Kira's dream keeps coming back. Is it a warning? All she knows is that her destiny lies intertwined with the prison planet. Will Chavez understand? It is six hours away from rendezvousing with Dr. Winters, who will attempt to help Kira with her problems. But Captain Maddeson is on an intercept course to capture them and return them to the warden. Will they escape? Dr. Winters has diagnosed Kira with the Chameleon Effect and in an attempt to halt its progress, he will use Chavez's DNA. But Kira has other plans and escapes off Chavez's ship, without a word to anyone.
Chavez couldn’t stop thinking about Kira as he plotted
his course to Prison Planet 452. He finally satisfied his curiosity by deciding
to review her file again. He’d read through all the essential parts and now he
wanted to know everything he could find about her. Although he had perused the
file before, he hoped there was something that he’d missed.
“Computer, open the file on Kira Rostropov.”
“Searching.”
A few seconds later, her entire file
flashed onscreen, starting with a recent visual of her at her home on Vega
Minor. She was standing next to the family swimming pool, dressed in a white
cover-up, with her thick, curly hair piled on top of her head. What Chavez
noticed most about the image was the smile that adorned her face. It lit up her
entire face and sent out a non-verbal message of happiness. Chavez
automatically smiled back as he felt a yearning for her in his gut. He wished
that she was able to smile like that now, but he’d only seen hints of it from
her. He frowned at the thought he suddenly had, and decided to follow through
on it.
“Computer, shown me Kira’s mother and her history.”
Chavez searched through her history and found what he was looking for. Kira’s
mother was the first wife of Ambassador Rostropov and was descended from a line
of seer’s that were from the planet Darius. They had mental powers that were
unequal to no other in this part of the galaxy. She died after giving birth to
two female children. If Kira had even part of the powers her mother had, what
would the Chameleon Effect do to her and how much power would it give her? He
wondered if the warden had figured this out and that was why she was targeted.
But unless they had a way of controlling her, the power would be useless.
Chavez pulled up the file on Ambassador Rostropov’s
second wife. She was his current wife, who was freed from slavery by the
Ambassador. She had one child who followed her into slavery, but had become
lost when he or she was thirteen.
Chavez reminisced about his own mother who had worked
so hard to protect him while they were bound in slavery. But it was at thirteen
when he met the warden, who gave him his lasting disfigurements and sent his
mother away to the slave auctions. The last word he had received about his
mother was that she had died under someone’s hand. Chavez vowed he would make
the warden pay for his cruelty not only to him, but to his mother. He had
caused her to work herself to death in slavery.
Chavez continued to dig through the family history
until he came to the line about a younger sister that had been born three years
after Kira, and then kidnapped at age 13. She was never found and although they
continued to look for her, the family rarely mentioned her because of the pain
it caused their father. But Chavez was curious. Why had Kira insisted that she
had to get back to Planet 452 or she
would die? She only knew bits and pieces about the Chameleon Effect, nor did
she know what happened to her while she was there. Or did she? She was so
insistent about going back, that she actually commandeered a shuttle and headed
off into space, not knowing which way to go. Were the two incidents related
somehow? The answers lie on the prison planet amidst a crowd of greedy,
backbiting individuals who would sell their own mother for a credit. Chavez
knew he needed to go there to get the answers he was searching for. He needed to
find out what had happened to Kira.
Lots of little, tantalizing bits and pieces to the puzzle revealed here. It'll be interesting to see it all assembled!
ReplyDeleteAs a side note... it's fascinating yet disconcerting to imagine a future where slavery is commonplace! It's makes one think...