The Beauty of Our Weapons

by Jilly Paddock

  Zenni mimed a grimace. Doesn’t it smack a little of sadomasochism, to maim yourself just for effect?

  All part of the game. With ice-cold certainty I realised that I’d met Druj twice in the mountain-city proper, when the archdemon had lurked behind the eyes of a medium called Amethyst Treebone, in a flash of violent spite, speaking in riddles, and again when he’d briefly possessed the irritating SantDenis, to tease, frighten and make me a present of an extinct alien weed. The words tickled in my memory like his cruel laughter—‘little miss’—and all three of them had called me that.

  “You left Draoi injured?” Michael queried. “Why not dead?”

  “He was weak—he’d lost a lot of blood. Maybe the man was tougher than I thought and managed to escape. It wouldn’t be a great loss if the Tambou authorities never found him; the cult has been mopped up and Nansi was the driving force of mayhem behind the movement. Draoi was only a figurehead, and now that the hero has fallen from grace even the staunchest of his supporters won’t be too eager to help him gain the throne a second time.”

  “A hero falls and a heroine rises, except that she’s too modest to tell us the whole tale!” Collins sneered.

  Some nuance of his tone raised the hairs on the back of my neck and at my bidding, Zenni scanned him. Beneath the table in his hidden left hand was a mass of metal and plastics, which my partner rapidly identified—an impact-syringe.

  Does he really think he can take us down with that? I wondered, snapping back to catch the tail-end of Chandre’s second plea for information. “You can’t draw me out, either of you. What happened in Lowkrys is between me and 4013, and there it stays!”

  “At least tell me how you broke our coma!” She pressed.

  “God was out to lunch, so I made a pact with the Devil.”

  Chandre scowled at me. “Did you bring back an antidote from your second trip to the planet? The nurse on ICU said that you’d given us something, but she wouldn’t be more specific, in fact, she was just as close-mouthed as you and Lyall.”

  “No amount of pressure, well-intentioned or otherwise, will induce me to talk.” I stole the lines from Jeb. “It’s all too fresh to trample over and dissect like this. 4013 and I suffered in the underworld of Krystallya—our wounds are still open and raw. In time, perhaps, I’ll tell you the all of it, but not now. It’s too painful. I’m in denial and I prefer to avoid thinking about it.”

  “You don’t seem to understand us.” Michael leaned back in his seat, his face concealed by a patch of shadow as a cloud obscured the sun. His voice was level and controlled, yet his emotions balanced on a razor’s edge. “Your preferences don’t enter into it. You’re an agent of Earth Intelligence and you’re facing the two highest commanders of that organisation. When we order you to jump, you should ask ‘how high?’ and when we order you to make a report on your mission, you should damn well make that report!”

  “I know who you are, Michael, but you don’t recognise me. Forget that I’m Anna, the agent at the peak of your whimsical little pecking order, and see who I really am. I have control of Delany Corp, with all the executive power that implies.” Nemesis was close now and I watched for his reaction. “I can recall the leases on any of our hardware—even the Zenith series isn’t exempt. Tell me, where would all of your expensive, highly-trained agent-pairs be without their electronic partners?”

  “You don’t have the muscle to do that!” He kept his nerve—just. “You’re bluffing!”

  “You’re playing a dangerous game, Michael.” Chandre warned. “With such inspired handling of our most successful operative, you might push her into carrying out that threat—and she can do it—believe me, I’ve read the small print. While EI could certainly function without pairs, it would put us at a considerable disadvantage.”

  “You’ve always been too soft with her, but I refuse to be intimidated by one of my staff.” Collins raised his cup as if to drink, then his defences came down with a thud and a single word flamed in his forebrain. Now!

  He hurled the coffee into my face, but I’d expected that and swept it aside. The table overturned as both of us sprang up, flinging chairs and crockery every which way. Chandre yelled, toppling from her seat to make an undignified landing in the wreckage of our breakfast. I let Collins make his next move and, as predictable as ever, he fired the contents of his syringe after the coffee. Once again I blocked the liquid, snagging a small portion for Zenni’s analysis pod. Realisation that none of the drug had reached me crossed Michael’s face, wiping out the joy of his anticipated victory. He fumbled in his pocket for a second capsule to reload his weapon.

  Why did he warn me he was attacking? I twisted the syringe out of his hands as I shaped the internal question. Michael made a grab for it and I threw it at the wall. Was he calling for help?

  Perhaps, Zenni said grimly. I have the analysis now. It’s water, Anna, ordinary, unadulterated tap water!

  Before I could react, the real trap was sprung. With impeccable timing, Collins’s agent materialised at my right elbow, discharging another impact-syringe into the side of my neck, the drug-laden one this time, not Collins’s dummy. She wasn’t any of the pairs I’d met, a chestnut-haired woman with a tip-tilted nose and sepia eyes set in an open, amiable face. In other circumstances I might have liked her—now I lifted my hand to ward her off and she stepped back hastily, doubt flooding into those bottomless eyes. I wondered how long it had taken Collins to talk her into this mission.

  “Thank you, Cathay.” Michael straightened his jacket with a shrug. “You see, Chandre, even your wonderful prime-pair can be outwitted. No agent is invulnerable—”

  I went for his throat, curling the fingers of my good hand into claws—I think I even growled. He was lucky that my fury left no room for rational thought, that my instant reaction was physical not psychic, or his brain would have been pulp. He was luckier still that the drug-cocktail worked very fast, pole-axing my muscle control so that I fell heavily across the upset table, breaking glasses and plates beneath me, or I’d have done more than scratch his face.

  “Bitch!” Collins scrubbed at the shallow cut, wishing me dead. At his direction the woman he’d called Cathay hauled me out of the mess, dumping me back in the chair. A sliver of glass had sliced the material of my suit, gashing my shin. I watched thick blood ooze through a smear of strawberry jam with a distant, detached fascination. My wrists were pulled behind me and tied to the chair’s back, a move I tolerated with an unholy lack of concern. Something was knocking in the back of my skull, yet I paid it no attention. Even when my hair was jerked downwards and my head was tugged back, I felt no anger. I swam out of a sedated haze to look up into Michael’s face.

  “Vicious to the last!” He’d pulled my hair so hard that a clump had come out and he threw it into the trash on the floor. “It won’t do you any good fighting our drugs. They’re tailored precisely to block your psionics, render all of your voluntary muscles as floppy as wet string and make you want to talk nicely to your Uncle Michael. It’s a wonderful package—Beth Ayres put it together, and I swear that woman is a genius! No, don’t speak until I give you permission. I want the full story behind both of your trips to Tambouret, everything in detail, times, events, full descriptions of people and places, all you can remember, leaving nothing out. Now, you may speak.”

  I didn’t want to answer, but the drugs ate at my will. I had to bite my tongue to keep from speaking aloud. Zenni, are you still there?

  Nothing’s passing the link, but our telepathy’s still good.

  Get me out of here! I can’t focus enough to teleport—you’ll have to handle it.

  You aren’t under deep enough. Your life signs are reading far too healthy for me to assume control. He tried not to sound scared. Don’t try the jump yourself. Part of the debrief formula distorts perception, and if you teleport blind you could injure yourself or worse.

  “Come along, Anna—I’m waiting,” Michael said sweetly. “Talk.”

  It was a
gony not to obey. “No. Curse you for a bastard and the son of a whore, Collins, but I’ll not give you the satisfaction of winning!”

  His mouth tightened in an ugly line. “Cathay, give her another dose.”

  “I gave her a double shot to start with, according to your instructions.” Her voice was a musical soprano with traces of sympathy. “Is it safe to give her more?”

  “Don’t argue, just do it!”

  “I forbid it!” Chandre shouted. “Michael, of all of your idiotic schemes, this has to be the dumbest!”

  “Administer the drug, Cathay.” Collins nodded at the woman. “You are aware of the conditions I set up for this assignment? Total obedience to me alone or I give the command to pull the plug on your Zenith. The choice is yours.”

  My neck suffered again under the second load. I tried to expel the molecules, but there were too many kinds, a swirl of compounds that I ‘saw’ as a dance of multi-coloured fragments, filmy and indistinct. My head began to swim and I was caught up in the icy grip of compulsion. It would be so easy to tell everything and my resolve not to was being eroded by the second. I waited with increasing dread for Michael to speak.

  “Now, Anna, that ought to loosen your tongue. Begin your story.”

  I didn’t dare put my denial into words. Silence was my only refuge and that lane of escape was rapidly turning into a dead-end. Sweat poured from my forehead and into my eyes as I fought against the drug, but it was too swift, cruel and insidious. I knew I was beaten, and to be defeated by this hateful, pig-headed little man was more than I could bear.

  “Speak, woman!” Collins slapped me, twice, three times. “No-one can stand up to dosages like this, not even you!”

  “Leave her alone!” Chandre caught his arm and he shook her off.

  “I won’t speak! Never, not to you! I will not be broken by you!” I gritted my teeth, weeping with the effort of resisting. Collins loomed over me, a bulky shadow ringed with a halo of light, like an avenging angel.

  It’s an optical illusion, Zenni said. Your pupils have dilated due to the effects of the drugs and they’re now larger than the polarised area of your lenses. Collins is just a stupid, little man. Hold out against him!

  I laughed at that, at my loyal computer spouting logic at a time like this. The sound infuriated Collins and his answer was to hit me again. Without TK to turn the blow, it rattled my teeth. The drug had turned my will to water and my body to jelly, but I lifted my head to look at him. His smirk at the promise of victory turned like a knife in my heart and woke the ice-cold embers of my anger. Behind Collins, the sky framed in the window had turned ink-black. Distant lightning stirred the shadows of the room and the following thunder grumbled through my bones.

  “Go to hell, Michael!” I said softly. “I did, and after that I’d rather die than be bettered by a imbecile like you!”

  Collins waved a hand to bring the lights up in the room, then his gaze darted to Cathay. “Read her! Her defences should be weak enough by now. Take the data directly from her mind!”

  The woman’s eyes widened, but the threat he held over her gave her no option. Her first probe carried little weight yet it swayed my walls, a measure of the whittling away of my power by the drugs. Pride shrieked that she was no match for me, that I was number one and she only third in line, while sense maintained that her next attempt would throw down my walls—invasion was imminent. I saw the birth of confidence in her aura as she came in for the final attack and knew that sense would prevail.

  “No!” I screamed the word out loud as my shields folded, stripping me as naked as a psi-zero. Cathay walked into my head—just walked in, as bold as you please, where nobody had ever dared to venture uninvited. She smiled at the ease of it and, unopposed, swept down into my subvocal levels and beyond, to loot my memory.

  The shock of unasked-for intrusion was too much for any drug to damp down. The embers exploded into flame, a bomb-burst of incandescent fury as deadly as any high-yield nuke, and I expelled her with a violence that was just short of damaging her mind.

  Zenni tried to put the brakes on, flailing against the blast, but the firestorm of my pent-up hatred and rage was too much for him to stop. I struck out blindly, tapping my darkest, direst resources and hurling them forth. Even in the depths of that insanity I held back some of that awful power, careful not to injure or kill, avoiding the minds of friends and allies, and mindful of the need to conserve some energy. The blow lasted for a fraction of a second and then ceased.

  I shook my head to rid it of the last vestige of the drugs’ effects, what little had survived the hurricane. Inexplicably, my hands were free. All of the lights in the room had been quenched and I peered through storm-dark twilight. To my right, the sound of sobbing issued from the indistinct heap that was Cathay. She was on her knees, curled over and clutching her stomach. My assault had fractured her link with her complement-pair and her weeping was due to the shock of that, not hurt. A distant, lonely alarm siren howled dismally in the corridor.

  The crunch of china underfoot called my attention up front. Collins was sprawled on his back, unconscious, blood trickling from his nose—I’d left him alive. Chandre bent beside his inert body, finding a pulse-point. When she raised her head, her face was a vivid white triangle caught in a brief burst of lightning.

  “He’s out cold.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, her mind on the rim of panic. She didn’t comprehend what had happened, didn’t realise that I was the source. “Are we under attack? What in hell’s going on?”

  “There’s no attack.”

  As I spoke, the emergency systems kicked in. The alarm died and a diffuse red light drove out the darkness. Around us the building hummed with confusion and chaos, with shouting and the clatter of running feet resounding in the corridors, but in here the air was tight with silence.

  Chandre stood up slowly. “Anna, what did you do?”

  “Hit out at everything.” Suddenly I felt sick, scarcely able to stand. Please, Goddess, don’t let anyone be dead!

  The comm-link bleeped, startling both of us. Chandre picked her way over to the desk to answer. “Chandre Marteen, Operations head. No, I’m afraid you can’t speak to Dr Collins. He’s unconscious and we need medical help for him. Please give me your report.” She listened intently, her elfin face grave, until the flow of information abated. “You’re sure that the chaos is confined to this building? Good, that makes the explanations easier. No, it isn’t an enemy attack, nor sabotage, and, no, I can’t speculate on its cause, but I can assure you there’s no further danger. Send medical teams wherever necessary and call up the engineers to get the repairs moving. You’ve dispatched a medic to us? Thank you, and out.”

  “What damage did I do?” I demanded, as she dropped the handset into its cradle and sank back into the chair. “Is anyone hurt?”

  “Anna, you don’t appreciate your full potential.” Her tone was light but her eyes were hollow, like holes in a skull. Her terror cowered between us like a beaten dog. “You’ve disabled half of EI at a stroke! No serious casualties have been reported as yet, but you fused all the lights, threw every computer off-line and blew every power circuit in the building. Only the comm-lines and the emergency power-links are intact.”

  “I didn’t realise what I was doing.” I confessed. “When she came into my head... oh, she was as gentle as she could be, but it was forced entry all the same, and I couldn’t submit to it! That was my only thought—the rest was automatic.”

  The medics chose that moment to arrive. Chandre waved them through to the fallen and I declined an offer of treatment for my cuts and bruises from one of the group. Beth Ayres was close on the heels of her team.

  “Don’t tell me you had a hand in this?” She glared at me. “I might have known!”

  “Do you have a status report?” Chandre asked. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Nobody’s on the critical list. In the panic a few idiots fell over in the dark, spraining wrists and twisting ankles, nothing serious.
All of the staff are shaken, with complaints of nausea, nose-bleeds and headaches piling in from all departments. The worse affected were the agent-pairs. Every operational Zenith inside the building was thrown off-line and I’ve four human partners in varying degrees of shock and hysteria on my ward.” Her glance flickered over Cathay. “Make that five. My first thought was that we’d been hit by some unconventional low-frequency sound weapon, then I realised that certain key people remained unscathed, Lyall, my nurse on ICU and myself.”

  “She spared me as well.” Chandre paused as some of the team carried Collins out and the last one escorted Cathay. “Michael devised a complicated scheme to pump Anna full of debrief potion. That unfortunate child was his accomplice.”

  “I didn’t mean to harm her.” I insisted. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I deliberately held back to avoid that!”

  “That was holding back?” Beth whistled. “Jee-sus, I’d hate to be around when you get real mad! Could you give us some warning next time, so we can evacuate the entire West Coast?”

  “There won’t be a repeat of this.” Chandre’s assurance was grim. “I’ve warned Michael time and time again about using his strongarm tactics on the likes of Anna. He only gets away with it on the other pairs by walking a delicate tightrope of conditioning and mindwipe.”

  “He has me dope them, so they can’t hit back.” Loathing for that part of her duties laced Beth’s aura with heliotrope. “Knocked back to psi-zero and so punch-drunk on tranks that they couldn’t overpower a newborn baby!”

  Chandre scowled. “Don’t you think I hate it too? It’s the way we’ve always done things, and Michael feels safer keeping to tradition. His attitude is a throwback to Jansen’s days at EI, when the pairs were kept on a tighter rein, but with the growing power of the Zeniths and the need to give our agents more autonomy, that isn’t possible, and Michael’s a damned fool to attempt it. There was always the chance that one of the pairs would rebel and cause some real damage, but my money was always on you, Anna. Why do you think I kept Training off your back for so long? I didn’t like to imagine what you could do under provocation. I can’t blame you for what’s happened. Michael pushed you too far, trying to bludgeon information out of you. I can only thank the powers that be that we’ve got off so lightly!”