by R S Penney
Isara planted fists on her hips and stood over him, smiling from within the darkness of that hood. “Now you are to step aside for a time,” she said. “You've presented us with a unique opportunity.”
“To do what?”
“That is not your concern.”
Isara flowed around him to stand before Valeth, her soft laughter filling the room and sending chills down Leo's spine. “I will be assuming control of this operation for the time being,” she said. “We have much to do.”
Chapter 17
A fat cloud drifted in front of the sun, its edge suddenly blazing with silver light. But for all its glory, it left this grassy hilltop on the outskirts of Syral in gloom. A fitting place for a funeral.
Perhaps a hundred people stood on that hilltop, forming a semi-circle around a man in white robes who stood behind a freshly-planted sapling. He was pale with a thin ring of gray hair around the back of his head and glasses on his face. “We have come together today to honour Tanaben Loranai,” he began. “I know that Tanaben was not religious, but at the request of his parents, Maresia and Voral, I will say a few words.”
It was killing Jack to be here; his shame was eating away at him, but that was no excuse to miss a dear friend's funeral. He just prayed that no one in Ben's family tried to talk to him before he slipped away.
White pants and a short-sleeved, button-up shirt were his garments as he stood on this hill with the wind blasting him. His face contorted as he listened to the prayer. This was his fault.
Reverend Kabareth turned his face up to the heavens, his mouth open in exaltation. “Dear Companion,” he began. “We ask that you smile on your servant Tanaben. Though he did not serve you in name, he did so in deed.”
The reverend laid hands on the young willow sapling and stepped forward, his head drooping as if from fatigue. “We offer this symbol of new life,” he said. “In memory of our departed friend and in honour of the promise of life everlasting.”
Jack closed his eyes, breathing deeply, letting the man's words wash over him. Are you still out there, guy? he thought at his friend. Smiling down on us…or maybe snarling, in my case?
He frowned, then quickly shook his head. Don't be an idiot, Hunter, he chastised himself. If there was any kind of loving god out there, the world wouldn't be such a mess. He or she wouldn't allow…this!
Several dozen people in white shuffled uncomfortably, many standing with eyes closed or murmuring to themselves. Most were Ben's family, but he saw a few who were undoubtedly LIS agents. That was good. It seemed many of Ben's former colleagues still respected him even after his conviction.
“Holy Companion,” the reverend went on. “We ask that you show Tanaben the mercy so often denied to us in life, that you shelter him and keep him and soothe away his pain. We ask this in the name of your most cherished daughter, Layat.”
The reverend squatted down and picked up a watering pale that he had left in the grass, then rose and poured a steady stream of droplets down on the sapling. “We nourish this tree with the water you have given us, Dear Companion,” he said. “With the light of your sun that shines down upon us.”
In the back of Jack's mind, Summer was angry with him. He understood why, but he couldn't do much to change it. This was the opposite of what she had wanted. She had told him to work through his guilt, not wallow in it.
Anna came up beside him.
In a short-sleeved white dress, she stood next to him with her eyes downcast, her face tight with restrained emotion. Her kindness was still a source of confusion to Jack. He had expected condemnation.
She took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, almost as if she could sense what he was thinking. Jack wasn't sure he wanted her to know what he was thinking. Anna would probably agree with Summer.
He saw Keli a little ways off, standing with hands behind her back and facing the sapling with the solemn dignity of a soldier who had lost a comrade. The telepath either didn't notice his attention or didn't care.
She must have liked Ben.
With a forced smile, the reverend spread his arms wide and offered a respectful bow. “Our service is ended,” he said. “You may go in peace.”
Anna turned to him, stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. “I'll give you a few moments.” Before he could reply, she turned her back and started down the hillside, leaving him alone with the symbol of his friend's passing.
People in white flowed around him, many talking softly with each other; some were sniffling, others outright crying. His heart broke for them. The urge to berate himself for his failure was hard to resist, but he didn't need more of Summer's anger.
“Agent Hunter?”
In his mind's eye, a blurry figure came toward him, and he turned to see a woman with Asian features and short gray hair hobbling through the grass. Ben's mother. “I was hoping to talk to you for a moment,” she said. “My son always said that you were one of the most amazing people he ever met. You were close?”
Jack smiled, his face suddenly on fire, and bowed his head to her. “We were,” he said, nodding once. “I met your son almost three years ago, on a mission to infiltrate a smuggling ring.”
She looked up at him with dark eyes that glistened, blinking to hold back her tears. “Tanaben often said that you were one of the few Justice Keepers he truly admired. Did he ever tell you that?”
“No, ma'am.”
“Well, you should know.”
“Thank you.”
Clasping hands together behind herself, the woman turned her head to study the young willow tree. “I'm told you were with him when he died,” she murmured. “May I ask a question?”
“Of course,” Jack answered, though he wasn't sure he wanted to give much detail about Ben's final moments. The last thing that a grieving mother needed was a gruesome depiction of her son's death.
“Were you still close?”
Jack crossed his arms, hunching over as he exhaled slowly. “The truth, Ms. Viala, is that I hadn't seen Ben much in those last few weeks.” It probably wasn't what she wanted to hear, but it was the truth. “Your son was angry with us.”
“It seemed he was angry with everyone.”
Chewing on his lip, Jack shut his eyes and nodded to her. “I would agree with that,” he replied in a breathy whisper. “I wish I could say that I knew what Ben was feeling in his last few days, but…”
“He kept you at arm's length.”
“Yes.”
Ms. Viala frowned, then reached up to scrub at her eyes with the back of one hand. “As he did with all of us,” she said. “Thank you, Agent Hunter, for everything you did for my son.”
“I wish I could have done more.”
“As do I,” she said softly. “As do I.”
The SlipGate bubble came to a stop in a room with cream-coloured walls and white floor tiles. Its rippling surface seemed to pulsate for a moment, blurring her view of the horseshoe-shaped console beyond, before it popped.
Melissa stood at her side in white pants and a sleeveless top, black hair done up in a bun. “So, what's our next move?” she asked. “Not to sound bleak, but it seems like Leo is consistently outwitting our best plans.”
Anna shut her eyes, breathing deeply through her nose, then nodded her reluctant agreement. “You're not wrong,” she said. “Our next move is to start asking the technical questions. How is he getting around? Where is he getting his weapons?”
She strode across the room.
Stepping behind the console, she spread her hands across its surface and input her access code. A few quick taps brought up the settings menu, and then she locked the Gate again. It wouldn't do to have uninvited guests Slipping directly into the basement of the Denabrian Keeper office.
She had opened the Gate remotely with her multi-tool. Her mind was just crackling with ideas, and she didn't want to ride the subway for the ten minutes that it would take to travel here from the Denabrian SlipGate terminal. Attending her friend's funeral left her feeling v
ery motivated. “Come on,” Anna said.
Outside, they found a long corridor with gray walls and no windows, a hallway so empty, her footsteps seemed to echo. Melissa was tense, breathing audibly as she stared at her own shoes. “I remember how nervous everyone was when Leo came to Ottawa,” she said. “We barely stopped him then.”
Anna set her jaw, then shook her head forcefully. “Despair isn't going to do anyone any good,” she chided. “Right now, Jack needs us more than he's ever needed anyone; so we're gonna come through.”
At the end of the hallway, she found an elevator that she summoned with a quick tap of the button. The doors slid apart, and she stepped inside, Melissa following with a few muffled complaints.
They stood side by side while the elevator rose.
Melissa blew air through puckered lips, then let her head hang in dismay. “Dad's plan was nearly flawless,” she muttered. “And Leo still eluded us. Anna, what if he's just unbeatable?”
Tilting her head back, Anna felt her eyebrows climb upward. “No one's that good,” she answered. “The universe is governed by laws, my young protege. Human beings are subject to those laws.”
“So…”
“So,” Anna said. “There are only so many ways that you can travel from Earth to Leyria, and only so many ways that you can get from a ship onto a planet's surface. We just have to go through them one by one.”
The elevator doors opened.
A quick trip through a hallway where bright sunlight streamed in through windows led her to the Science Lab that she shared with Cassi. Indeed, the other woman was already present and checking results on the DNA scanner. She had been examining the knife that Leo had used to kill Ben.
“Computer!” Anna said, striding into the room at a brisk pace. “Recognize Special Agent Leana Lenai, access code 4-4-7-2-Vedas-Tayanal. This is a Priority One request. Requisition a SlipGate and establish an interstellar comm-link with Earth's orbital traffic control network.”
“Comm-link established,” the computer replied.
Anna stopped dead in the middle of the room, folding her arms and turning her face up to the ceiling. “Download their orbital traffic logs and compare them with local data,” she ordered. “List all ships to visit both Earth and Leyria in the last two weeks.”
A hologram appeared: light blue text on a dark background, each record surrounded by a rectangular box. There were five in total, including ship name, registry number, time and date stamp.
Anna narrowed her eyes as she studied the readout. “The second one on that list,” she said. “It departed Earth on the same day that Leo escaped and arrived here eight days ago. Computer, do we have a visual of that ship?”
“Affirmative.”
“Show me.”
The hologram changed, displaying a box-like vessel against a starry background. It was your typical cargo-hauler, sluggish with poor maneuverability. And not designed for atmospheric flight. Which meant it couldn't have landed. So the only way that Leo could get from the ship to the surface was a SlipGate. The ship's name was listed as the Brithel.
“How long did the ship stay in orbit?”
“Approximately ten minutes.”
Just long enough to drop someone off.
Covering her mouth with two fingers, Anna closed her eyes and considered her next move. “Analyze sensor data for the time in which that ship was in orbit,” she said. “List all anomalies.”
The computer made a brief buzzing sound and then offered its response. “Sensors detected an energy fluctuation in local SlipSpace while the Brithel was in orbit.”
“Explain.”
“Energy readings are most consistent with a small pocket of normal space-time being translated through the SlipSpace medium, the most likely cause of which would be the unscheduled use of a SlipGate.”
Melissa stepped forward with a big smile on her face, her musical laughter echoing through the room. “That's it!” she exclaimed. “All you have to do is track his bubble, and you'll know where he went!”
Anna winced, then quickly gave her head a shake. “It's not that simple,” she said. “SlipSpace is an ever-fluctuating energy soup in eleven separate dimensions. Tracking an object's path through it is next to impossible.”
“Couldn't we just find a point on the planet's surface that was experiencing energy fluctuations at the same time as those recorded on the Brithel?”
“Only one small problem with that,” Anna replied. Stepping forward, she tapped commands into the horseshoe-shaped console and ordered the hologram to change. An image of Leyria floated before them, green continents on blue oceans. Hundreds of red dots popped up all over the globe. “At any given moment, there are literally hundreds of SlipGates active on this planet, all causing minor fluctuations in local SlipSpace. There's no way to tell which of those corresponds to the Gate on that ship.”
Melissa squinted at the hologram, clearly lost in thought. “Hmm…” she murmured. “Didn't you perform some trick where you compared time and date stamps of SlipGate records to track Keli?”
“Yes, but that assumes that Leo's people are using a registered Gate. Most likely, they have their own Gate that they only activate when expecting an incoming traveler. If their Gate isn't on the network, I can't download its travel logs. That's why the trick didn't work when we tried to find Isara.”
“So, what good was all this?” Cassi asked from behind her.
With a few quick taps, Anna returned the hologram to the previous image. A squat little ship shaped almost like a cube with engines. The nose was rounded, but that was it. Gracelessly designed, it was the kind of vessel that was usually sent on automated cargo runs between outlying outposts.
Anna put her fists on her hips, then craned her neck to study the hologram. “Well, unless they delete their records,” she said, “they'll have a log of what SlipGate they used when dropping Leo off. Find that ship, and you'll find Leo's hideout.”
“You have to let this go.”
Jack sat on his couch, hunched over with his arms folded across his knees. “I betrayed the ideals of what we stand for,” he mumbled. “I tried to rip a man apart from the inside out with my power.”
Anna stood before him in blue jeans and a white t-shirt, her face twisted into an angry scowl. “Tried being the operative word,” she insisted. “You didn't actually do it. And it's pretty clear you've learned your lesson.”
Jack looked up to blink at her, then shook his head. “I can't figure out why you of all people would forgive me,” he said. “You're usually the very first person to wax poetic about the ideals of the Justice Keepers.”
To his surprise, Anna dropped to one knee in front of him, reaching out to place her hand on his. “Because I know what Leo did to you,” she said. “What he did to Ben. Don't you think I want to tear him apart?”
“But you don't.”
She rose up to press a kiss to his forehead, then pulled away and exhaled through her nose. “But I want to,” she said softly. “And I wasn't there. I didn't see it with my own eyes. I don't know what I would do if I had been.”
On an intellectual level, what she said made all kinds of sense. He'd read all about the trauma endured by soldiers on the battlefield, about how one could break under that strain, but Keepers were supposed to be better than that.
He threw himself back against the couch cushions, tossing his head back. “I don't know what to do,” he said. “I think I'm gonna tell Larani about what happened. If Harry and Ben were punished for screwing up; I should be too.”
“If that's what you have to do,” Anna muttered, “then, by all means, do it. But I would remind you that Harry wasn't exactly punished for his transgression.”
“That's only because he was shot.”
Anna stood up slowly, her head drooping as she visibly struggled with her fatigue. “Something I'd like you to consider,” she said. “Harry tried to torture Isara by using the N'Jal to fire pain receptors in her body.”
“Yes.”
“Do you hate him for it?”
He opened his mouth to answer but realized that he had no valid response to that. Because he didn't hate Harry. On the contrary, he barely even thought of the other man's transgression. The action itself was reprehensible, but Jack could understand what had motivated his friend to go to such extremes.
Isara had tried to kill his daughter while wearing the face of the woman that Harry loved. Jena's good name was now tarnished, quite possibly forever. There was a better than average chance that Isara was at least partially responsible for the carnage in New York, and who knows what she would have done if she had gotten her grubby little paws on Kevin Harmon. And that was just the stuff that Harry knew about. A person could only take so much before they snapped.
It wasn't right, but Jack understood.
“Maybe we're all a little screwed up,” he said.
Anna sat down beside him with her hands in her lap, a warm smile on her lovely face. “Yes,” she agreed. “I'm not saying that you just get a pass, Jack. But, honestly, what am I going to do? What could I possibly say to make this lesson sink in any more than it already has?”
“So you don't hate me?”
“I could never hate you.” Those words warmed his heart. Damn it but he loved this woman. It was almost enough to make him forget everything that had happened over the last few days. Almost.
Somehow, without him even realizing it, as the exhaustion of a long day washed over them both, he ended up with Anna's head on his chest. She was smiling, breathing slow and deep, on the edge of sleep.
“Hey,” Jack whispered.
“Mmm…” Anna murmured. “Sorry.”
“Don't be.”
Anna sat up, and strands of her white hair fell over her face. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes. “I should really get going,” she said. “It's late, and we both have a lot to do tomorrow.”
“I have a better idea.”
He got up and went down the short hallway that led to his bedroom, where he fished around inside a drawer until he found what he needed. When he came back out, he was carrying a folded up pair of shorts and a t-shirt.
