Test Subjects

by R S Penney

  “Right,” Jack said. “Should have known that wouldn't work.”

  It was a tense few minutes as they gathered Novol and Edan and led them out of the cell. Then Jack was ushered back through the door at gunpoint. He went without protest. Sure enough, the pile of weapons was gone. Well, it wouldn't have done him much good anyway. Back to solitary confinement then.

  Chapter 20

  The elevator doors parted to reveal a sub-basement corridor bathed in the artificial glow of bright ceiling lights. The air down here was always a little stale. Or maybe that was just her imagination.

  Anna stepped out in beige pants and a red t-shirt, her white-tipped hair done up in a nubby little ponytail. The duffel bag she wore slung over one shoulder was packed with a week's worth of clothing and some other supplies. There was no way to tell how long it would take to find Jack, but she had no intention of quitting until her boyfriend was back in her arms again.

  At the end of the corridor, she found a fatigued Cassi Seyrus blocking the doors to the SlipGate Chamber. The other woman wore gray pants and a light brown jacket, and she carried a bag of her own.

  Tilting her head to one side, Anna raised an eyebrow. “Really?” she asked. “Cassi, this mission is going to be dangerous, and there's a good chance I'll be going up against enemies we don't know how to fight.”

  “All the more reason to bring me.”

  “I appreciate your desire to help-”

  Cassiara set her jaw and stared Anna down with violet eyes that almost seemed to blaze with rage. “He's my partner,” she insisted. “Larani assigned me to him because she knew that man needs someone to watch his back.”

  Anna pursed her lips and held the other woman's gaze, then nodded once in assent. “Okay,” she said. “But if we end up fighting genetically-engineered mutants that like to snack on Justice Keepers, I reserve the right to say 'I told you so.' ”

  The SlipGate chamber was a room of cream-coloured walls with no fixtures of any kind except a horseshoe control panel positioned directly in front of the gleaming metal triangle. If the air had been stuffy before, it was downright stale in here. You might not think so, given that this was technically a transit hub, but few people Slipped directly into Justice Keeper Headquarters.

  She spread her hands on the console and verified that the Gate was indeed locked, barring incoming travelers. A quick flick of her fingers, and she placed a call to the LMS Endeavour. It took a moment for the ship's captain to answer. “Operative Lenai,” he said. “I've been expecting you.”

  “Slight change of plans, Captain,” Anna replied. “I'll be bringing a second Justice Keeper along with me.”

  The brief silence on the line made her fear that perhaps she was being too much of an imposition on this man and his crew. Their agreement was that he would take Anna, but she had said nothing about Cassi. “That's fine with me,” Captain Desarin said. “But you'll have to share quarters.”

  Anna looked toward Cassi, who was leaning against a nearby wall and inspecting the nails of her closed fist. “Fine by me,” she muttered. “Let's just get going.”

  “That's an affirmative, Captain,” Anna said.

  “Excellent. Our Gate is open. Feel free to come aboard.”

  It took less than thirty seconds to unlock their Gate and program it to reseal itself once they were through. She called up a map of the entire planet-wide network, selecting the Endeavour as her destination. “Okay,” Anna said. “Let's go.”

  She and Cassiara moved to stand side-by-side in front of the Gate, both with stiff posture, eyes fixed directly ahead. The warp bubble formed around them with a low hum, distorting everything so that the room appeared to be a cream-coloured haze.

  They were yanked forward through a dark tunnel that seemed to stretch to infinity and then pulled to a stop in another room with gray walls and the blurry figure of a man in a black uniform standing before them.

  When the bubble popped with a slight whooshing sound, Anna had a good view of Captain Morris Desarin. In person, he was even taller and more imposing. His handsome face was blemished only by a very small scar on his cheek, and that thick golden beard had flecks of silver that had not been visible in the holographic transmission.

  The gray uniform fit him well: unrelieved black from shoes to shoulders with six gray bands on the cuff of each sleeve to denote his rank and a silver captain's star on each side of his collar. “Operative Lenai,” he said with a nod. “And this is…”

  Cassi stepped forward to peer up at a man twice her size. “Special Agent Seyrus,” she said. “I'm Agent Hunter's partner.”

  “Nisalika threnadaline,” Desarin replied in what Anna assumed was Lovalin. It was an archaic language from Leyria's eastern continent, one she did not speak. Perhaps a greeting of some kind.

  The smile that grew on Cassi's face suggested that it might have been an attempt at flirting. She offered a shallow bow in response. “Aliastra…And I'm impressed. Not many people speak the old tongue.”

  “Well, I took a guess,” the captain murmured. With a sudden shake, he came back to himself and blinked at them. “We'll be getting underway in the next half hour. Would you care to observe from the bridge?”

  “Thank you,” Anna said.

  The hallway outside the ship's SlipGate chamber was lined with silver bulkheads that seemed to shimmer under the glare of ceiling lights that were designed to imitate the noonday sun. Or close to it. The light levels on a starship varied with the time of day. And though it was evening for Anna, this crew was on a different schedule.

  Captain Desarin walked ahead of them at a very brisk pace, glancing back over his shoulder. “It should take about twenty-eight hours to reach the Oniara System,” he said. “But I want to rendezvous with the Adanius and the Vasane. We just don't know what we might find waiting for us; I'd rather be prepared.”

  A frown tightened Anna's mouth, but she nodded her agreement. “Danger, danger all around,” she muttered. “Do we have any data that might give us an inkling of what to expect?”

  “I'm afraid not.”

  “Damn.”

  The captain had his back turned as he grunted and said, “I'm not going to lie to you, Operative Lenai; if that battlecruiser has left the Oniara System, it will be extremely hard to track them.”

  Grinding her teeth, Anna shut her eyes and drew in a breath. “I know…” Her voice grated in her own ears. “But I have to do something, and I'll take slim hope over no hope any day.”

  An elevator ride took them up two decks to another hallway that looked identical to the last one. For a little while, they walked in silence, Captain Desarin plodding along in front of them while Cassi checked something on her multi-tool.

  He stopped abruptly near a door on Anna's left. “Your quarters,” he said, turning around to face them, nodding to each woman in turn. “I'll leave you to get settled in. We depart in roughly twenty minutes; you can join me on the bridge if you like.”

  Anna favoured him with a smile, then lowered her eyes. “Thank you,” she said in a soft voice. “For everything you've done, Captain. This is a kindness that I'll never be able to repay.”

  “It's not just kindness, Operative Lenai,” Desarin explained. “Military ships aren't generally dispatched as a personal favour. However, the Justice Keepers are one of our greatest weapons, and if a potential enemy has gotten their hands on one, I would rather not give them the chance to gather any valuable intel. The admiralty agrees, and so this mission was approved.”

  Anna's first instinct was to object; she took personal offense at being referred to as a weapon, but Desarin had gone out of his way to accommodate them, and this was his ship. Starting an argument with the man was not a good idea.

  It took some effort to suppress the desire to laugh, and the smile returned without her permission. Sometimes, she could rein in her impulsive side. Sometimes. When she had enough on the line. “Thank you again,” Anna said. “We'll join you shortly.”

  “Washrooms a
nd vibe showers are that way,” Desarin said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Two sections down, take the corridor on your right. I'll see you on the bridge.” With that, he left them to explore their quarters.

  Double doors opened into a cramped sitting room with two couches on either side of a duroplastic table and a desk along the wall to her left. To her right, an open doorway led to an even smaller space with a narrow bed on each wall and an aisle between them just wide enough for a single person to walk unencumbered.

  Tossing her duffel bag to the floor, Cassi plopped down on one of the couches and frowned thoughtfully. Anna was a little more fastidious, choosing to slide her bag under one of the beds. “What did he say to you?” she asked, returning to the sitting room.

  Cassi looked at her, and then her face lit up with a smile, her cheeks turning several shades of red. “Just a standard 'I welcome you to my home,' ” she answered. “'But he used a form that implied I was his wife. I'm sure it was an accident.”

  “Probably.”

  “Shall we go topside?”

  Anna shrugged. “No rest for the wicked. Allons-y.” When Cassi responded to that with a puzzled frown, she added, “It's an Earth language. Never mind. Let's go.”

  Melissa grunted as she slid her trowel into the dirt. Not from exertion – Enhanced strength made it feel like scooping up butter with a spoon – but it was a habit. The purple flower that she planted settled nicely into the hole she had dug, alongside some yellow tulips that her father had started growing before his injury.

  Squatting at the edge of the garden in blue jeans and a yellow halter-top, her dark hair pulled back in a bun, Melissa poked the soil with her trowel. “There we go,” she said, standing up. “All done.”

  The purple flower was called a selinthia, a blossom native to this world. After ten thousand years apart, the Leyrians had developed slightly different agriculture from their Earth cousins. Certain staples were fairly common throughout the galaxy: carrots, apples, potatoes. But there were variations.

  This plant shared a genetic ancestor with Earth's alpine betony, but it had only three wider petals that seemed to droop just a little bit. Positioned among the yellow tulips, the selinthia added a lovely splash of colour to the garden.

  Melissa stood over it with hands on her hips, nodding with satisfaction. “Very nice, if I do say so myself.” The swell of emotion from Ilia told her that her symbiont agreed. For some reason, Ilia loved flowers. You wouldn't think a Nassai could have a sense of aesthetics, especially not one that had once Bonded Jena Morane, but there it was.

  Melissa sighed.

  Her mind painted the image of the back door opening and Harry stepping out onto the patio. Her father was in shorts and flip-flops – which seemed entirely out of character for him – but he still managed to look stiff. “Picking up where I left off, I see.”

  “I thought the tulips could use some new friends.”

  Harry stepped up beside her with his hands in his pockets, frowning as he inspected her work. “It looks nice,” he said at last. “I didn't know you had an interest in gardening.”

  “I saw these flowers outside a restaurant in the square,” Melissa explained. “They looked so gorgeous, I wanted some for our backyard.”

  “How was your date with Aiden?”

  The unexpected question made Melissa's face grow warm, and she was suddenly very much aware of sweat on her brow. “Not so great.” Once, she would have had a hard time opening up to her father, but that had changed. “He's starting to worry me, Dad.”

  “Oh?”

  Once again, Melissa dropped to a crouch and picked up the trowel. She used it to smooth the soil around the newly-planted selinthia. Not because she thought it necessary, but her nervous energy had to go somewhere. “He's obsessed with proving himself to the Justice Keepers. He spends days shut up in his room, going over every last note he took in class.”

  Harry squatted at her side with hands on his knees, nodding once in response to her answer. “I remember my college days,” he mumbled. “There were times when I hid away in my dorm room with textbooks scattered on the floor.”

  Melissa shut her eyes tight, stiffening as she exhaled, then shook her head. “This is different,” she insisted. “When I went to see him last week, he was so strung out. And the other night, he seemed a little better…at first…”

  “But?”

  “Let's just say Aiden is having trouble with the phrase 'No means no.' ”

  Harry looked at her with a fierce-eyed squint. “Did he-”

  “No!” Melissa said before he could finish that question.“No, nothing like that. It's just…He seemed to think that sex would help him unwind, and you know my position on premarital intimacy.”

  “What am I gonna do, Dad?” she whimpered. “If Aiden keeps going like this, the Nassai will reject him, and I don't want to see what will happen after that.”

  “That's not your problem, sweetheart.” It was simple advice, offered in that kindly tone of voice her father so often used. “Maybe you need to break it off.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Just don't let him take advantage of you.”

  Melissa stood up, turning her back on her father and pacing a line at the edge of the garden. She crossed her arms and shivered despite the warmth of the sun. “Dad, there is something else I wanted to talk about.”

  Harry was crouching in the grass with an elbow on his knee, his chin resting on the knuckles of one fist. “What is it?” It was clear from that question that he was expecting to hear something he wouldn't like.

  Melissa turned.

  Her father looked up with that cop stare, his eyebrows slowly climbing. “What is it?” This time, he sounded truly worried. “Melissa, if something's wrong, I can't help you unless I know-”

  “The N'Jal.”

  “What about it?”

  “I still have it, Dad,” she explained. “I haven't given it back to Larani…Because I think it belongs with you.”

  With a heavy sigh, Harry stood up and strode toward her. “Melissa, we've been over this.” He reached out and set his hands on her shoulders. The intensity in his gaze made her flinch. “I'm putting that life behind me.”

  “I don't think you get that option.”

  “Oh?” he said, raising one dark eyebrow. “I'm not free to make my own decisions? Is that what you're saying?”

  Irritation spiked within her, and it took a moment for her to realize it was because Harry sounded like a teenager. In fact, this argument could have been the mirror image of several they had had when he opposed Melissa's decision to become a Justice Keeper. “It isn't that,” she said. “And you know it's not that.”

  Melissa stepped out of his embrace, steeled her nerves and spoke the words that she expected to start a fight. “Dad…You are a part of this.” Once that first bit was out, it was easier to keep going. “I believe that you have the N'Jal for a reason.”

  “And what reason is that?”

  “I don't know!” Melissa snapped. “I don't have all the answers, but I have faith that what we're doing here is important.”

  Her father just stood there with a saddened expression, his attention focused on the grass under his feet. “I don't,” he said at last. “Melissa, I've never been a man of faith. I'm sorry, but that's not enough for me.”

  He turned around and started back toward the house, pausing just before he stepped onto the patio. “I love you, kiddo.” It was delivered with such gentleness that she almost started crying. “But I have two daughters who need me, and I can't keep putting my own life in danger.”

  When she stepped into the detention area, Keli was surprised to find Rajel as one of the three guards behind the desk. The newest addition to Anna's team stood casually with a hand on his belly, his sunglasses reflecting the light. The other two were Keepers that she did not know.

  Rajel let his weight fall against the wall, crossed his arms and sniffed at her arrival. “You want to see the telepath?” It
wasn't a question so much as a condemnation. This fool of a man was going to drive her insane.

  Keli stood before him with hands clasped and head bowed. Sometimes, effecting humility was the best way to get what you needed. This was especially true when people feared your natural abilities. “I'm supposed to interrogate him.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  The woman who stood beside him – a lovely young lady with a pointed chin and honey-coloured hair that she wore in a long ponytail – gave Rajel an exasperated glare. “She is cleared to come through.”

  A grunt was Rajel's only answer to that, but he stepped aside and gestured to the door that led to the cell-block. Keli gave herself a moment to calm her nerves. This man would not get under her skin.

  “Thank you,” Keli said, nodding to him. The words were stiff, but she forestalled any further interaction by striding forward, nearly crashing through the doors when they couldn't slide apart fast enough.

  The cell-block was just as she remembered it: a long corridor with metal doors on each side, all shut tight. Her last visit to this place had been at Tanaben's request. She still remembered the brief peek she had into Isara's mind, and it made her cringe. She needed a minute to put those thoughts out of her head.

  When the door opened behind her, she nearly jumped. Keli was not used to being startled, and her slight embarrassment became humiliation when she realized that Rajel was the one who had come through. “I'm sorry,” he said before she could get one word out. “I just talked to Jon Andalon, and he confirmed your story.”

  Keli turned gracefully on the spot, looked up and held the man's gaze. “You didn't believe me?” she asked, her eyebrows rising. “One wonders what I would have to do to gain your trust, Operative Aydrius.”

  His face went red, and he cleared his throat. “I know.” It seemed as if the words had been dragged out of him. “Everyone tells me that I give you too much of a hard time, but I am trying. Jon wants me to accompany you.”