Unholy Star, Beyond Faith

"He has to go"

Sen sat tucked into one of the many bay windows found in one of the many hallways in the floating platform daydreaming out over the densly forested horizon of the planet Skye.

It had been two days since the incident on the observation deck, and in that time, Sen had been planning. She was working through the several sequences of possible events that would bring about her goal: the removal of her father's barrier to her accepting the opportunity to study at Qura Amara.

At the root of the problem was that her father had totally underestimated her, not knowing that her acceptance to the Ethnaa Aashar as one of the Twelve was nothing more than a means to an end for her. What Sen needed was the unbridled access to information that being a student of the Learned would bring. The Twelve had, by the right of law, access to any information that would support their learning. As Ethnaa Aashar, you had twelve years to master your chosen fields of study and to build a communal theory that would progress human civilisation. Occasionally, after twelve years of dedicated study and, if their communal theory was deemed worthy, one of the Twelve could be named an heir apparent and win a lifetime seat on the panel of the Learned, but only after one of the existing Learned died.

If she could get in, Sen would have twelve years under the radar to discover the meaning of the messages that she had been receiving in her dreams. Dreams that had been visiting her young mind for as long as she could remember. In fact, it was her dreams that showed her the way, showed her the importance of being one of the Twelve, even though it would mean that she would lose all of her gefresh entitlements so that she could live for twelve years as a twelve-year-old child.

She hated that her father had taken opposition to her plans. The situation made worse considering that the only way forward was to remove him as an obstacle. If only I could tell Father the real reason, about the dreams, perhaps then he would understand how important this is to me, too everyone, she thought. But, no, Lynx is as stubborn and righteous as he was loving, like her dreams said, he had to go.

Once Father was out of the way, she considered it would be a breeze to convince her mother to allow her to go on.

She knew that any way forward would involve blood. The options she saw in her imagination varied from the savage brutal of shuttle accident to subtle application of poison.

"What is yer doing, Salty gal?"

"Huh?" Sen looked up from her daydream position in the window bay to see her big sister Wattle dropped down beside her forcing her feet up to make room.

As intelligent as Sen was, she couldn't recall her exact number of brothers and sisters. She figured that she had well over seventy living throughout the Kingdom. Many of her siblings were into their third or fourth genetic refresh and some of her half-brothers and sisters were even in their sixth stage of gefresh, these older siblings had long ago moved on from the platform, and many had added branches to the family tree themselves starting new platforms in remote star systems. Those brothers and sistsers that still resided on the platform were typically under thirty-two years old, an age from which gefresh was accessible. Also, after thirty-two, Skyeans are permitted to travel beyond their home star system. Sen lived with her two brothers and three sisters on the platform, along with eight children from their extended family and a few children on exchange from allied families.

Of all her siblings, Sea Buck who was in his late one hundreds was her favorite, he was super smart like her and far too funny.  But Sea buck had disappeared for over a year with no one knowing is whereabouts. Without Sea buck, Wattle kept her feet on the ground. Sen loved her.

A year older than Sen, Wattle was somewhat smart as was to be expected by the nature of their family's level three genetic marker -- but unlike Sen, Wattle or Acacia, as was her formal name, was extraordinarily beautiful and charismatic; a true natural and much like their mother in these qualities. It would be easy for Sen to have been jealous of her sister's looks and personality, but in a way she thought that if anyone was going to be perfect it should be Wattle.

"I said, What. Are. You. Doing. Salty!?"

"Oh. Nothing much." replied Sen breaking out of her daze, "Just working out how I can join the Ethnaa Aashar."

"Yeah, must be a real pain that Da' is so against it. I honestly don't think he'll be changing his mind."

"I know. But he's right, even without the Ethnaa Aashar, I'm still good enough to do something worthwhile." She had to change the subject away from her dark plans; she didn't want to give Wattle any clues as what she was going to do to their father, "Hey, just let me know if you need any pax. I just made a mint last night on the Outer Hebrides exchange by including a whole heap of Second phase pax. I'll be able to tripple the earnings within a week or two."

"Really now? smarty pants!" exclaimed Acacia playfully, "And how did you manage that considering that you need to be thirty-two to transact and without your own trading account? Or shouldn't I ask?"

"Oh yes, ask away." She didn't keep secrets from Wattle, who promised not to tell anybody about Sen's activities, she, like everybody else, didn't know how she was able to 'make things happen'. Sen explained, "You see, I might not look like it, but I'm the auger director of an out-of-world corporation. Shine-x it's called, I hijacked an inbound thread from their trading routine; played the market for a while; created a couple of phantom accounts for me to hide my pax in, before topping up their regular accounts.

"So even though the fat cats in the company will know they've been used, they won't want to ask any questions. They'll just keep the extra pax I give 'em!

"So you're cheating the markets and sharing the profit with the company that you're using?" confirmed Wattle.

"Yes. But, no. I don't cheat the markets."

"Really?"

"Well, okay. I cheat a little bit." Send confessed with a grin.

"You, Senniella Atriplex are pure evil!" Acacia giggled.

Sen didn't find her sister's jest funny. If anything could make her change her plans it was her sister's strong love for their father, "Don't call me evil." Even though I am, she added in thought to herself.

"Okay, not evil then, just simply, darkly amazing!"

The compliment put a crooked smile on Senniella's freckled face and, just for an instant, she thought of cancelling her plans for their father, just to save her sister pain.