexed slightly when the ship touched down, locking into position as the engines powered off with a low-pitched hum. I stood up and stretched my legs, and despite my best efforts to ignore it, my eyes were once again drawn to the rapidly blinking light on the communications panel.

There were more than 50 urgent messages from Bodhi Prime, all unanswered.

I looked out the front window and saw that the hangar was empty. No reception this time, I thought. Then I told the ship to extend the ramp and walked outside—trading the spaceship’s tasteless mixture of air for the planet’s balmy, tropical atmosphere.

At the bottom of the ramp, I stopped to consider my next move. No one on Volas wanted to talk to me—that much I understood. But it was their reasoning that I had a hard time comprehending.

The Volasi embraced grand,

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