Nara by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, Christmas, foodie, seattle
Publisher: Buchman Bookworks
Published: 2016-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

8 January 1 A.A.

Jaron sat and stared down at his hands. They hadn’t been this clean… perhaps since he was born. For a week they had not let him back into the jungle. Except once to lead the Captain and her team of judges through the events that he could remember.

A holo of the corpse, in all its bloody detail, had been turned on for their benefit.

Several of the judges had added their stomach’s contents to the jungle’s composting process. Just as Samnal’s blood had flowed into the stream, adding his nutrients back into Stellar One. They’d certainly be of more use there than they had ever been to the man.

For himself, while he had no doubt that he’d done it, even without the evidence of his machete, he could remember nothing since Harold had flown aloft and Jaron had begun to clear the trail. This worried his judges beyond reason despite the psychologist’s reassurance that this was a common reaction to such a trauma.

What was the Captain doing?

Why didn’t she just get this over with?

His mother had been right.

Had the WEC troops ever tested his blood, he would have been eliminated for latent violent tendencies. He had proven himself a murderer. He’d always argued that such things came from upbringing, but now he must reexamine his own premises.

The World Premier’s program of race cleansing based strictly on DNA analysis had just been proven valid. What secrets were contained in the results of the Second Human Genome Mapping Project? The results had been classified, and with the death of the world, were now completely gone. But they’d given the Premier’s troops the necessary knowledge to eradicate his father and brother.

That they’d killed his mother and sister was just a misunderstanding when they’d sent him running to the jungle that morning so long ago. Now their sacrifice was about to be wasted. He had killed and he, in his turn, was about to be eliminated.

The Captain’s cough returned him from his musings. Had she finally decided to act? Was Samnal right about how ineffective the woman was? He glanced about her pristine office.

A long wall of clearplas showed a great slice of space, rotating in a great circle once every sixty seconds. The white rug and simple furnishings spoke of a centralization of power that no amount of ornamentation could impose. A glittering steel model of Stellar One rotated and spun above her desk. It was little bigger than his hand, yet something about it was wrong. A few moments of inspection revealed that the five rings were complete and the engines were in place. So this was not a holo, but an actual crafted model. The wall held a few certificates: Luna Shuttle Captain, Mars Hopper Commander, Captain of Stellar One.

And Captain Devra Conrad Commanding sitting upright behind her desk. Behind her, beyond her desk of glass and steel, beyond her eyes of gray, there spread the emptiness of his future. The wall a pale blue, blending in with the Captain until only a space black uniform faced him, headless and handless, all washed away.

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