“No!” she cried as her vision telescoped, and she lost her footing. I can’t lose consciousness now—
Thrust back in the nightmare world, Jetta lashed out at the soupy darkness, trying in vain to return to the physical world.
(I have to go back—Jaeia needs me!)
The footsteps, the voices, the grinding metal came after her much more quickly this time. She curled in on herself, readying for the attack. When she sensed her brother’s presence, she dared opened her eyes, and the clamor faded to a whisper.
(Jahx? Oh, Gods—)
Jahx stood directly in front of her, his head hung low and shoulders slumped. Disheveled and wearing dirty rags, her brother wouldn’t look at her, but she could see his lips moving.
She tried to reach out, but she didn’t have the means to bring herself to him.
(Look at me!) she shouted.
(You have to find me)
(Why won’t you speak to me directly?) she projected across their bond, but he did not answer. Instead, the frightening thing in the darkness roared to life, creaking and groaning like a worn-out machine as it lumbered toward her. A splintering cacophony of suffering and psionic dissonance bellowed across the dark plane, forcing her to retreat into herself.
(What is that?) Jetta couldn’t make out its shape, only distortions in the shadows and odd shimmers of light. As it approached, she saw tiny embers poking through the darkness, like thousands of glowing red eyes.
Jetta remembered seeing pictures of demons in the leaflets that the missionaries of Fiorah handed out, but those diabolical creatures were cartoonish and laughable. This was something much different, much more evolved. The smell of sulfur and decay filled her nose, and it made her wish back the stink of ashes.
(Jahx, run!) she screamed as it opened up its black maw. Spiny fingers grew out of the shimmering distortion of shadows and reached for him. Jahx’s head arched back as it touched the base of his calf and his face turned ghostly gray in an instant.
(You have to FIND ME!)
JETTA CAME TO CHOKING a man wearing the threadbare uniform of a Core soldier. Chunky yellow mucus oozed from his eyes, and his tongue waggled from his mouth, but she kept squeezing until she heard the telltale crunch.
I have to rescue Jaeia! she realized, letting go of the man.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Rawyll reach to her and shout some sort of warning as she sped up the mountainside. She didn’t hear it, nor did she need to; she knew she had the power to kill any enemy that would stand in her way.
Jetta skidded to a halt at the mouth of the cave. Three Prigs fired plasma weapons at Crissn, who had taken shelter behind a rock slab. The Oriyan repelled most of their attacks with a reconfigured energy shield, but it wouldn’t hold up much longer.
“Hey!” one of the Prigs shouted. The others, alerted to her presence, turned their fire on her. She dodged the first few rounds, but as she slammed the nearest Prig against the rock wall, she was hit by the rebound shot off of the energy shield.
Pain exploded through her side as she was knocked off her feet and rolled to the edge of the cliff. Catching herself on the lip of the precipice, she looked down into the darkness of the forest below and held back a scream.
“Shield is down—go, Teag!” one of the attackers shouted.
Fear overcame pain as Jetta frantically pulled herself up. As she flopped onto solid ground, she managed to see the two remaining Prigs take off into the cave entrance. Someone screamed, and the gunfire faded as they descended into the tunnels.
“Skucheka,” Jetta cursed. It hurt to breathe. Looking at the gushing wound in her side, she realized she didn’t stand a chance at catching up to them.
Fuming in pain and frustration, she let go of her control and allowed her mind to expand. She didn’t want to resort to using her talent again, but like before, she didn’t have a choice.
Frisson washed over her with such exhilarating energy that she forgot what she was worried about. Tasting the carnage and the blood in the air only furthered her desires.
I want more, she thought, shivering with anticipation. I will go even farther than before.
(They will suffer.)
In her rage she didn’t understand the length of her range, nor did she sense those minds that were ensnared in her wake. Delighting in her own power, she was blind to the difference between friend and foe as she reached back into the darkest fathoms of her mind.
TIDAS RAZAR LOOSENED his collar as he searched around his office for his private keycodes. It was too hot, and the air seemed considerably thinner than he could tolerate.
“Environmental controls, increase oxygen limit by ten percent and decrease temperature by five degrees,” he ordered into the voice command unit. The central computer made a series of clicking noises as it processed his request.
“Oxygen saturation already at ideal maximum. Temperature at Starways regulatory levels. Override?”
After finding the keycodes in the safe behind the bookshelf, the Military Minister scrambled back to his desk.
“Override, dichu! And call up Admiral Unipoesa now!”
The keycodes and Unipoesa were all he had now. The codes would allow him to reactivate border bases and military units without the authorization of Chief Commanding Officer Urusous Li. Li had already denied his previous requests to arm the fleet, and the General Assembly had backed the CCO’s order. Their CCO had assured them that the Eeclian Dominion had been destroyed and General Volkor defeated. Nobody wanted to believe that an army could be assembled that quickly, especially one that could rival the strength of the allied Homeworlds. War fatigue dominated not only the Starways citizens and the General Assembly, but even the Alliance Senior Council.
Tidas knew the truth.
As he waited for Unipoesa’s callback, he watched the composite reel pieced together by his intelligence agents, making sure it wasn’t just a bad dream. The reel contained surveillance tapes, personal video logs and shaky marine video-cams, starting with the video log of a pilot and the scanner records of his ship in deep space near the boundaries of the unregulated territories. A tiny blip on the radar from the orbit of the fourth moon of Oriathos barely got the pilot’s attention until he picked up the federation signal.
Through surveillance cameras on an Alliance outpost, Tidas watched as the inspection team boarded the battered shuttle. As reported through personal video logs, the inspection leader noted that the onboard computer was barely functional, life support had failed, and the lone occupant appeared dead.
The video that followed made Razar shift uncomfortably in his seat. Marines joked as they dragged the dead watchman from the shuttle, but stopped laughing when they saw the terrifying artifact imbedded in his chest. One of them screamed when the dead body started to twitch.
Tidas blinked several times as he watched the grainy black-and-white footage. The corpse’s head bobbled back and forth as his torso and buttocks bucked off the floor. Finally, the watchman bent at the waist and sat straight up, his head hanging limply to one side. He spoke through some unidentified internal source as his jaw hung awry.
“In four days you will be purified,” the dead body choked in some guttural and grossly inhuman voice. One of the marines shot it fifteen times, but the bullets did nothing to faze the corpse.
Tidas stopped the reel with a fist slam, holding his head with his other hand. Li had laughed at it, called it a cheap trick. But the young commander’s eyes had not seen Razar’s years of battle. Nor had Li and the other officers or councilmen been there when he questioned Sebbs.
Now he sat at his desk, his nervous habit taking hold as he arranged and rearranged some of the newer secured files. Finally, the wire came through to connect him to Admiral Unipoesa.
Unipoesa read him correctly and skipped the usual formalities. “How bad is it?”
“Admiral, what is your position?”
“I’m pushing her jumps, but we’re still about two hours away.”
“At a
ll costs, Damon, retrieve that Prodgy Healer and get those launnies off that godich planet. Do you have the pods ready?”
“Yes, my SMT has already swept and checked twice now; we’ve got the whole rescue process laid out.”
“Do it again.”
“Sir, with all due respect, I am aware of the importance of this mission.”
“Let’s get one thing clear between you and me, Damon,” the Minister said through clenched teeth. “I know that you are one of the more informed officers of the Alliance—I have been personally watching your activity for some time now.”
“You know that everything I’ve ever done has been for the Alliance and the Starways,” the Admiral replied calmly.
“That remains to be seen,” Tidas said gruffly, drumming his fingers on his desk. “For now, I will overlook your indiscretions in light of your report. If the Deadwalkers do have some kind of bioweapon to mass-convert Sentients into their puppets, then I require your faculties.”
With a grim expression, the Admiral nodded. “I know. You need my help to convince the Assembly to override Li.”
“Ah, Damon,” the Minister laughed mirthlessly, “you did your job well back in the day—you made him an attractive hero. The General Assembly will follow him to the grave.”
Unipoesa removed himself from the viewscreen for a moment, only to return with a knotted forehead and a face turned scarlet.
The Minister knew he had struck a sensitive chord. Unipoesa had trained Li from near infancy under the secretly instituted Command Development Program, molding him into one of the deadliest officers ever to take helm of an Alliance fleet. Damon posted his reservations about Li’s psychological stability after some unexplained incidents during training, but when his flawless Endgame record was leaked to the Homeworlds media circuit, he earned an indisputable position not only in the fleet, but in the public’s heart.
Things only got worse after it became public that the young prodigy defeated the great commander Unipoesa of the Raging Front—his own trainer—in the Endgame. It wasn’t long after that Damon was forced to take an advisory position by a unanimous vote in the General Assembly. Li’s youthful attractiveness and media savvy brought in more funds for the Alliance military and government than Damon’s battle-worn image ever could.
“Sir, I must be frank,” the Admiral said. “Our efforts mean nothing if Li remains in command. He would not share the helm, least of all with pair of launnies, and with his political powers, it would take more than a miracle to remove him from his post.”
“That is why you’re going to have Pancar convince the council to put you back in command.”
“You know—?”
“Never underestimate me again.”
“Noted, Sir. But what about the launnies?”
“They’ve commanded under the mask of Volkor,” Tidas stated as he rechecked the security of their channel.
Unipoesa’s face turned to stone. “You couldn’t be suggesting...”
“Wouldn’t you like another set of medals, Admiral? Assuming, of course, that they are victorious. You and I know that Li can never find out about those launnies. He would make their past—how shall I say this—‘indiscretions’—public. And if the public found out that the same bloody leeches that persecuted them were at the helm of their military, it would be a political firestorm. So you see why you must be reinstated as chief commander,” Tidas said.
The admiral hesitated. “We’re asking something tremendous of them considering their history with organized military. I don’t know if they would agree to such extreme terms, especially given what is at stake for them.”
“Come now,” Tidas said, waving him off. “You turned that sorry pissant of a kid into the jackal he is today. I’m not worried about your powers of persuasion.”
Damon ran his fingers through his hair. “This is beyond anything I’ve ever asked a child to do.”
“Don’t do this, Damon, not now—this is our only choice, and you know it. If you, even for a moment, have any reservations, you’ll compromise this mission. Are you keeping up on your Rai Shar?”
“Yes,” Damon said, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’ve done all that. I’m ready to face them.”
“Good,” Tidas said. “Just make sure that you get them—with or without Jagger’s help. I’ll send an encrypted message for Pancar to persuade the council to reinstate you. I’ll tell him we’ve spoken”
With that the Minister of the Alliance military forces signed off, leaving Admiral Unipoesa the task of retrieving Jetta and Jaeia Kyron.
FOR THE FIRST TIME in his life, Jahx was angry with himself. He had always had faith in his intuition, in the gifts that had given him insight into the unspoken languages of the universe. But this was wrong. He was wrong. Now everyone would pay for his mistakes—those who were alive and even those who were not quite dead.
(Jetta was right about me...)
He tried not to let the thought through, but he could feel himself caving under the weight of the truth. With patience, pain and isolation, the Motti Overlord achieved complete control of Jahx’s body. Soon, the systematic extermination of the Sentients of the Starways would be realized. I have become what I fear most.
If the others had been united in wanting to end their enslavement, it would have been easy for Jahx to lead them all away peacefully. But a collective memory had been created in the neuroelectric void, an angry one, by the fragments of experience of those that once lived. All of them had suffered through the Dissembler Scare and had lost everything, and from this memory arose a yearning for vindication so powerful that it took everything he had to avoid its toxic effects.
We need to battle the Motti—not the Sentients of the Starways! he projected, but the others couldn’t hear him. With their awareness limited to raw desire, his will alone would not be able to steer the other telepaths in the right direction. They could only comprehend the power at their fingertips, and the enemies the Motti targeted.
Jahx couldn’t help but question all that he ever believed. How can I justify my actions when I’m murdering innocent people?
But he knew the truth. He had always been afraid of his power, afraid of the possibility that he might have to hurt someone to help someone else. He didn’t want to make that choice, but he couldn’t go against the call of his instincts.
Jahx entered his body again to grant himself temporary relief from the distortion of limbo. The voices of the others constantly tore at his mind, seeking answers that he couldn’t provide, but his body was no longer a refuge. Only emptiness, and a strange feeling of nakedness remained.
(I can’t do this much longer,) he thought. He concentrated on his fragile grip on reality as he extended himself into the physical world again.
(Don’t leave us)
(They must be stopped—)
(They are the enemy)
(Finish them)
(You can’t leave)
(Afraid)
(You are the only one)
(Take this pain away)
Thousands of minds wrapped around his, pulling him back, drawing him away from his body. They knew what he wanted to do, and for all of their different reasons, they wouldn’t let him.
Jahx fought back with all the strength he had left. He didn’t consider, however, that the Motti had been watching the stress levels of his stalk and identified a lingering presence—and that his enemy was waiting for him.
With his head fixed to the stalk, Jahx could not look away. The Motti leader, patiently standing by, lifted his undercarriage with two of his pincers and removed part of a humanoid hand. After slipping it on the end of one of his spidery legs, the grayish hand displayed movement in all five fingers.
The dead hand turned purple as it caressed Jahx’s cheek and pulled at the few remaining strands of hair on his head. A part of him felt relief that he couldn’t really feel it.
“The most powerful telepath in the galaxy, useless until I made you useful. That is my gift to yo
u.”
Jahx could barely hold on. The Motti Overlord removed his eye again and set it in the portal in Jahx’s head. He didn’t want to see any more death, and he didn’t want to know any more about the weapon he had become. But where could he go? He didn’t want to return to the pandemonium where the other voices leeched from his essence.
The movie reel in his head began to play. He witnessed the Motti Overlord and his underlings standing over the controls to the stalks, programming him and the others with new priorities. Not long after, he saw a mucus-like white substance pumping into his veins after he gave an order to attack an unarmed civilian outpost.
(This is not what I am meant to do.)
Jahx’s vision faded. He had to act now.
M’ah Pae chuckled, emitting a sound like grinding glass. “There is nothing for you Jahx—why remain? I have only begun to show you the true power of your mind,” he said, digging his dead hand into his cheek. An electronic warning signal went off in his head that the external pressure exceeded safe limits. “Leave my construct or I will destroy your soul.”
AT FIRST JAEIA THOUGHT she would black out. The fever from the sickness used up her last reserves, and the flashfire hits she had taken in the arm and thigh seared through her like no pain she had ever felt before, robbing her of what little control she had left.
But as one of the Prigs stood over her, preparing to deal her death, the faintness turned into something else. Something much worse.
“What the hell?” the Prig said, sticking a finger in his ear. His face twisted with pain, and he dropped his rifle on the ground to clutch his head.
Time slowed to a crawl as she became aware of every nerve fiber, every cell throughout her body. The incredible sensation grew worse until she felt a fire spread through the branches of her awareness.
Then the burning stopped. She wasn’t in the caves anymore. Looking around, she realized she was back on Fiorah, in their old apartment, standing alone in the entryway where she slept.
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