Death of a Spaceman

Death of a Spaceman - a science fiction novel. Space travel opened many opportunities for humans, but the discovery of faster-than-light speed added a new complication for the Human Interest: Relativity. Society reorganized and stratified. Special Agents - pilots who could travel between the segments of the new culture - were employed to advance Human Interest while avoiding war among the stars. Kit became a Special Agent for the Human Interest. Blind, Kit was granted special cybernetic eyes, and he could see much more than the average human. But nothing prepared him for what he witnessed on the planet Kozar. I saw something menacing. It was just a glimpse, but I was sure that I'd seen it. Something sharp and lethal. A dagger lifted into the air. My eyes followed it faithfully, mesmerized. I couldn't turn away. Couldn't blink. Couldn't flinch. Then it descended. In slow motion, the way things happen when time is meaningless, when fate has turned a card, and there is no stopping the inevitable. The dagger struck my chest. Deeply. Except that it wasn't my own vision that I was viewing. My special sight had been hijacked by another's vision. Through someone else's eyes, I suffered the attack and then saw E'Lowa run to the door. E'Lowa had opposed human intervention in Kozarian space and now that the tide of events had turned against him and his faction, he had decided to take matters into his own hands. His opponent K'Mack had won approval to grant humans access to Kozarian space. I finally made it to the victim's room to stop the attack, but I already knew that I was too late. The guard grabbed the Kozarian standing there. The captive made no move to resist. In his right hand, he limply held a bloody dagger. I was ready to strike E'Lowa, the man I had just seen raise a knife and plunge it into my chest. But the Kozarian emerging from the victim's chamber wasn't E'Lowa. It was K'Mack. --- Winner of eLit Bronze Medal for Short Story Fiction.