Image Source

Kahn L’Vare, the Nihekhi Chief Detective of the Eighth Ward of Technopolis, scowled as he sucked on his salt stick. The crime had stayed true to pattern, save for the one notable exception.

A group of young homosexual men had gone into a local bathhouse, put their weapons and their clothes in storage lockers as the local laws demanded, and then went in to the baths to have a good time. None had come out again. Only the possessions they had left behind remained – these and the subtle traces of radiation that proved that they had been dematerialized into the quantum vacuum and not kidnapped by means of a portal.

One murder had stood out from the rest. It had been committed by a master of the martial arts, who had killed his victims with his hands and feet. But other lines of evidence pointed to the same suspect being responsible. He certainly had vanished with the same mysterious suddenness as in other cases.

So far, on nearly a dozen worlds and in twenty cities within the Rim Confederacy, this pattern of random strikes had taken the lives of almost a thousand men within a Standard Year – always homosexuals and their close sexual allies. When pedophiles were involved, all but one of them in the group was killed in this manner; the remaining man was always found cut up bloodily and efficiently, as if one of the Covenant Sphere’s Blademasters Level Five had diced him to pieces while the poor man was still on his feet.

The murders had sent shudders and cries of outrage through the whole “fringe” community in the Rim. A fearful name was being whispered within it (for some of the surviving minors had heard it spoken and had passed it on): *Alan Blackstar*. Some conspiracy theorists whispered that he also had other names which were even more fearful, and far more public.

The older surviving minors enabled Kahn to put together a sketch of the suspect: a blond Adami male of the White Tribe, slender, of moderate height, brown eyes, very fair, very handsome in a way that the more hypertrophic kind of homosexuals often liked. All of the minors testified to the incredible speed and skill the suspect had in killing the adults with his sword. How he got into a given bathhouse was almost always a mystery. He simply appeared, did his terrifying work, and disappeared just as suddenly.

It was difficult for the sketch artists to believe what they were drawing. Sometimes they had to redraw simply to overcome their own biases toward a normal, adult Adami facial profile. But the suspect’s profile wasn’t that of a normal Adami adult; it had a blend of mid-teenage and adult features that wasn’t found in nature. Only one documented Adami adult male in the Ring of Stars looked like *that*. And when the minors were shown photos of that male, they almost always confirmed the match without hesitation.

Examinations of certain DNA traces, taken from the various crime scenes, pointed in the same direction. They very closely matched the DNA of the suspect, who was now sitting in the strongest cell with the strongest force fields in the strongest prison that New Attica had to offer.

< For all the good that does, > Kahn mused. < Given his famous metaphysical powers, he could break out of that cell without warning, and with no problem at all. And technically, we have no right to hold him; his kind has diplomatic immunity. The Sphere’s Circle of Starbards should be handling this case. >

Well, sitting here at his desk would do no good to either Kahn or the suspect. It was time to meet him face-to-face.

Kahn stepped out into a misty night that gave the endless lights of the great city a mysterious, almost romantic quality. Kahn loved his adopted city; he often took its efficient public transport monorails simply because he could. An official police aircar at one of the Park-and-Ride areas along the monorail’s path took him to the isolated site of Talon World Prison, where the toughest criminals were held.

“Are you *certain*, Detective, that we have the right man?” said the Warden as he walked down the hall with the Detective. He had just a number, no name, as he was a construct: Warden G-2575. He was a massive Adami in form, very realistic-looking, modeled after a typical black-haired Red Tribesman – but he was far stronger than any mortal Adami.

“There is always the error factor, Warden. But all the direct physical evidence and most of the testimony so far points in his direction. And he *has* been traveling within the Confederacy with his ship and crew for the past Standard Year.”

“Noted. He and his crew have freed many members of several female harems in the various Sheikdoms – in almost every case, via direct purchase in pure gold – and helped break several female prostitution rings run by the Maids of the Chalice.”

“*And* the murders I’ve been tracking have always occurred when the *Hind of the Dawn* has been in port at a particular world, or in orbit around it.”

“It is strange that he gave no resistance to his arrest, when A Company found him. He could have overcome his would-be captors easily and fled the Rim.” And that was the truth. A Company’s constructs were rightly feared by all carbon-based life forms that knew of them, even those trained as soldiers – but the suspect was *potentially* a fighter like none other, and A Company knew it.

“Perhaps he was hampered by the strange ‘need’ that limits his powers.”

“What ‘need’ could drive him to commit such acts, even in his Lord’s name?”

“What ‘need’, indeed? I don’t want to imagine. Is this his cell?”

“Yes. He has been a model prisoner – which to my brand of intelligence suggests that he is not the carbon-based life form you seek, this world’s laws notwithstanding.”

“Perhaps not – but the alternatives are even more frightening. Let’s go in.”

The cell that restrained Chris Alan Starbright – about as effectively as rice paper would’ve restrained a mad bull, had there been the need to leave it – was as sparse as it could be made without qualifying as subtle torture. Rafael was deactivated in Rest Mode and was resting in a secure vault elsewhere, along with Chris Alan’s Starblade and the few other personal effects he wore.

“Did you think to check what kind of blade the suspect was wielding, Detective?”

Kahn started. This Starbard had a way of asking disconcerting questions, often seemingly out of left field – yet always relevant ones.

“Unfortunately, Captain Starbright, the testimony I have points to a blade that shines and disrupts like yours, wielded by a man who can make his hands glow in the manner of a Lightchild.”

“Are you *certain* about that? Our Light can’t be duplicated, not by any means whatever. But sometimes it takes subtle scans to tell the difference between the real and the counterfeit. Mortal eyes usually aren’t equipped for such subtle distinctions. I’m pretty sure there weren’t any spectrographs present when the *real* suspect did his dirty work.” Chris Alan mused. “I don’t suppose those bathhouses had any video recordings of his actions – pornographic, security-related, or whatever?”

“The suspect, whoever he is, has been clever enough to avoid or overcome such situations – and you *are* noted for your cleverness.”

“Cleverness. Hm. Do these bathhouses ever happen to have chess boards?”

“Now how would you know about *that*? Never mind; of *course* you’d know about that, one way or another.” Kahn mused for a moment in turn. “Now there was *one* case where the suspect came in through the door like any normal customer, and challenged the others to a friendly game or two before the festivities began. Allegedly, he liked to relax that way. According to one of the surviving minors, the new man lost to an unexpectedly strong opponent. Since that’s when he started killing the other men in anger with his bare hands and feet, that seems presumptive evidence that the loss was real and not faked.”

“I see. How good is your Warden at playing chess?”

“His kind has ‘solved’ the game – no surprise, as the artificial brains of any one of them can out-calculate an entire planet’s worth of organic brains. The Warden here can only be beaten to a draw, whether by an organic intelligence or an artificial one. No organic intelligence has ever beaten him or any other construct of his type to a draw.”

“Then prepare to see a thing. Warden, would you care to play a game with me?”

“We have no board. Are you prepared to call out the relevant moves?”

“Yes.”

As Detective Kahn watched and listened in amazement, Chris Alan and the Warden played. It usually took longer for Chris Alan to call out his moves than it did for the Warden, but when he did it was always with perfect confidence. In due time the Warden conceded the draw.

“How did you do that, Captain, without your Guardian’s aid?” The Nihekhim weren’t predisposed to believe in the miraculous, which made what Kahn had just witnessed more awe-inspiring in its way. Somehow, Chris Alan had threaded his way through all the possible moves in the game – a number with more than a hundred digits – and matched the Warden’s brute-force calculation with inspired insight.

“With the Mind of the Lord empowering me, Detective, I can call upon all eight of my natural cognitive processes at need.” Chris Alan looked tired but triumphant. “I’m one of only three Adamim now living who can do so. The one who’s turned to evil doesn’t fit your suspect’s description – and neither does Grandmaster Toa. Had I been at that bathhouse – which I wasn’t – I guarantee I wouldn’t have lost that game, I’d never have simply thrown it, and I *certainly* wouldn’t have thrown a murderous temper tantrum had I lost.”

Kahn shook his head. “That still doesn’t explain the discovery of *your* DNA at many of the murder sites. Don’t underestimate our forensic biotech, Captain; it’s only just less sophisticated than your people’s own.”

“Maybe someone out there has biotech as good as or better than either of ours,” Chris Alan suggested.

“Are you suggesting that the *real* suspect’s a replicant?”

“I wish that Prophecy at Need could confirm or deny that, but it can’t – yet. Detective, why isn’t the testimony of my crew enough to establish an alibi? Both they and Rafael affirm that I wasn’t even dirtside when this last murder occurred.” Chris Alan couldn’t suppress a wry grin. “In fact, Autumn could tell you *exactly* what I was doing at the time, but not even *she’s* that open about our marital relationship to strangers.”

“Frankly, I tend to agree with you, on the weight of the evidence. Unfortunately, Captain, our laws assume guilt until innocence is proven. By their tortuous logic, they demand that we find an alternative suspect that fits the forensic facts better than you do, no matter what other alibi you may have. It’s too bad that beings such as the Warden didn’t develop New Attica’s criminal laws.”

As if on cue – just as so often happened when Chris Alan’s presence affected the space-time continuum around him – Kahn’s wireless phone beeped. “Yes? Yofi, what do you have?” Yofi, Kahn’s Adami mate, was the stuff of cheap detective novel fantasies: a moderately tall, brunette research assistant with the body of a bikini model, the soul of a romantic near-nymphomaniac, and the mind of a lawyer and a scientist combined. Chris Alan wondered how Kahn had met her, and how he’d managed to keep her.

“*What*?” Kahn all but shouted. “Where?” Kahn listened to the almost frantic jabber of Yofi’s voice in his ear for almost a minute. “All right, get the lab people scanning the place. I’ll be right there – hopefully with some backup from A Company. Yes, and Captain Starbright too, if I can get him out of here. That’s right; I’m at Talon, speaking to him. I just saw him do the most amazing thing: beat the Warden to a draw at chess. Yes, that’s right: just another thing to add to his legend.” Chris Alan’s eyes rolled at that comment. ”Send someone to pick up my aircar; I’ll ask the Captain to portal me to the scene. Kahn out.” Kahn clicked shut and holstered his phone. “We’ve had another bathhouse murder, gentlemen – the worst one yet: the biggest bathhouse in the Fringe Quarter was hit. We could be talking about hundreds dead, not only disembodied, and not just fringies this time. People who heard the screams came in and got cut down. This time we have a good number of dead bodies to look at, men and women, all stabbed or cut apart by a Starblade.”

“According to eyewitness testimony, or forensic examination?”

“Eyewitness testimony – so far.”

“We’ll see what the evidence says, Detective. Autumn and I can help point out the telltales.” Chris Alan stepped up to the force field blocking the door and spoke urgently; his tiredness had fallen away like an outer cloak. “Whoever this perp is, he’s completely out of your league – *and* that of A Company. He’s wielding powers comparable to my own – how, I don’t know yet, but if he’s getting this brazen then I need to get after him, fast.”

“I’m surprised in a way that you’d even care, if you follow me.”

“Nothing good comes from breaking one part of Covenant Law on the pretext of upholding another, Detective. Warden, is there any reason to hold me now?”

“I have contacted the Interlink and have received permission to release you with its apologies, Captain. I am now notifying your crew as well. We will get you ready to leave as quickly as we can.”

= = = = = = = = = =

Quickly, Chris Alan and almost his entire crew had assembled with Kahn and Yofi at the Muddy Waters Bathhouse. Trana Rastajar, another Nihekhi, alone stayed behind to man the onboard portal and other systems from the bridge of the *Hind*. Chris Alan thought it rather odd that Trana would volunteer for the job when a fellow Nihekhi was on the case dirtside, but then (unlike the rest of the crew) Trana preferred to work “behind the scenes” and not call attention to himself.

Chris Alan hated to expose his wife and First Officer Autumn to the sordid scene at the bathhouse – he could barely stomach it himself – but Autumn had a different kind of intuition dominating her personality than he did. She could connect seemingly random objective observations into a pattern in a way that took Chris Alan considerably more psychic energy to use, and through an archetype that was different from the archetype used by the same cognitive process in his own mind.

“The perp *is* a Lightchild,” Autumn choked out when she examined one of the corpses closely. “May the Lord help us all.”

“Why do you say so?” Kahn asked. Yofi was speaking to the director of the forensic crew, some distance away, but this conversation caught their attention as well.

“May I?” Chris Alan asked.

“By all means,” Autumn replied. Her mind was already leaping to other possibilities, and she started looking around accordingly. Chris Alan was more focused, when he applied himself to something.

“Nothing but duringlass cuts this clean, not even a Guardian’s saber,” Chris Alan explained. “Duringlass isn’t matter as this Realm knows of it. When honed to a microfine edge, duringlass can split an object right down to the molecular or crystalline level on contact, even when it isn’t lit. Look at the muscle and bone tissue at the end of this severed limb. The discoloration’s characteristic: the very proteins and fatty acids have been broken down, cut right through, at the contact surface. Had the blade been lit, of course, this limb would’ve simply dissolved into the quantum vacuum – as no doubt many of the corpses were.”

Kahn nodded. He had been watching while Chris Alan and Autumn had crouched by one of the male corpses and scanned its parts using their Guardians’ Contact Lens Mode. It was fascinating to see them in action. In some ways they were very much alike, yet it seemed as if the wiring in their brains had been completely flip-flopped in polarity relative to each other. Even more fascinating was how the more naturally directing Chris Alan often spoke deferentially to Autumn, while the more naturally deferential Autumn often spoke in a fairly directive way in response.

“This was some fight,” said Slate Rockmire, the *Hind*’s Engineer. Pulling rank as the Undying Singer, Chris Alan had gotten permission to have his crew observe, ask questions and even intermingle – carefully – as Yofi and the local forensic specialists worked over the crime scene.

“This wasn’t a fight,” said Slate’s mate Amethyst Bellatrix, Navigator/Helmsman on the *Hind*, “it was a massacre.” Both were saying the obvious, and both of them knew it, but their emotional reactions were taking center stage even as they were taking in the hard evidence.

“Some of these people were decent fighters,” said Aletheia, the *Hind*’s Sergeant-At-Arms. “Look at how some of these bodies are laid out, the debris that lies around here and there. Objects were thrown at the perp, or else used as weapons against him. Some of the dead used projectile and directed-energy weapons, some of which are still on the floor; look at the blast holes in the walls here and there. They’re fresh.” She pointed to some of the blast holes as she spoke. “These victims didn’t go down easily, even against this Lightchild. Autumn, I don’t understand: how could the perp wield his Gifting in such an evil way?”

“Either he’s being used despite himself still,” Autumn replied, “or he’s drawing on some other source of power we don’t know about yet. If it’s the second, as I’m betting, then it’s a mighty good imitation of Gifting.” She stopped as Amber Bdellium, her Guardian, gave a summary report via Contact Lens Mode. “Alan, the Detective’s right: there are minute traces of hair, skin, skin oil, sweat and blood that match yours very closely, all over this part of the floor where the worst fighting occurred.”

“Your Guardians’ active and passive sensors are that finely calibrated?” Kahn asked Chris Alan in astonishment. The forensic specialists scanning some of those very traces looked up at the question.

“You don’t know the *half* of it, Detective. Theirs is meta-tech, not just tech or hyper-tech. I see those traces too. Rafael, bring up whatever you can find about exiled Lightchildren, starting with the most recent incident.”

“No Lightchild *looks* like you, Captain,” Detective Kahn reminded him.

“No, but some *fight* almost as well as I do. There’s something about this guy’s style that’s reminiscent…”

“Yes, like your style, and yet unlike it,” Autumn exclaimed. “Even counting just what’s left on the floor, the perp was outnumbered thirty to one. Some of these guys are *huge*; and he knew exactly where to hit them, to slice them, or to use their energy against them. He laid them out just like *you* would’ve done, or very nearly. There’s just something about *how* he cut some of them up that’s bugging me. I don’t see any signs of protection by a Guardian, do you?”

“No – and no genuine use of Light, either, just some kind of Light-surrogate. Some kind of hyper-tech, I’m guessing.”

“Not many people can fake what *you* do, Blondie, without using hyper-tech,” said Slate.

“I know.” They were thinking of the very same people’s hyper-tech. “Oh, no. Lord help us, *no*.”

“What’s the matter, Captain?”

“This blood trace. If Rafael’s spotted what I *think* he’s spotted – Detective, does anyone here have Nutrient BA-29?”

One of the forensic scientists had a small vial. It was used in investigations that either involved or else possibly involved the Maids of the Chalice. The scientist, a pretty and sensitive-looking young Brown Tribeswoman, brought the vial to where Chris Alan was crouching. When she put a single drop on the clotted blood, it quickly became a writhing purple mass.

“Put it out, *quick*!” shouted the young scientist. She hated it when the test did its job.

< That one might think about a career change, > Autumn thought wryly.

Chris Alan drew his Starblade, lit it, and killed the rapidly multiplying symbiont. “That tears it,” he said. “Our perp’s an acolyte of Nicholas and Callista – and that means only one person on Rafael’s list of exiles could possibly qualify. Well, at least we have a potential motive now.”

“But he looks nothing like you,” Rafael noted, pulling up a file photo.

“I know. But as our Elemental crewmates can tell you, looks can be deceiving.”

= = = = = = = = = =

The perp was looking down at the bathhouse from the top of a tall skyscraper several blocks away. He no longer looked like Chris Alan Starbright; the energy required to imitate him so precisely (even down to his genome) was tremendous, and the imitation would only work against the perp now.

Lucas Theophilus (named after two famous and closely associated men in the Covenant Codex) had indeed been a Lightchild, a very precocious one; some claimed he was the most precocious student of the Starblade since Chris Alan himself. But Lucas’ heart began to harden when at the Covenant House’s Blademaster Academy in the Heart of the Sphere, Chris Alan’s friend Cody Lonestar had beaten Lucas soundly in a demonstration match. Lucas had accused Cody of cheating – which of course wasn’t true; Cody had a precision and efficiency of style which even Chris Alan could overcome only by drawing upon his Primary and Secondary cognitive processes in a very deep way.

Then there was the matter of Lucas’ ethnicity. Yellow and White Tribesmen, in that order, were disproportionately represented among Blademaster candidates. Instead of rejoicing in his relative rarity as a Black Tribesman in that elite set, Lucas started acting as if he’d been chosen as a more or less token representative of his people. When his Teacher pointed out that Black Tribesmen tended to be disproportionately represented in some other athletic fields, and that *somebody* had to buck the statistical bell curves, Lucas became even more resentful.

Next, there was the transformation of the very nature of Gifting. It affected all Lightchildren everywhere, including Chris Alan. Now Eight New Gifts were linked directly to a Lightchild’s eight cognitive processes. As one of only two still-loyal Lightchildren that could access all eight cognitive processes consciously with ease (even if it still took him more energy to access some than others), Chris Alan alone could wield all Eight New Gifts Without Measure, and his Gifts were still called the White Hand in ensemble. Together, they made him *the* Catalyst and Protector among Lightchildren. Lucas, though an Artist with an impressive array of physical talents and metaphysical Gifts, would never reach a like level of Power, and he knew and resented the fact.

Finally, Lucas never gained the mastery over his own sexuality that Chris Alan had attained under much more severe trial. This particular piece of leaven had begun leavening the whole lump of Lucas’ spiritual and personal life. He had been exiled without his Guardian and his Gifting, but with the extraordinary step of being allowed to keep his Starblade. The last person to be exiled out-of-Sphere with a durin or duringlass blade was Nicholas Blackthorn, the Great Apostate among Elementals.

It was to Nicholas Blackthorn’s world – or rather, to his daughter-wife’s world, Callista’s Planet – that Lucas had been exiled through the Portal of Starlight. Nicholas immediately saw Lucas’ potential for his purposes and offered to him everything that he’d offered Chris Alan long before. In short order, Lucas had drunk of the Chalice of the Maids and became an extension of Nicholas and Callista in his metaphysical powers. To compensate for Lucas’ loss of Gifting (especially Light), Nicholas obtained for Lucas the best hyper-tech that the Nulls could offer, even the power to send people and things into the quantum vacuum (if a bit messily, by comparison to the power of Light pumped through a Starblade). In no time at all, Lucas Theophilus had traded in his own name and identity and had become Alan Blackstar (or simply Blackstar) the supernaturally virile “sex god” that Chris Alan Starbright would’ve become had he yielded to Nicholas’ temptations as a fifteen-year-old.

One thing Nicholas and Callista gave Blackstar that they hadn’t offered to Chris Alan was the ability to change form, after the manner of Protean Elementals. This enabled Blackstar to please the fantasies of as many different women as possible. In a true coup, Nicholas’ agents had even managed to bring a blood sample from Chris Alan himself – a sample taken by the vampire-like Daimonae during a terrible battle that Chris Alan had fought with them as a Realmwalker, long before. This greatly aided Blackstar’s ability to become like Chris Alan bodily, right down to his genes. Many women found that particular wish fulfillment enthralling, but Blackstar no longer minded; he could use the fact as a sort of dark revenge while potentially corrupting the real Chris Alan’s galactic reputation.

But while Nicholas and Callista encouraged most kinds of adult heterosexual activity among their world’s acolytes and visitors, they had a passionate (if ultimately arbitrary) hatred of non-heterosexual activity. Such deviancy of itself would stand in the way of their own plans for subverting Adami reproduction. Blackstar was an apt pupil of their attitude. He liked the idea of being the forefather of a whole new subset of Adamim, one in which his Black Tribe phenotype, not a White Tribe phenotype like Chris Alan’s, would predominate. It wasn’t long before Nicholas sent Blackstar to the Rim Confederacy to enjoy himself with the local Maids and heterosexual natives – and to start sowing random terror among the “fringies”.

Soon after, things had turned disastrously wrong. Blackstar had barely escaped in time when Chris Alan and his crew broke up a local ring of Maids of the Chalice on Kingleaf. Chris Alan’s ability to heal supernaturally had not been taken away when his Gifts had been redefined, and he’d removed the Maids’ symbiont as easily as the Hooded Man Himself could’ve done.

At that point, Blackstar might’ve chosen prudence and fled the Rim. Chris Alan Starbright could be imitated, but never truly duplicated, and certainly was not to be underestimated. But Blackstar, like Chris Alan, was both clever and resourceful, and as he looked down from that lofty skyscraper in Technopolis, New Attica, he laughed to himself.

< Have you become so overconfident, Undying Singer, > Blackstar thought, < that you feel free to herald your coming wherever you go? How easy it was to learn when you’d visit every world on your tour; after Kingleaf, you had all the local authorities afraid of what you might do if they opposed you. > Blackstar chucked again. < All but the authorities of *this* world, that is. And at the end of the day, I framed you well enough. You’d still be rotting in Talon, thanks to me, if I hadn’t decided to go ahead and keep on doing what *you* should’ve been doing in your own high-mindedness. >

Well, thanks to Blackstar’s action the day of reckoning had been set. Blackstar wasn’t as foolish as to believe that Chris Alan wouldn’t figure out what was going on, or have it revealed to him, one way or another.

< Maybe Nicholas can’t kill him, > Blackstar thought in dark anticipation, < but maybe I can, Blademaster against Blademaster. *Somebody* has to, if I’m going to keep getting what’s coming to me. >