Triorion Omnibus

by L. J. Hachmeister

  The mechanic gulped audibly. “Look, Triel—you’re a step up, right? He’s a dog-soldier, and even if he was soft for you, he’s still gonna be a dog-soldier. He ain’t gonna settle down. He doesn’t know how; it ain’t his blood.”

  The admiral knew she got it then when he saw the hurt contorting her face.

  She lowered her head, hiding her tears. “Is he out right now?”

  “Uh, y-yeah.”

  Denial set in, changing her expression. She glared at the admiral while speaking to the engineer. “Tech, what was the name I used when you first met me?”

  She’s testing him, making sure he’s not a fake. But Tech was quite real—just modified.

  “Huh? Why?” he replied.

  “It’s very important.”

  “Raina.”

  Tears came now.

  “You okay?” the engineer asked, confused.

  “Goodbye, Tech.”

  Triel closed the DAT-receiver, severing the connection. “You could have warned me,” she whispered to the admiral.

  “You wouldn’t have believed me,” Unipoesa said, pouring himself another shot. “Drink?”

  “No,” she whispered, wiping away her tears. She was silent a moment, looking at one of the windows to the stars.

  “Jumping into the mining arm was on purpose, wasn’t it? I took the news very badly,” Triel said.

  You’re doing the right thing, he told himself. “It looks that way.”

  “Reht was my first love,” she whispered, still staring out at the stars. “But I always knew in my heart it wasn’t going to work out. I just can’t believe I would do something so stupid, even if I was upset. Something more must have happened. Maybe the emotional toll—maybe I was Falling, maybe I thought it would be best if I...”

  She curled up in a tight ball on the couch, sobbing. He offered her a drink which she took, lifting her head only briefly to down it before hiding again.

  “We tried to work with Captain Jagger and the crew, but he’s violated at least fifteen federal laws just in the last ten months alone,” the admiral said. He wasn’t sure how much Triel knew about the flash transport device, but he was sure that she wasn’t completely ignorant. “He was also trying to circumvent our security measures when they were allowed shore time on Trigos. He proved to be a liability. That was why he was relegated to the outerworlds.”

  “Triel,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. He assumed his most fatherly tone. “We need you here. You are instrumental in our efforts to find and help the surviving telepaths, and your abilities as a Healer are unparalleled by any existing technology. Your dreams of reconnecting are possible, and there are people that care about you. I hope you stay with the Alliance.”

  His conscience bit at him with the seediness of his own words, but speaking partial truths was what he did best. The illusion of sincerity, the illusion of control—he had mastered them at a young age to be in this uniform. He cared about her, but the military did not. And by deceiving her into believing that she was in a safe, protected environment that would cultivate her abilities, he was as guilty as those that gave the orders.

  “Jetta—did you find her? Is she okay?” Triel asked, looking at him with reddened eyes.

  Why Jetta? he wondered, understanding her strong affinity for the twins, but not exactly for the darker of the two. Still, her bond was another means to exploit her, and for her sake he had to use it.

  “She’s back and safe,” he said.

  She let loose a huge sigh of relief. “Thank the Gods. Where was she?”

  “On Old Earth, of all places. She was captured by some Scabbers and controlled by a shock cuff until she managed to break free and contact Jaeia. She’s prepping for a mission right now.”

  “I’ll have to see her,” the Healer said.

  “And she has some good news for you—apparently their brother is back.”

  “What?” Triel exclaimed.

  “I don’t understand the powers of telepaths,” the admiral said with a chuckle, “but if they can cheat death, sign me up. She’ll have to explain it to you.”

  Triel stood up to leave.

  “Sit down, Triel,” he said, his tone changing. “We’re not through just yet.”

  “My punishment.”

  “Yes,” he said, removing a datafile from his uniform jacket. “I’ve spoken with the Minister. Given your previous outstanding record, our tenuous situation with the invading ship and the imminent uprising in the Holy Cities, we’re going to grant you conditional forgiveness. I want you to see a therapist to help with your emotional regulation.”

  “My emotional regulation was affected by the fact that you were torturing of the crew of the Wraith!”

  “I know that’s your reasoning for your actions, Triel, but you have to understand our position. Reht Jagger is a dangerous man. He’s supplied us with valuable information in the past, but he has also sabotaged our ships, compromised the integrity of the Fleet and blackmailed the Minister. It was within our policies, and none of them suffered any physical damage associated with our interrogation methods.”

  Wisely, Triel held her tongue. She, like the twins, knew better than to play her hand too soon.

  At least I’ve secured her safety a little longer.

  But now came the risk of Jetta and Jaeia sharing their knowledge of Reht’s situation with Triel. The sheer unpredictability of the twins’ telepathic powers made erasing their memories far too risky, but their knowledge of the Sleeper program made them a liability. Somehow he would have to make the sisters understand the danger they would put themselves and Triel—and him—in if they told her the truth.

  “There was an emergency Fleet meeting,” he said, handing her the log. “I know it’s not specific to your department, but I wanted you to have a look. I think Jetta has an idea about the type of weapon the Motti are using, and I wanted to run it past you.”

  Triel took it from him, her eyes growing wide as she read the record.

  “What did she say?” Triel said in a hushed voice as she set down the file.

  “That she wasn’t sure, but she had to see it herself. She’s heading out to investigate it with our new scanning parameters and see if she can pick anything up at a closer range.”

  “When is she leaving?” Triel said, standing up quickly, “I have to talk to her right away.”

  “Right now,” the admiral said, pointing to the cosmos.

  “No!” Triel shouted, running to the window. She banged her fists on the glass as the corvette navigated out of the docking bay, cleared the perimeter and initiated the jump cycle.

  “What is it?” the admiral asked, grabbing her by the arm. “What’s wrong?”

  “I think I know what it is, too,” she said, pulling away. Terror-stricken, her voice strangled by the gravity of her belief, she whispered: “Jetta won’t be coming back.”

  JETTA’S CORVETTE HAD just jumped to the next site when Jaeia’s ship was attacked.

  “Report, ensign!” Jaeia shouted as she righted herself in her chair. Two more volleys followed and catapulted her onto the deck.

  Smacking her hands down on the armrests, Jaeia pulled herself back into the command chair, adrenaline coursing through her systems. Smoke blasted down from the vents, making it almost impossible to breathe.

  “Forward engines offline. Primary shield down to 10 percent and secondary to 20 percent!” the ensign manning the helm choked out.

  Jaeia wiped her eyes, but something didn’t feel right. Impulsively, she looked down at her hand. Blood, not sweat, slicked her palm and fingers. She touched her forehead and felt wet, gouged tissue.

  Both stolen and previous experience told her that if she gave this a second thought, she would faint. Gritting her teeth, she gripped the armrests with all her strength. “Helm to my terminal!” she yelled.

  The ensign relayed her manual control of the ship, and she quickly typed in a string of evasive maneuvers as several more missiles grazed their hull.
r />   “Mae dereke ni onanosk,” she prayed in Fiorahian as she tried to gain some distance from their attackers.

  Jaeia counted four unidentified starcraft on the scanner readings on the right of the viewscreen, two of which hid from direct view behind a nebulous cloud of protoplasm.

  “I can’t stop this reaction—we’re going to have to eject the engine core,” the chief of engineering screamed over the internal explosions.

  “Don’t eject the core!” Jaeia shouted back. She crawled over to the engineering relay as the ship rocked starboard. “Ensign, fire everything we have, full spread!”

  She didn’t fault her engineer for not knowing the subroutine and execution of a manual coolant washout. That was a trick she had come up with after synthesizing what she had learned from one of the battle-tested chief technicians aboard the Dominion Core vessels and her uncle’s experience with burnouts on deep core mining ships.

  “Keep an eye on the secondary drives,” Jaeia said to the engineer as she inputted new commands into the relay. “And instruct your crew to start dumping Phadion into the backup valves in case that happens again.”

  Saving the engines won’t mean much if I don’t solve the bigger problem, she thought, checking the scanners. Four starcraft surrounded their vessel, and her ship’s failing shields and damaged reactors gave them little chance in a fight.

  Even if we were up and running, the Rapture, isn’t outfitted for this kind of confrontation, reason countered. Warhawks are used for evasion and speed, and aren’t suited for heavy fire.

  Stolen knowledge merged into her thoughts. Someone must have known we were coming to be able to outclass us like this. They even waited for my sister’s corvette to jump before revealing their position.

  “Commander Kyron,” a voice called over the com. “Pathetic. And you’re supposed to be the best?”

  Urusous Li, she thought, clenching her jaw. His voice, just as snide and arrogant as it was all those months ago when they battled him for the right to command the Alliance Fleet, evoked a deep-seated anger she didn’t know she carried.

  Without breaking composure, Jaeia reached out to her sister for her insight. I need you, she called across the stars, but the connection felt murky and muted.

  I can’t have this now, she thought, but there was no time to investigate the psionic dissonance with Li on her heels.

  “Send an emergency transmission to Central Command,” Jaeia ordered.

  “All network frequencies are jammed, Sir,” the ensign said.

  “Okay. Put him on,” Jaeia said, moving to the center of the bridge.

  Battle strategies from former commanders circulated through her mind as the crewman manning the com terminal converted Li’s audio signal into a holographic projection: Know your enemy. Who is he? What does he want? What are his weaknesses?

  Thinking back, Jaeia tried to recall as much information as she could about the former Alliance prodigy. Li is a phenotypically Asiatic and Reamis, but genetically spliced with many other species.

  There were rumors about his origins—that he was human-hosted or that he was grown in a lab—but the Alliance claimed that many of his files were corrupted after his defection, not that they weren’t already tight-lipped enough about their former prize officer.

  Even though I’ve beaten him once, she thought, I can’t rely on old strategies to do it again. Li is cunning, and he didn’t ascend the Alliance ranks by chance.

  Worst of all, she realized, unable to access more than wisps of his psionic presence. He has apparently been perfecting his Rai Shar.

  “Don’t even try your mind tricks, leech,” Li said. “I’ll end you right now.”

  The emotions of the crew leaked into her mind. They’re frightened, she sensed, but they still have confidence in me, even against impossible odds.

  But after squaring herself against Li, self-doubt ebbed away her aplomb. They need Jetta, not me. I’m not that kind of strategist.

  “Rule number one,” she remembered Jetta explaining after she’d tricked the leader of a child labor gang into giving up his food. “Never let them know you’re afraid.”

  Drawing in a deep breath, Jaeia continued to channel her sister. Jetta would exploit Li’s weakness. That’s what I need to do to save the ship and crew.

  (But I can’t do that—)

  An old memory awakened at the thought.

  “We all do things we’re not proud of,” Jetta said, sharing her stolen bakken with blood-soaked hands. Jaeia remembered how defensive her sister sounded, but how hollow she felt inside, green eyes never meeting hers. “We do these things because we have to survive.”

  Okay, Jaeia thought. To save my crew...

  Jaeia cleared her mind and concentrated on Li’s psionic frequency, hoping to find the chink in his armor, when it dawned on her why accessing his mind was so difficult. Li isn’t aboard any of the ships—he’s commanding remotely, she deduced, sensing a great distance to the source of his tune. He thinks physical separation will give him an advantage.

  Thinking of his personality, she came up with an alternative explanation. Or he doesn’t want to risk actual confrontation.

  Realizing what she needed to do, Jaeia typed in a string of commands to the helmsmen and the engineer.

  “What are you up to these days, Li? There are a lot of people interested in talking to you,” she said, trying to buy some time. She eyed her other crewman, seeing that they picked up on the strategy as the helmsmen input the coordinates and relayed the secondary commands to each terminal.

  “Ending the conflict you started,” he sneered. “The Starways has no place for warmongers like you. My Republic will have peace and order.”

  “Your Republic? You mean your peace and order, your concept of morality, your ethical principles, right? That’s called a dictatorship,” Jaeia replied.

  “It will be a Republic,” he said, just below a shout. “One with a strong military and council. Not your weak-hearted fools like Chancellor Reamon and Minister Razar ruling over a corrupt line of inbred bureaucrats and terrorists.”

  “What’s your plan then? Do you want to kill me and this crew? Capture us? Come on, Li—you’re not that good. You got us with the surprise attack—I’ll give you that. But where you’ve always failed,” Jaeia said, standing up and nodding, “is sealing the deal.”

  Her crew snickered, eliciting the response she wanted from Li. Anger curled his lip and stiffened his posture.

  “I wanted to see the look on your face before I eliminated you, just so I can tell your sister all about it before I eliminate her, too,” he said. “Then the Starways will be free of you bloody leeches once and for all.”

  After catching the eye of her engineer, Jaeia saw the command-ready flashing on her console armrest. Time to play my hand.

  She sat back down and steadied herself on the armrests of her chair. I haven’t gone all-out since I forced Jetta against Jahx... and I swore I would never use my talents like that again.

  (What are you doing?) her conscience screamed, reminding her of all the sleepless nights haunted by her brother’s shriek and the sound of millions of voices blinking out into starless oblivion.

  The only thing I know.

  “Li, you’re forgetting something,” she said, driving back her fear with thoughts of her crew. Allowing her mind to extend away from herself, Jaeia homed in on the tiny thread of a connection between his voice and his body light years away. She reached back and in, through the dimensions folded into a spaceless void. “You can’t see me.”

  Her second voice reverberated back at her, a driving force much stronger than she remembered. She cupped her ears, unable to withstand the noise of the aftershock.

  “Your pathetic mind games are useless on me, leech!” he shouted, terminating their communications. Despite the severance, she felt her talent latch on, splintering his mind with the deception she had implanted.

  “Release the module,” she shouted as the enemy starcraft recharged their we
apons. “Fire!”

  Her crewman responded, catapulting the TX4-module filled with high-density gases and phasic neutrino fields. When the disrupter fire from her ship ignited the timing capsule, the compressed gas detonated, shooting out the smokescreen she needed for their cover. Still locked into the guidance system, she slammed on the primary engines as the module exploded, angling them away from the targeting arms of the enemy ships.

  The synergy of the gases and the phasic neutrino fields overloaded the navigational systems and visual displays, but with their course laid in and executed prior to the TX4 explosion, the warhawk stayed on trajectory.

  Blinded and dislocated by the generated anomaly, Jaeia had assumed that the ships trapped within the smokescreen would have anchored until the event dissipated, but she hadn’t anticipated the impact her second voice would have on Li.

  “Sir, they’re firing on each other,” the ensign reported.

  Jaeia closed her eyes, the weight in her chest crushing her heart. Not wanting her crew to see her pain, she pushed the wave of emotion back as the vaporous cloud erupted with gunfire.

  I didn’t want Li to find us, but I didn’t want this!

  She heard her brother’s voice in her head as clear as it had been years ago: We can’t control our talents, so we must never use them against others.

  And she heard her own voice admonishing Jetta from years past: It’s too dangerous—it isn’t a gift, it’s a curse.

  (Yet I’ve killed once again.)

  As she watched the enemy ships destroy each other, she relived old nightmares: Freshly gnawed, bloody stumps from the crazed junkie waving in her face, the sweet, beefy smell of his flesh twisting her stomach. The dead eyes, open and unseeing, of the boy she had tricked into finishing her job aboard the mining ship following her no matter where she ran.

  That was on Fiorah, she told herself, I have more control now—

  Guilt dragged her forward in time, forcing her to see herself once more at Jetta’s side in the medical bay: Jaeia held her sister down as her twin’s mind fractured against the truth of what she had done at the battle of the Homeworld Perimeter, sending her spiraling into a dark abyss.