“I can’t let you go, Warchild. You are a danger to yourself and others. I know what you’re thinking of doing to these men,” Victor said, his holographic image coming up from behind her. “Let me help you. Stay and conquer this common enemy.”
Jetta winced as the Healer’s cry intensified in the back of her mind. Jetta!
Time slowed as a dark implosion stripped away the last of her control. With superhuman speed she watched herself tear into the jugular of the nearest soldier with the knife hidden in her sleeve. The other troops fired shots that grazed her shoulder and side, but she wrenched the soldier she had assaulted around to shield herself from the fire. She dragged him along with her as she drew her gun and fired back, her aim deadly and precise, embers of cold hatred giving her focus.
Jetta was outnumbered, and the gunshots were beginning to rip apart the soldier she was using for cover. She dumped him and somersaulted behind a statue of Stalin, repacking her ammo cartridge as fragments of stone and marble exploded all around her.
Jetta! Triel’s voice was fading, and Jetta grimaced as she strained to maintain the Healer’s psionic tune in her mind.
Conflicting feelings tore at her as she fired back, trying to buy herself a few precious seconds to think. She needed to help her friend quickly, and the only way to do that was to indulge the dark appetite gnawing at her mind. But she didn’t have time to use her talent.
A smile pinched the corners of her mouth, if only for a second, as she closed her eyes. She hadn’t done something like this in a long time, not after the last time proved so deadly. But that’s what she was hoping for now.
(Let them feel your suffering.)
Jetta screamed, surprising herself, as she released the violent torrent pent up inside her. The psionic riptide magnified as her unwanted emotions swept through each soldier, knocking them off their feet.
Gods—
As she watched them writhe on the ground, terror gripped her heart. Inhuman gurglings rang out over their headsets as she heard their thoughts, mangled by her emotion, turn savage.
Victor’s holographic projection stood behind the complement of soldiers as they turned on each other, his face unreadable, though Jetta could have sworn she heard him laughing. Helmets and gear flew across the room in a chaotic jumble. Soldiers ripped through each other’s armor, drenching the floor in blood and sinew as splintered teeth sank into skin and eyes, devoured by hatred and carnal thirst, searching for something they could not find.
Jetta scooted away in a panic, heart hammering against her breastbone, knocking into a statuette as she scrambled for the exit. Someone was at her heels, snarling and gnashing his teeth as she dove through the double doors. She spun around, drawing her gun and firing at her assailant as she landed hard on her back.
With the wind knocked out of her, she couldn’t recover quickly enough to avoid him. The soldier landed on top of her, his warm blood dripping down her cheek, dead weight crushing her ribs.
She shoved him off but quickly resumed cover underneath his body when she saw the sentinels, alerted to her movement, arming their pods. She was less than twenty meters from her ship, but there were at least a dozen sentinels emerging from their hiding spots.
“Jeka sheaod om frerecka,” she cursed in Fiorahian, trying to remain motionless.
The soldier’s weight on her chest made it difficult to breathe. To make matters worse, she could sense more of them approaching. Then she got an idea.
As quietly as she could, she unpinned one of her detonators and shoved it into the waistband of the soldier on top of her. As she readied to launch him towards the sentinels, she heard him moan. His only remaining eye fluttered open, his shredded lips moving without sound. She gripped his harness with all her might as wisps of his essence seeped into her awareness. She didn’t want to feel his pain, didn’t want to know that his three children stationed on the base with his wife. She didn’t want to hear his laughter or taste his sorrow.
With a scream she pushed him hard off of her, sending him flying into the cluster of sentinels. She shielded herself from the explosion as his body disintegrated into red mist and a confetti of tissue raining down in every direction. The sentinels, confused and disoriented by the chaotic motion, fired randomly at the fragments of flesh as she bolted for her ship.
Something sour rose in her throat as she initiated her emergency flight plan. The sentinels redirected their fire at her as the engines flared to life, but she raised her shields, nullifying their hits.
Jetta knew she had been injured by the soldiers and sentinels, but she refused to dwell on them as she watched the few soldiers that had survived her psionic assault spill out of the building. They took aim at her, but she was already a thousand meters above the landing site. Still intoxicated by her rage, they redirected their fire at the sentinels, and the robotic guardians, programmed for defense, fired back, killing the remainder of Victor’s squad.
A chill settled in her chest as she laid in a course for Alliance territory. She had wanted to jump in the stratosphere, but out of the corner of her eye she spotted the JAG fighters darting in and out of the mist, quickly approaching her position. She was still too close to the city to avoid casualties, and she would definitely obliterate Victor’s collection of Earth artifacts.
Jetta looked up as the lead JAG fighter banked sharply towards her, the tips of its razor guns hot and primed. Without hesitation, she hit the punch.
“JETTA, NO!” JAEIA SCREAMED. She sat up, racking her head against an overhead swing light, and then quickly pitched backwards. Someone caught her, easing her back down.
“Sir, you’ve got a concussion. Please hold still.”
Waves of nausea threatened to empty her stomach of its contents, but she swallowed hard and focused on her breathing. She touched her forehead, where a nasty gash was in the preliminary stages of being closed.
“Where am I? Where’s my sister?” she said, squinting under the bright exam light.
A medic popped into view with a sterilization/dermabond biopen in hand. “You’re aboard the Jinluko II, a medical frigate. You were drifting in your gear just off the port bow when we rescued you.”
“And Jetta?”
The medic pushed Jaeia’s hand away from her head and activated the biopen. “I don’t know about Commander Kyron’s location, Sir.”
Jaeia listened to the hum of the biopen as she tried to collect her wits. She closed her eyes and grimaced, faintly aware of the medic asking her about her pain.
This isn’t over yet—she had said to Jetta. And then pain. She was aware of Jetta’s voice—I’m afraid it is for me... Goodbye, Jaeia—but her body was unresponsive, her mind drifting in and out of consciousness as her sister ejected her from their starcraft.
Jetta had hit her. Hard. Enough to render Jaeia unconscious long enough to let her take the ship. Jaeia knew she should feel something—fear, anger, hurt—but the shock of it had stripped away her ability to comprehend.
Then she realized why. It had been her longstanding fear that Jetta would turn on everyone, including herself, but Jaeia had always placated herself by thinking that she and Jahx could keep Jetta from becoming blinded by conviction. But something had happened when Jetta had tried to glean thoughts off Victor’s mind, tearing her away from Jaeia’s sight, leaving Jetta alone to face whatever was in that dark hollow of a place.
Tears formed beneath her closed eyelids, and she stretched her mind out into the neuroelectric plane. Jetta hovered on the horizon of her mind, a steady, low thrum in the thunderous noise of the collective pulse, but she was there. Her usual tune was muffled, distorted and layered within itself as if she was trying to pull away.
Jaeia opened her eyes again. “What is the status of this ship?”
The medic, a human, was transparent to Jaeia, the confidence in her voice betrayed by uncensored emotion. “We’ve reestablished auxiliary drives, but the navigational systems are blown. Last report I heard was that a tow was on its way. It may
be thirty hours or more before we can make port.”
Jaeia grabbed a handheld scanner with a chrome frame and looked her reflection. The gash was still an angry pink, but the wound was closed. “Thanks for patching me up. I have to speak to your captain.”
“Sir, I’m not finished—”
Jaeia sat up but stopped short of jumping off the table when the vertigo hit.
Help me...
It was Triel’s voice. Little bumps rose on her skin as a nebulous feeling of dread pervaded her chest. Something was very wrong with the Healer.
“I have to speak to your captain. I need to get back to base.”
The medic held up her chin and waved a light in her eyes. “The captain’s dead. Lieutenant Biggs from engineering took charge. I still need to keep an eye on you, so please stay here and I’ll ring him up.”
Jaeia stayed put as the medic went to a com access. Jetta, where are you? Triel needs us. Jetta...
No response. The vice grip of panic seized her chest and spread out through her body in violent shivers. I don’t want to be alone.
If Triel was to Fall, if Jetta was to turn against her—if Jahx didn’t make it—
Please, Jaeia said, gripping the edge of the exam table with white knuckles. Don’t abandon me, Jetta. I can’t do this without you. Please!
The room’s walls began to fluctuate, the pulsing of the monitors bending into the distance. Jaeia tried to stay upright, but her body toppled over as she submerged somewhere between worlds, into a place she had tried to forget.
The suns baked the cracked and blistered cement, burning her exposed feet. Jaeia hobbled over to an overflowing refuse station and held her nose as she fished the soggy cardboard box out of the heap of rotting trash. Leaning against the rim of the dumpster, she gingerly wrapped her feet in cardboard, tying it down with a scrap of plastic she’d found dangling from a torn garbage bag.
(Why am I here?) she thought to herself. She was back on Fiorah, in an alleyway leading to the main drag. It was close to midday, the suns glaring down on her with contempt. Across the street Galm and Lohien were bartering with a pigeon dealer in a cramped scrap metal booth littered with feathers and bird droppings. Jetta and Jahx huddled near the corner of the east building, hiding from the passing crowd as they waited for their aunt and uncle.
Her siblings wore improvised shoes too, the soles fashioned from the piece of red polyurethane rubber they had found weeks ago in a vehicle repossession compound. There had only been enough for two pairs, so they rotated who wore them. Lately, though, Jaeia had started refusing her turn. Jahx’s feet were nothing but blisters, and Jetta’s looked infected.
“How’s it going?” she heard herself say as she trotted up to them.
Jahx shook his head. “Not well. The dealer won’t give Lohien anything for her hens.”
Jaeia remembered. Lohien was selling off most of her females after Yahmen cut Galm’s wages again. It was right before he took Lohien away and put them all to work in the mines.
Jahx looked up, squinting against the glare of the suns. “There’s trouble coming.”
The fear she had experienced so long ago bloomed fresh inside her as Jahx’s premonitions crept into her awareness like prickly heat. What they were doing was dangerous, with Galm such a hated man after reclaiming the inheritance that Yahmen had taken from him. Sharks, bosses, underhanders, streetwalkers, and Meatheads—they all wanted a cut of flesh from the Drachsi brother with the title to the mines that were sinking the local economy.
Jetta was the first to spot the gang members, red bandanas tied around their forearms, as they insidiously gathered around the booth. Galm, seemingly oblivious to anything but the argument, stood by his wife silently as she got in the dealer’s face.
Jaeia tried to warn her sister this time, but it was a memory, and there was nothing she could do to change the past. Jetta took off like before, winding through the crowd, screaming for their uncle. Jahx took off too, catching Jetta and pulling her away just before one of the gang members pulled a knife out of his boot and lunged for Galm. Alerted to the assault, Galm grabbed Lohien and whipped her away as two more came from behind.
In the tangle of fists, Galm was thrown to the ground. Jaeia saw the glint of a knife before the milling crowd blotted out the scene, and Lohien’s scream, desperate and high-pitched, cut through the city noise like a razor.
Fear rooted her to the cement. She tried to speak, but her voice was caught in her throat.
(Jetta—Jahx—)
Pain racked her skull as the churning crowd knocked one of her siblings to the ground. The dealer pulled out a rifle and fired off shots, sending the crowd into a frenzy. She couldn’t see Galm or Lohien, and her siblings were lost in the scattering crowd as other Sentients drew weapons and gunfire exploded in every direction.
A streetwalker, caught in the crossfire, gurgled as a bullet ripped through her chest. She stumbled towards Jaeia, arms outstretched, eyes frantic and pleading, before collapsing at Jaeia’s feet, her frothing blood mixing with the yellow runoff that trickled down the alley channel.
Run, Jaeia! Jetta cried as a stray bullet struck the building next to her, spraying pieces of red brick against Jaeia’s face.
She crouched down, squeezing herself against the building while shielding her eyes as more bullets zipped past. She couldn’t leave her family in the midst of the riot, but if a bullet didn’t kill her, the stampeding Sentients might. People were tearing each other down in the alley as they tried to evade the gunfire.
“You!”
Dirty hands grabbed her by the armpits, slamming her against the brick wall. Foul breath steamed from his mouth, and his wild eyes, glazed white from his choice of flavor, portended violent hunger.
“It’s all your fault! All your fault, stupid launnie!”
Jaeia didn’t know who the human-like Tamesikoid was, and she was pretty sure that he didn’t know who she was, but through the haze of chemicals he was certain of her crime. His hands dug into her skin, and he slammed her into the wall again, spit spraying her face with each word. “I’m going to carve you up, little launnie!”
No one was there to help her. She was all alone in the surrounding chaos of the riot. She turned her face away as he licked his lips, his psionic tune slimy and rank, burrowing into her mind like wriggling fungal worms. He was going to hurt her. He was going to make her squeal.
It was the first time her talent had been provoked, something that she had repressed all these years. Jaeia tried to look away from the memory, but it slammed into her with hypersonic force.
“Take your hands off!” she screamed, her voice multi-pitched and oddly foreign.
The junkie’s hands flew off her, and she fell down into the pile of trash below. She looked up in time to see him regarding his hands in horror before sinking his teeth into one of his wrists. She heard his cries through wet gnawing as he bit into soft flesh, blood bubbling over his lips and down his neck.
Jaeia ran. The cardboard shoes flew off as she tore down the alleyway and through the crush of Sentients, dodging the arms, legs, tentacles, and other appendages that knocked into her as she raced back to their apartment. Molten fear numbed the pains in her feet as she ran across the heated asphalt, leaping over a massive Toork as stray bullets felled people left and right.
No matter how much distance she put between herself and the junkie, she could still feel his panic and taste his pain as he tore away his own flesh.
(What have I done?)
She rounded the empty parking lot, darting past the twitching homeless in cardboard homes, and scrambled up the grated stairwell of their drab-faced apartment building. In her panic, she lost her footing and cut her chin on one of the stairs.
Heaving for breath, she slammed the door to their apartment behind her, pushing their stack of cots in front of the door before diving under the couch. Shaking, the sullied after-presence of the junkie still in her mind, his body odor still ripe in her nose, she made herself as s
mall as possible underneath the couch.
Tears burst forth when she tried to slow her breathing, and, still fearful of being followed, she muffled her cries with her hands. She cried out silently to her siblings, trying to find them, tears leaving streaks down her dirty face. Blood from her chin dripped onto the carpet as she desperately searched for a familiar tune, but she couldn’t calm herself enough to listen. She was certain of it—her family had been killed. Her parents, her siblings—dead—and she had run away like a coward. She was alone.
(Please,) Jaeia cried, pulling away from the memory.
“Please,” her younger self whispered, squeezing her eyes shut, “please come back. I’m sorry—I’m sorry!”
Hours passed as she lay curled up underneath the couch. Rats scurried along the floor, pausing to sniff in her direction before scampering off. Her chin had stopped bleeding, but her face was a sticky mess of dried blood and debris from her hiding spot. Her feet throbbed, and her neck and body ached from her cramped position, but she didn’t dare move. The junkie with his bloody stumps was there, waiting for her, calling her into the shadows, into the lonely darkness that lay beyond her tiny sanctuary.
“Jetta!” Jaeia screamed, grabbing blindly in front of her. She caught a fistful of hair, but quickly let go when she realized where she was. The medic looked panicked, holding her down as a doctor pressed an adrenaline booster into her arm. Her heart kicked into overdrive, making her inhale so hard she thought her lungs would burst.
She grabbed the doctor by his collar, her words coming between breaths. “Get... me... to Central Command.”
“Pass the word to Biggs,” the doctor ordered, gently removing himself from Jaeia’s grip.
“But Sir—we have our orders from Central Command.”
“Which Commander Kyron has the authority to override in an emergency.”
The medic ran back to the com access and talked hurriedly over the line as the doctor turned back to her with a queer sort of understanding in his wrinkled face.
“Don’t worry, Sir. She came back before, and she’ll come back again,” he said, rolling up his sleeve. Tattooed on his forearm was a series of barcodes. He quickly pulled his sleeve down when he saw the look of shock on her face; it was the first time she had encountered a registered telepath who had lived through the Dissembler Scare.
Triorion Omnibus Page 88
