Shadows of the Void Books 1 - 10

Generation-5

RETIRING TO HIS CABIN after his duties were complete was almost Master Akabe Loba’s favorite time of day, excepting only what came after. He closed his cabin door, set his corridor-side panel to read Do Not Disturb and shrugged off his jacket, dropping it on the floor as he went to his closet. From the top shelf he took a cylindrical container. He popped off the lid and slid out a roll of very old paper, though it might have been another material such as parchment or vellum. Loba was no expert on such things. He sometimes wondered if he’d been duped into paying an exorbitant sum by the vendor, but it didn’t matter. If the document was fake, it was convincing to him, and he enjoyed the ancient feel and look of the thing. Most importantly, he had found it to be accurate.

His ritual had been the same as far back as he could remember, though if the truth be told, his memory wasn’t as good as it had once been. He should cut down on his habit, he knew, but not today. He would start tomorrow, or next week, when they had cataloged this latest planet, and he could relax a little. Damn that Harrington for causing a delay. He found himself beginning to gasp, and he pushed the memory of the defiant security officer from his mind.

Loba undid and dropped his pants. Stepping out of them, he took two paperweights from the table. One was a fist-sized iridescent crystal he’d picked up from the desert floor of a long-forgotten planet in the days when he’d been working his way up the ranks. The other was a long block of polished ebony: wood of a now-extinct Earth tree. Unfurling the document on the floor, he placed the crystal on one end, then unrolled the rest of the scroll to its full extent before securing the other end with the wooden block.

Every day the same.

Traced in faded ink on the sheet was the figure of a naked man. His arms and legs were outstretched, and his blank eyes were open. Wavy hair surrounded his head like a halo. The figure itself was unimportant to Loba; it was the lines that ran through his body, from his head and spine to his fingertips and toes, that were the focus of his interest. They were meridians: energy paths, where the greatest pain—and pleasure—could be felt.

He ran a fingertip down a line that skirted the groin and followed through to the thigh and leg. It was the meridian he had used for yesterday’s dose. To achieve the greatest effect from his drug of choice, Loba had to apply the doses at each point along the meridians according to a strict rota. Yesterday’s dose had contacted a point at the left-hand side of his groin. Today, he would administer it fifteen centimeters below, in the thigh. Loba relied on memory alone for the order of the dosing points. If any record of his habit were found, it would be professional suicide. This was why he possessed only a physical document to guide him, a document that could be purged into space in less than a minute. Digital information was much more difficult to erase.

Drug abuse had impacted Loba’s functional ability in many areas of his life, but in the matter of remembering the dose position order, his recall was excellent.

He pressed an invisible button on the ebony paperweight. As the block of wood popped open, his breathing quickened. In the lead-lined center of the block was a clear glass vial of carmine liquid. Mythranil. Exquisite purveyor of bliss. Lying next to the vial were a set of fine, hollow needles. Loba could hear himself panting.

Soon, soon.

He removed the vial and a needle and went to the sterilization unit in his bathroom, where he placed the needle in the unit and let it sit for thirty seconds. His hand trembled as he retrieved it.

Only a minute to wait.

He sat on his bunk and removed the stopper from the vial. After inserting the needle in the liquid, he gently sucked at the other end, careful not to draw the mythranil into his mouth. Ingestion destroyed the active ingredients of the drug, and each drop was a week’s wages. He slipped the needle from his mouth and quickly placed his thumb over the hole to prevent the liquid from dripping out. Loba took a last look at the image of the spread-eagled man, lay down on his bunk and felt down from the sore spot on his groin to a point roughly fifteen centimeters below.

Just a few seconds now.

Joy suffused Loba as he thrust the needle home, grinning through the pain. His aim was true. He’d hit the meridian line spot on, and ecstasy flowed through him. All cares, worries, and concerns of reality melted away, and he sank into a blissful daze.

***