Chapter Thirty-One
A secret within a secret. This is the most difficult to unravel.
—Anonymous
At the conclusion of the funeral, the Nehr brothers took a shuttle to the nearest pod station, and from there caught a podship to Timian One, the breathtaking capital world of the Merchant Prince Alliance.
Now, as the pair rode a ground-jet back to the headquarters of Nehrcom Industries, Giovanni Nehr considered how to say something important. He was slumped into one of the soft, deep seats in the passenger cabin, while Jacopo sat across from him, studying an electronic copy of the quasi-religious Scienscroll.
The Great Inventor, Gio thought bitterly. It was a title commonly applied to his graying older brother, for developing the nehrcom cross-galaxy transceiver.
His big secret.
Gio touched a combination of toggles on a small vending machine between the seats, causing the Hibbil device to manufacture a pill according to his specifications. A bright red capsule tumbled into a receptacle. With a shaking hand he grabbed the narcotic and gulped it, and seconds later felt it take effect on his mind. He inhaled several deep breaths, and tried to maintain control over his emotions. The drug only helped a little, but he didn’t want to consume more right away, since he had such a sensitive constitution.
For the past two generations, secrets had been the economic life blood of the Nehr family. His parents had made a fortune by sending hunters out into the galaxy to capture Mutatis, which were subsequently used—under extreme secrecy—as biological factories, processing foreign substances in their bodies and metamorphosing them into hallucinogenic drugs.
On Forzin, a remote moon of the Canopa Star System, the family had kept Mutatis penned up like farm animals for the production of the drugs. The prisoners were force fed carefully-selected substances such as ravenflower hips, bacchanal barley, and toxilia, powerful agents that overwhelmed Mutati immune systems and tapped into their shapeshifting cores. In this manner the transformative powers of the Mutatis were rerouted, causing the creatures to change the extrinsic substances into exotic hallucinogens instead of metamorphosing their own flesh.
Each captive Mutati created a different narcotic, which was extracted from his blood. The Nehrs called their products “powerdrugs,” since the procedure always resulted in something highly potent. The wide variation and unpredictability made the substances extremely exciting … and expensive.
The drugs, as individual as each Mutati, all bore letter and numerical code names, from P-1 through P-1725 … meaning that a total of one thousand, seven hundred twenty-five of the creatures had been captured and forced to produce. Some of the narcotics were more popular than others, such as P-918, which simulated Human flight when the user took it. But when the Mutati producing that variation finally died, the drug was gone forever … with the exception of any that might have been stockpiled. Like rare vintages of wine, preferred varieties went up in value, and people could make money by trading them on galactic commodities markets.
The business all came to a sudden, violent end when the last Mutati broke free, killed Gio’s parents, and destroyed the manufactory. Jacopo had been fifteen at the time, and Gio barely three.
As Gio grew up he followed a different course from his famous sibling, and became something of a ne’er-do-well’, failing in a number of risky business ventures. Two years ago, Jacopo rescued him from a bad drug overdose and gave him a job in administration with Nehrcom Industries.
Gio, however, was less than appreciative, as he did not like Jacopo’s condescending attitude toward him. The younger Nehr also felt extreme jealousy toward his brother … and while he fought to suppress it, he rarely succeeded. Like a toxic leak that could not be sealed, the feelings continued to seep into his mind, poisoning it.
Although the pair resembled one another in their chiseled facial features, the similarity ended there. Gio was taller and heavier, with a muscular physique that he had developed with sterisone drugs and regular visits to Hibbil body-enhancement facilities. If he wanted to, he could break his brother’s body in half with his bare hands, and sometimes thought about doing exactly that. Jacopo often wore a reserve military officer’s uniform, but that was just for show; he was not tough at all.
Across the passenger cabin, Jacopo continued to read his electronic copy of the Scienscroll.
Gio glared at him and thought, smugly, I have secrets too, Big Brother. And you’re not going to like them. He bit his lower lip. OK, let’s start with this one.
In the most pleasant of tones, Gio announced, “I will be resigning soon.”
The great man looked up from his reading and lifted an eyebrow in surprise, but only a little. “To do what?”
“I don’t know. I need to try something new.”
Jacopo showed little reaction. It was exactly as Gio expected, and made him doubly glad that he was about to steal something important—the secret of his brother’s nehrcom transceiver. For some unknown reason, Jacopo fully trusted only one person, his own daughter Nirella, and had given her responsibility for protecting information about the invention.
But Nirella had made a mistake, and her opportunistic uncle was about to capitalize upon it.