TO JETTA’S SURPRISE, Admiral Unipoesa invited them to a formal dinner in his quarters. He had painstakingly arranged for authentic Fiorahian foods to be served, hoping that they would relax with familiarity.
I can’t remember eating anything other than food rations and welfare handouts, Jaeia remarked as they took their seats at the table.
Jetta silently agreed. If Yahmen hadn’t tortured them by eating extravagant dinners while they nursed empty bellies, they wouldn’t have recognized the dishes at all.
Inwardly, Jetta delighted in how uncomfortable the fare made Admiral Unipoesa. Fiorahian cuisine was created to please the palates of crime lords and junkies, which were anything but delicate. The spread consisted mainly of meat, some of it raw, accompanied by overly sweetened deserts that pleased only those whose tastes were dulled by years of habitual smoking.
“Oh Gods,” the admiral said, pushing himself away from the table. He looked a little green after trying to cut through the stuffed yamb’s heart and nicking an artery. Coagulated blood and squirming yellow heartworms spilled onto the table.
“You’re supposed to shave the heart with the edge of your knife,” Jetta said, flicking away some of the worms with her knife.
“I see,” the Admiral said, taking a big swallow of water. “Clearly my knowledge of Fiorahian cuisine is undernourished.”
“Technically, so is ours,” Jaeia said.
“I was hoping that we could discuss your stay,” Unipoesa said, regaining his composure.
“We want off this ship,” Jetta said.
Jaeia’s disapproving thoughts rang in the back of her mind. You’d trust a pack of criminals over the Alliance?
I don’t see the difference. They both have their own agendas, but it’ll be a lot easier to handle a few mercenaries over a Fleet. Besides, I’m sure Jahx is still alive, Jetta reminded her sister. There is no argument.
“It’s not advisable. You’re needed here,” the Admiral said.
“What makes you think we want to fight your wars?”
Admiral Unipoesa straightened his uniform and nodded toward the entryway. “I invited a guest to join us.”
When the guards opened the doors, a haggard man stumbled inside. Despite his sunken eyes and sickly yellow skin, they recognized him immediately. The cocky attitude and pretense from his days in service of the Dominion Core had vanished, and he stood before them twitching nervously.
“Mantri, please join us,” the admiral said as a guard brought another seat to the table.
The old methoc junkie sat between Jetta and the admiral, fumbling with his hands, unable to decide whether to put them in his lap or on the table. Finally, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a pack of illegal cigarettes. Digging into the carton, he offered them around.
“How the hell did you manage to get those things? I can’t let you smoke here,” the admiral exclaimed.
Sebbs looked at him with pathetic desperation until Unipoesa finally rolled his eyes and waved a hand in permission.
“Why did you bring him here?” Jetta demanded. The sight of him disgusted her, and she shoved her seat back from the table to avoid the smoke that rolled toward her as he lit up.
“He knows a lot about the two of you. He was the one that alerted us to where you were located and the true nature of your imprisonment on the Dominion ships.”
The corner of Sebbs’s lips turned up in an unsure half-smile.
“Sebbs,” Unipoesa said, motioning for him to speak. Jetta and Jaeia stared at the disheveled man until the narcotizing effects of the laced cigarette took hold, and he found his voice.
In half-mumbled words he told them about his side job selling insider information to Reht, and Reht’s loose connection with the growing rebellion on Trigos. He described the dangerous discovery he made after getting an officer high and hacking into the Dominion database.
He paused, nervously patting himself down for something he could not find. Running his hand through his hair, Sebbs cursed under his breath and continued, telling them how he figured out they were supposed to have been terminated, but that the orders had been tampered with, resulting in their exile.
Jetta pressed the tips of her fingers into the prongs of a fork, but anger blotted out the pain. “You believe this junkie?” Jaeia glanced her way but didn’t challenge her. “Did he sell you this meitka so he could buy his next pinch? What else is he hiding?”
“You little—” Sebbs started, but Unipoesa interceded.
“Captain Sebbs underwent considerable risk to bring us this information. Here is something else he acquired that I’m sure you’ll be interested in.”
The admiral cleared his throat and slid a datapad across the table. Jaeia stared straight ahead, listening to Jetta’s internal voice as she read the translated letter:
My dearest children—
With this letter comes a thousand apologies. I know I’ve let you down right from the very beginning. Yahmen’s kept me alive all these years to shield himself from harm’s way, and because I took you in, you were forced to share my burden.
The most important part of this letter is the truth which I have kept from you. I feared that if Yahmen were to discover your true beginnings, he would sell or kill you. Despite what I told him, your mother was not a streetwalker. After many months and many unmentionable deals, I bought you from a drifter who picked up your escape pod in deep space. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to save you. There were items aboard the ship, artifacts from another world, and the writings looked similar to the marks on your arms. Are they something to do with your family line? Your true names? A destination? I can’t say. But somebody cared enough to make those marks on you, so they must have a purpose.
Jetta, Jaeia, and Jahx, I hope this letter finds you in a better situation. Know that my selfish reason for seeking you in the Underground changed the moment I held you in my arms. I have no right to ask for your forgiveness, so I will leave you with this: Never look back and never think of Fiorah again.
Galm
“This letter,” Jetta said, closing her eyes and recalling the sensation of Galm pressing the paper into her palm as they said goodbye. “The Core soldiers took it away during decontamination. I never knew what it said.”
“I’m glad we could share this with you,” Unipoesa said.
“Not good enough!” Jetta said, stabbing the fork into the table. “What else do you know about us? What else was in that pod?”
Sebbs nursed the last of his cigarette. “Very little. The Dominion somehow figured out your true family name is Kyron, but I’m not sure how.”
“That’s not really helpful,” Jetta said.
“You’re here, aren’t you?” Sebbs said, grinding out the butt on the admiral’s plate.
A long silence followed. The Joliak hadn’t lied, and the letter from Galm seemed authentic. Still, she didn’t trust what she had read. If she believed in the letter, she would have to embrace a whole new realm of possibilities. A real mother and father—and they could still be alive! Maybe they didn’t abandon us; maybe they were forced to make a terrible decision?
Sliding her hand under her shirtsleeve, Jetta rubbed the tattooed symbol on the inside of her right upper arm. The inked skin felt hot, like it would burn through her clothing. It could be our family name—or a clue about our real home.
Jetta glanced over at Jaeia and tapped into her thoughts. Holding her right arm, her sister struggled to absorb the shock of Sebbs’ information.
Galm was never going to make it on Fiorah once we left. This is probably the last we’ll ever know of him, Jaeia thought. He’s gone.
Jetta gritted her teeth against Jaeia’s guilt and withdrew from their shared connection as much as she could. I can’t afford those feelings right now.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you, really, I am,” Sebbs said, his tone softening. His shoulders sagged forward, and he cupped the admiral’s wine glass, which Unipoesa quickly took out of his hands. “Before it was
just a slack job spreading Dominion propaganda. This was different,” he said, frantically pawing for another cigarette in the empty package.
Unipoesa rested a hand on the Joliak’s shoulder, but Sebbs shrugged it off and gnawed the back of his fist. “I didn’t want this, you know? This responsibility. It was just a slack job, just a way to fly. I’m not Reht. I don’t even have half a soul. I never wanted to go out and save the galaxy. But this gorsh-shit happens, and I—I can’t take it. How could that leech priest be right about me? I’m not chakking worthy of anything!”
“What priest?” Jaeia asked, but both of them knew before he even answered, seeing the familiar face of the Grand Oblin in the memories that leaked from the Joliak’s mind.
Jetta—if Sebbs confessed to the Grand Oblin, it would explain why he knew so much about us.
Sebbs? I don’t believe it.
“Did you speak to the Grand Oblin?” Jaeia asked. Jetta sensed her sister’s opinion of the man shift dramatically.
“Chakking leeches,” Sebbs said, holding his head in his hands. “What good did it do? That priest said I would bring about ‘the Awakening’ in this big prophetic voice, made me feel real important. But it’s all a bunch of gorsh-shit—”
“—Sebbs,” Unipoesa interrupted. “Tell them what they need to hear—why we need them to help us.”
Sebbs mumbled and looked away.
“Sebbs!” the admiral barked.
Sebbs wiped his nose with his sleeve and looked at them fiercely through bloodshot eyes. “Your brother is a Deadwalker.”
“He is a Liiker,” the admiral corrected.
“He’s a chakking mechanical corpse.”
Jetta didn’t hear whatever Sebbs said next. An empty stillness took hold of her mind, and she feared breathing or even moving. The true meaning of her dreams clicked into place, and the fragile hope that Jahx had somehow escaped unharmed crumbled away. Frantic, she reached out to Jaeia for support, but crashed into a wall of pain.
Tell me he’s lying, Jaeia, Jetta called to her sister, but Jaeia curled into herself, unable to give her sister any emotional support. Their brother, a third of their telepathic connection, was dead but still alive, suffering under the will of the Motti.
Jaeia—
I can’t— her sister silently sobbed.
Jetta never felt anything like the seismic emotion building in Jaeia’s mind, the grief and guilt shredding her rationalizations. No, no, no, Jetta told herself, pitching forward. It isn’t true. It can’t be. Rage boiled inside her, pouring hot fire into her arms and legs.
“It’s all gorsh-shit!” Jetta screamed, standing up and throwing her plate at the wall. It shattered, sending bits of food every which way. The admiral didn’t move, but Sebbs took cover under the table.
“It’s all bloody gorsh-shit!” she repeated, taking the table by the sides, ready to throw it aside, ready to throttle the admiral until he took it all back. Jaeia laid a hand on her shoulder, her eyes pleading with her to stop.
“It’s not only your brother. The other telepaths—the ones the Core commanders used for their communication system—have all been converted to Liikers,” the admiral said calmly. “I thought you’d need proof of all this, so I compiled a dataset for you.”
Jetta tore the datafile from the admiral’s outstretched hand and whipped it at his head, but the admiral was quicker than he appeared, dodging it before it connected.
“Calm down!” the admiral shouted, retrieving the datafile as Jetta looked for something else to throw, “or I’ll call in the guards and have you sedated.”
Look at it already! Jaeia said.
“Give it to me,” Jetta said, taking it from him, this time scrolling through. Through her tears she could barely take in all of the field data, the interviews, the intelligence reports, the mission logs and video cams.
“I won’t believe it,” Jetta said, her hands trembling as she laid the datafile on the table. “I won’t. It’s not possible.”
“Something terrible happened to Jahx, Jetta—something terrible happened to all of you, and to many others. I have no simple explanation for any of this.”
Jetta turned her back to them, leaning against one of the support beams that arched over the dinner table. She closed her eyes, wanting to dump her emotions into somebody else, wanting to escape the life she failed.
The admiral straightened his uniform again. “With a potent bioweapon, your brother commanding the telepaths, and the telepaths commanding their newly integrated Dominion army, the Motti have a power we couldn’t possibly rival.”
Jaeia wiped the tears from her eyes. “This bioweapon—do you have a way to stop it?”
“No, we don’t. And it doesn’t matter. If our forces try to counteract the virus, the Motti nuke the planet and move on. With the Dominion’s warships, weapons, and a growing number of conquests, the Sentients of the Starways face genocide.”
The admiral opened his arms in supplication. “Please, I implore you, help us. You are the only two that understand the way Jahx thinks, what he could do with an army like that.”
“Why are they doing this? What do the Motti want?” Jetta barely heard the words escape her sister’s lips. Jaeia needed an explanation, but Jetta didn’t see the point. I will kill all the Deadwalkers—
“Their origins and motives are both unknown,” the Admiral said. “Until all this they were merely reclusive, hostile on contact but not a threat. Now they are abducting Sentients and scorching planets with disease and nukes, leaving them entirely uninhabitable. They want to make sure none of us could possibly survive.”
“Maybe they’re just jealous of our skin,” Sebbs laughed. Nobody else saw the humor.
Jetta felt like she should remember something about the Motti.
M’ah Pae...
The twisted half-man with a burning red eye smiling at her with metallic gums. She remembered her intense revulsion and dread as the monster promised her power and revenge. His sinister words rang in her ears: You are a humanoid I do not despise. You are different from the others. You share my disgust for the infectious impurity of the Sentients.
“No. It’s much more than that,” Jetta said. “Much more.”
She froze in place, overcome by the same nauseous feeling that had seized her years ago. This is about Fiorah—about Yahmen. The Motti Overlord recognized the brutal animal within her, the one she had come to rely on for survival even as it sought to destroy her. M’ah Pae saw his evil reflected in me.
“This is about an old hatred that cannot be reasoned with,” Jetta whispered. “This is about someone, something that was once weak and wounded, and has come to depend on its anger just to stay alive. This is not something you can understand.”
Complete silence. This time Unipoesa didn’t stop Mantri as he snatched the admiral’s wine glass and took a giant gulp.
Where did that come from? Jaeia asked. Jetta didn’t answer.
The admiral shifted uncomfortably in his seat and cleared his throat before speaking. “Then you understand our predicament.”
“I know what you want,” Jetta laughed mirthlessly. “You want us to fight him. You have a lot of penjehtos to ask me to do something like that.”
Jaeia tried to say something, but Jetta didn’t give her a chance. “I don’t care who you are or what you represent. There is nothing you could say to convince me to turn against my brother. We have no business with you.”
“I can’t spare you any starcraft,” Unipoesa said, running a hand through his hair.
“Then we’ll go with the dog-soldiers.”
Admiral Unipoesa sighed. “This is so much more complicated than fighting your brother, Jetta. I wish you could see that.”
“No,” Jetta replied, standing. “It’s not.”
Jaeia joined her sister at her side, tears streaming from her face. Please, Jetta—I’m so confused. Let’s just wait—
No! Jetta said. We’re not going to listen to his lies.
“Well then
,” the admiral said, turning to face the window. “Go safely—for the short while that you still can.”
The light of the nearby star cast an eerie glow across his face. Jetta couldn’t tell what he was feeling, not that she tried very hard. All she knew was her own determination and the lengths she was going to have to go to save her brother.
REHT SPIT A MOUTHFUL of steaming, oily liquid across the floor of the bridge. “What the hell is this?”
Ro snickered. “Ah, Cappy, it’s just ale from Talisse, some snips from Mom’s stash, and a little engine grease.”
“Bastard Farrocoon,” Reht muttered, throwing the mug at Ro’s head. He ducked in time to miss the mug, but the steaming contents splashed his neck and shoulders.
“Ratchakkers!” he howled as he scampered down the bridge hatch, Cray running after him, laughing uncontrollably.
“Diawn, where are those chakking launnies?” Reht yelled. “And are you keeping that crazy tin can away from them? Don’t want to be getting their panties in a bind. I have a feeling they won’t warm up to our wee little Deadwalker.”
She spun around in her seat with a scowl on her face, once again taking his pissiness personally. “Yes. Tech put Billy in a sleep cycle and locked him in storage closet. Not very nice if you ask me.”
Reht chuckled. “Come on, Di. It’s just temporary. Anyway, Billy Don’t ain’t complaining.”
Diawn’s eyes burned. “The girls are in nav/ops with Mom going over the ship’s schematics.”
“Not the real schematics, right?”
His pilot continued to glare at him. “No, the jimmied ones. Nothing critical.”
“Good. Vaughn, keep your eyes on the scopes,” he barked as he headed to the back deck.
Leaning against the doorframe to nav/ops, Reht took a moment to let Mom cycle through the blue schematics of the Wraith, studying the twins. Mom grunted every time the twins asked him to go faster, but the Talian obliged.
Gods, I could make a fortune off of them in Underground, he thought, watching their eyes zig-zag across the schematics. His hands ached at the thought. (Elia, my homeworld—I can’t forget.)
Triorion Omnibus Page 39
