Vari's Choices

by Laura Jo Phillips

  “Has the Leaper’s status been verified?” Kai asked.

  “Yes, it has,” Garen replied. “The two ships closest to the coordinates were small cruisers. They reported no sign of the Leaper, no debris, and no sign of battle, but they didn’t possess the equipment to do more than that. About an hour later a Lonkree battleship reached the area and did a full scan. They reported clear signs of a ship having veered away from the shipping lane and transmitted the coordinates which we’ve sent you.”

  “They didn’t attempt to follow the particulate trail?” Jay asked.

  “They did not,” Garen replied, his golden eyes flashing.

  “We can detect and follow the trail, Highness, but as you know, this is not a battleship,” Declan said.

  “The Leaper carries approximately fifteen thousand souls, including a large number of families with children,” Garen said. “More than three thousand children, in fact, according to the Inter-System Transit Authority’s passenger manifest. The last thing we need is a battleship. The Bihotza is exactly what we do need.” His eyes returned to Vari. “It’s my understanding that, even though your jammers are not functioning, your shield is now strong enough to protect you.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Vari said, instantly understanding the reason for the question. Her mouth went dry, but she revealed no sign of it. “Declan, Jay, and Kai shared their power with me. It’s even better than the jammers.”

  Garen’s gaze shifted to Declan and held for a long moment. Declan had no trouble whatsoever interpreting the silent message in his cousin’s eyes, and he nodded a bare fraction to acknowledge it. Garen took a deep breath and shifted his gaze back to Vari even though his next words were not for her.

  “In addition to your other orders, Commander Declan, you are to locate the Leaper and, while avoiding detection, close within transport range, then transport Vari over. One of you will have to accompany her in order to maintain the shield she requires.”

  Garen’s gaze remained on Vari, who returned his stare steadily. Declan, Jay and Kai watched, but they had no idea what their silent exchange meant. Vari nodded to Garen once before looking at her father.

  “I have every faith in you, Daughter,” he said gruffly. “Nevertheless, you will be extraordinarily careful. Consider that an order.”

  “Yes, Ata,” Vari said quietly. “I promise.”

  “We do not understand this,” Declan said, fighting to hold his emotions at bay. “Why should we transport Vari to the Leaper? She’s not a warrior. We are. One of us, or all of us, will go in her stead.”

  Garen arched a brow at Declan, then flicked his eyes to Vari, who shook her head almost imperceptibly. “There are reasons for our orders, Declan. More than that is not mine to say.”

  Declan took a moment to study Vari carefully. She was calm, composed, and completely unsurprised by Garen’s order that she be transported to a ship he and Faron suspected was held by Doftles.

  “It’s clear to us that there is much going on that we don’t understand,” he said, his eyes still fixed on Vari.

  “There is,” Garen agreed. “You may tell them what you will, Vari.” She nodded, but Declan, Jay, and Kai all felt her relief. Knowing that she wanted to tell them what was really going on helped to ease their escalating tension.

  When Garen spoke again, his voice, tone, and even his manner was different. “Vari, I would speak to you now as your godfather who loves you very much.”

  Vari tensed, and the Dracon-Bats shifted closer to her without being aware of it. “Yes, Uncle Garen?”

  “You have two gifts, one from the Creators, the other from Lariah. The time has come for you to fully accept both.”

  Vari stiffened. “Is that an order, Uncle Garen?”

  “No, Vari, it’s not an order,” Garen replied with a sad smile. “It’s a request. A very strenuous request. We would have you armed with every weapon available to you.”

  “Ata?” Vari asked uncertainly.

  “This is your decision to make, Vari, but I agree with Garen, as do Popi, Dede, and Mom. This is unlike anything else you’ve done. You will not be hiding in plain sight and beneath notice. Your concerns over what’s fair or unfair, or the loss of your cover, have no place on the path before you. There is only live or die.”

  “I understand, Ata.” Vari swallowed hard, then lifted her chin. “I trust your counsel as I trust you. Both of you.” Faron nodded with obvious relief.

  “A task force is being assembled now,” Garen said. “We expect to depart in a few hours and we’ll travel as quickly as possible. Please keep us informed as well as you can, but do not risk revealing your presence to do so.”

  “Of course, Highness,” Declan said.

  Faron looked at the Dracon-Bats, started to say something, then raised his fist to his heart. “Silent hunting, Mighty Warriors.”

  Declan, Jay and Kai returned the salute. “Speedy travel, Warriors of the Klanaren.”

  When the screen went dark Vari took a long deep breath and tried to set aside her fear for Ria and Shanti. It would not help her in what was to come.

  “We have questions for which, from what your father and Garen said, you will provide answers,” Declan said, startling her.

  She looked up and nodded. “Of course.” She waited as they all sat across the table from her. She suddenly felt as though they were about to engage in a battle, with herself and Pandora on one side, and them on the other. She shook off the notion and sat up a little straighter.

  “First and foremost, why do they insist on you being transported to the Leaper?” Declan began.

  “Actually, I think the first question should be, who is the one person who must be rescued at all costs?” she said, hoping to put them off the bigger questions until she had a moment to think.

  “All right, consider it asked,” Declan said.

  “It’s Ria, of course.”

  Declan looked at his brothers, who stared back blankly. “Who is Ria?”

  Vari looked at him in surprise, then frowned when Pandora made a low sound of irritation. When she thought about it, it made sense. They hadn’t visited Jasan in ten years that she knew of, and before that had only met them once.

  “I’m referring to my middle sister, Maria,” she said. “She goes by Ria.”

  “Demii,” Declan swore. “According to the data reports we’ve received, the Doftle take a particular interest in Jasani females.”

  “Yes, they do,” Vari said. “She’s working on the Leaper as a med-tech under the name Adriana Canis. It’s an alias that allows her to continue to go by her nickname, Ria. She changed the color of her hair from blue to black, as well. Hopefully the Doftles will not recognize her.”

  “Who is the other passenger Garen mentioned?” Declan asked.

  “My friend, Shanti.”

  “She’s the one you spoke of yesterday,” Kai said. “Dr. Jula’s niece, right?”

  “That’s right. Doftles are always interested in anyone with psychic abilities and Shanti is a particularly strong Aural. If they know she attended the ICARUS Psy Program with me a few years ago, which is a very strong possibility, they’ll want her, too.”

  “We will transport both of them to the Bihotza as soon as possible, of course,” Declan said. He glanced at his brothers, feeling their doubts, which matched his own. “I don’t wish to criticize Prince Garen or your Ata, Vari, but I can’t help but think a mistake has been made. It’s understandable, I suppose, considering what pests the Doftles have made of themselves recently, but a mistake nonetheless.”

  Vari was so stunned it took her a moment to formulate a response. “What sort of mistake?”

  “It makes no sense for the Doftles to hijack a passenger liner filled with people unless they’re holding it for ransom. I think if that were the case, Prince Garen would have said as much. It’s far more likely that they’d go after a battleship, or a cruiser with the latest technology.” He shrugged. “I don’t deny that something has gone wrong with the Leap
er, so we will of course go after her, and we will get your sister and your friend. But it can’t possibly be the Doftles.”

  “Wow,” Vari said, looking at each of them before returning her gaze to Declan. She scrambled to think of an appropriate response to his statements. Her silence lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough for him to misinterpret her reaction.

  “So you agree.”

  “Not in the least. There are just so many things wrong with what you said that I hardly know where to begin.” Declan frowned, Jay looked confused, and Kai was surprised, but none of them said anything.

  “First, Doftles are so advanced technologically that the last thing they want or need is one of our ships. Second, they took a liner full of people because that’s exactly what they do want and need. Slaves. Lots of them. The more the better. And third, well, let’s just say that referring to the Doftles as pests is like saying the Xanti were annoyances.”

  “What do they need slaves for?” Jay asked.

  Vari looked at each of them. They really didn’t know. That seemed so…peculiar. She cleared her throat. “Over the past few months three Doftle storage planets have been raided.” She stopped. “Do you know about the storage planets?”

  “Yes, that was in the most recent report we received,” Jay said, much to her relief. Though it made her wonder again why they didn’t seem to recognize how dangerous Doftles were.

  “As I was saying, three storage planets have been raided. That I know of. I’ve been away for several weeks, so there could easily be more than that by now. The silos that are filled with the Doftle’s genetic creations on each planet have been destroyed, and tens of thousands of captives have been freed. So many that ICARUS is stretched to its limits trying to move them to new worlds and get them settled.

  “Doftles are very ordered, routine oriented, repetitious, set in their ways, and they do not like losing ground. Having lost three storage planets has surely sent them into a frenzy of activity in an effort to rebuild them as quickly as possible. To accomplish that, they need slaves to replace those they’ve lost. Lots of them.”

  “You seem to know a lot about them,” Declan said.

  “We don’t have a lot of information, but what we do have, I know thoroughly.”

  “Is your knowledge why Garen ordered us to transport you to the Leaper?” Kai asked.

  “While my knowledge will certainly help, no, that’s not the reason.” Vari pressed her palms together beneath the table, the only outward sign of her tension. “I’m a Class 6 Omni telepath. Do you know what that means?”

  “Dr. Jula gave us a brief explanation, and I did a little research on the vid terminal,” Declan said. He thought for a moment. “You can read the Doftle’s minds.”

  “Hopefully, yes,” Vari said. “I haven’t gotten close enough to one to test the theory yet, but I’ve never had trouble hearing any sentient being before.”

  “So, we’re supposed to transport you to a hijacked ship so you can try to read the minds of the hijackers,” Declan said without even trying to hide is disdain for the idea.

  “Yes,” she said warily, suddenly worried that he wouldn’t follow Prince Garen’s orders. An idea that was both inexplicable and shocking.

  “Pandora, do they have Controllers?”

  “No,” she replied. “I already asked. Twice.”

  “I don’t like this,” Jay said. “Sending you over there is too risky.”

  “Too risky?” Vari asked, surprised yet again. And a little angry now, too. “In the past six months they’ve circumvented our security, destroyed our ships, used an unknown number of our people as lab animals, and murdered hundreds more. They’ve basically done whatever they pleased without interference because we were completely unaware of their existence even though they’ve been around for not hundreds, but thousands of years.

  “Despite reams of data captured from hand terminals and the Doftles’ computer mainframes, we know precious little about them. They’ve already created hundreds of thousands…maybe millions…of genetic hybrids, many of them with stolen genetic material from Clan Jasani, and we have no idea why. Our need for information far outweighs any risk I have to take a thousand times over.”

  “We had no idea the situation was so dire,” Kai said.

  “No, we didn’t,” Jay said. “But I still don’t like the idea of transporting you to the Leaper, Vari. What if we transport over, capture a Doftle and return with it?”

  She blinked at him in confusion. They didn’t seem to know much about the Doftles, but it was possible that they had knowledge she didn’t. They were high ranking Clan Jasani, so it was more likely than not. “How would you go about capturing a Doftle?” she asked tentatively.

  “Our data reports indicated that they’re approximately the height of a ten year old child,” he said with an air of smugness that pricked her temper all over again. “I think we can manage to bring one back here without much trouble.”

  “I don’t,” she said flatly.

  “Why not?” Declan asked.

  “There are several reasons, but the most important one is that it’ll cost a lot of the people on the Leaper their lives, if not all of them.”

  “Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?” Kai asked.

  Vari’s surprise was unfeigned, and they all felt it. “You seem to think Doftles are little more than bad tempered children. How is this possible if you’ve been receiving data reports?”

  “I don’t know,” Declan said. “The reports are complete as far as we’re aware, though redacted for names, of course.”

  “Redacted for a lot more than that, obviously,” Vari said, truly worried now. “Your lack of knowledge on this subject is dangerous to yourselves, to me, and to the fifteen thousand people onboard the Leaper.” Three sets of eyebrows arched.

  “It will not be our first battle, Vari,” Declan said with a smirk.

  “This can’t be a battle, Declan,” she said calmly, though his condescension hurt. “Doftles are intelligent, technologically advanced, and a lot more vicious than you realize. We have to get inside the Leaper, find and kill the Doftles without killing the passengers ourselves, or provoking the Doftles into killing them which won’t take much more than them discovering we’re there. You’re the ones with the experience and the training to figure out how we’re going to do that, but you need some knowledge of the Doftles before you start planning.”

  “All right,” Declan said. “Give me an example of something so important that we need to know it before facing the Doftles.”

  “How about how to kill them?” she asked, letting her irritation show. “Would that be important enough?”

  “Sure,” Declan said, feeling Vari’s annoyance while trying to hide his own. Did she think they were untried children that had never seen battle?

  Vari could almost read what he was thinking by his body language alone. She was very tempted to get up, go back to her room, and call her Ata to tell him they needed a new plan. If there hadn’t been so many lives at stake, lives that deserved to be put first no matter what her personal feelings might be, she’d have already left.

  She’d give them this last bit of information, she decided. If that didn’t convince them to take her seriously, then she’d make that call. The people onboard the Leaper might end up slaves if they didn’t do anything, but at least most of them would still be alive.

  “To the best of our knowledge, there are only four ways to harm a Doftle seriously enough to possibly kill it.” They hid their surprise very well, but she still felt it.

  “What are they?”

  “To begin with, you should be aware that you have no weapon on this ship capable of breaking a Doftle’s bones. You might be able to crack one in your dracon alter-form, but as you can’t shift in the confines of the Leaper, that’s irrelevant.

  “Their orbital cavities provide the only access to their brains that we know of. They’re small targets, but if you manage to hit one directly, and if you manage to
penetrate deeply enough to reach the brain and cause enough damage, you can kill one. They freeze at 7.2 Celsius, though I’m not sure how that can be of use unless you have a freezer handy, and they can’t survive without an atmosphere any better than we can. And finally, the only material we know of that will penetrate their flesh is Kunian steel, which isn’t exactly common.”

  “That’s it?” Kai asked.

  “Yes, that’s it.

  “There must be more methods that haven’t yet been tried,” Jay insisted, though at least he didn’t sound quite so smug anymore.

  Since he wasn’t dismissing her outright, Vari allowed herself to hope they were starting to believe her. “A severed Doftle arm was recovered several months ago and the council spent weeks testing it. It’s because of those tests that we know it freezes at a relatively high temperature, and that Kunian steel is as effective against them as regular steel would be to me.

  “There may be methods that the council hasn’t tried, or couldn’t try with nothing more than a single arm to work with. At this time, those four methods are all we have.”

  “Then we’ll just transport one from the Leaper to the Bihotza,” Jay said. “We can place it directly into a secured room.”

  “Better still, why not just transport all of them off the Leaper and into space,” Kai said. “You said lack of atmosphere kills them.”

  Vari’s hope vanished. “Don’t you think Prince Garen and my father would have suggested as much if it were possible to deal with the matter so easily?” she asked as she pushed her chair back. “If you’ll excuse me…,” she began, but Declan interrupted with a raised hand.

  “Of course they would have suggested it if it were possible,” he said quickly, realizing that Vari had given up on them. At the same time, it finally occurred to him that Prince Garen obviously trusted her, and he was no fool.

  “I apologize, Vari. We’re having difficulty accepting the idea of sending you to the Leaper while knowing it’s in enemy hands, but that is no excuse for doubting you.”

  “There’s no need to worry about me,” Vari said, his apology raising her hopes yet again.