No Such Thing

by Michelle O'Leary

  Horror at the concept set tinder to her already seething rage. If she’d had any qualms or regrets about what she’d planned to do, they were blasted to bits in the face of the enemy’s plans. With grim fury, she reached into the threatened sun and plucked the device from its heart. She had planned to use herself as bait, but this would make her so much more irresistible.

  Opening the com for general transmission, she said, "This is Telenetic Ryelle Soliere. I am alone on an unarmed vessel. I’ve come to offer my services. I am the most powerful telenetic known to humankind, but my people treat me like a monster, like a beast to be caged and tormented." She could hear the outrage in her voice, the clear tones of truth that rang through the words. The fact that she wasn’t lying only spun her fury higher. "I deserve better. I deserve to be treated with respect and simple decency. I deserve a place where I can be myself, where I can use my ability as it was meant to be used. It’s my understanding that the GenTec do not have any telenetic ability. Is this true?"

  There were a babble of voices, mainly from the Fleet, protests and objections, some contrived like the commander’s and some honest like Hoti’s snarl of vindicated hatred. Here she was, turning to the other side, fulfilling the Institute’s most terrifying predictions of her destructive capability. "Just wait," she murmured in response with a flash of black humor. "You haven’t seen anything yet."

  Her com indicated a waiting visual transmission and she accepted, squinting through the light and watching the viewer in fascination as two GenTec faces appeared. Other than the general shape, there was nothing left to suggest that they’d once been human. One had skin like oil, dark and greasy, with nothing that looked like eyes or nose, only a seething mass of flesh in the center of its head and a slash below that could have been a mouth. The other was a bit more recognizable, with slitted eyes and protruding jaw, its skin a mass of layered plates like bony armor.

  "You are telenetic?" the armored one hissed, eyes glittering deep in its sockets.

  "Yes. I’m willing to put my talent at your disposal. Even more, I’m willing to offer my genetic material for your study and replication. In return, I want safe passage, a decent home, a respectable position in your society, and the chance to destroy them," she answered, pointing a bitter finger towards the Fleet.

  "You expect us to believe? Such tales are for defectives."

  She blinked at the term but didn’t hesitate. "You can see that I’m on a weaponless conveyer. You can also see that the Fleet is attempting to retrieve me. And if you need proof that I am as powerful as say…"

  She reached out with her talent and crumpled the Fleet fighters arrowing toward her one by one, even as they began to flee back to the main ships. She left them adrift with large dents around them that looked like the fingers of a huge fist.

  "You left them alive," the GenTec hissed.

  "If you refuse to accept me, I need a fall back position," she said with a gesture of dismissal. "Do you believe in my strength?"

  It studied her with glittering eyes, silent for the moment. Ryelle kept watch on the GenTec fleet and felt a surge of satisfaction to feel them closing in. They wanted her. They might believe they had the advantage with their sun killer, but they were still desperate to have her talent. They would see such power as an irresistible addition to their genetic enhancements, creating better, stronger humans.

  "If you want me, come and get me," she murmured with a taunting smile into the creature’s alien eyes. "You might also be interested to know that I’m in no way suicidal. With me around, you won’t be needing this." She pulled the sun killer away from the suns, hurtling it through the light to her position.

  The GenTec’s eyes widened and an alien sound came through the com. It wasn’t any language that she could understand so she ignored it, stopping the device at a safe distance from her conveyer. The thing was still glowing, murderously hot from being in the sun.

  Ryelle turned off the viewer, knowing she no longer needed to entice. They were pouring toward her from all sides. After placing a protective bubble around the device and her conveyer, she ignored the hostile incoming ships and reached for the suns. Diving her talent into them, she pulled, creating two rivers of sunfire that began to wrap around the GenTec forces. There were still a few ships beyond the far side of the suns and her roaring tongues of fire. The Fleet was not prepared to cover that side, so she ripped them apart with sharp stabs of her talent, keeping her mind filled with rage and sunfire and away from the death she doled out so brutally.

  Fighting the pull of the stars’ gravity, she drew their fire out farther, sweeping the two arms around to herd the GenTecs toward her. She needed a way to contain them, to bring them close enough so that she could destroy them all at once. If she had left them spread out, some would have escaped while she was focused in a different direction. The Fleet had their orders—they would destroy any GenTecs that tried to escape to the front or above and below her barriers of fire. She pulled faster, overtaking some of the ships in wild bursts of killing flame.

  The ones closest to her had figured out the trap by now and were pummeling her with weapons blasts. She ignored their frantic efforts. She was filled with flame and had no room in her for anything else, not even the violent tumbling of her conveyer within its protective bubble. The arms of sunfire swept around, forcing the GenTec into her killing field, and when the tongues of fire met in a corona around her, she let the flame die away.

  Immediately the GenTec began to flee, but it was too late. With a cry of rage and despair, Ryelle detonated.

  The force of her killing blow swept out from her in a wave of death, overtaking every ship and shattering them to pieces. They died and died and died, and she was the hammer, she was vengeance, she was pain and hate in killing form. For the stars they would have destroyed, for the shipmates she’d come to love, for worlds of children who knew peace.

  For her mother who lay dying.

  She burned and finally found her limit, after moving suns and destroying thousands of ships, killing hundreds of thousands of people. She burned and cried out and let her talent falter. The silence that folded over her was dreadful. Her little conveyer drifted, listing painfully to port, in a vast, endless debris field. The stars’ accusing brilliance limned the wreckage in dazzling judgment, prostrating her weak and shivering body to the conveyer floor. Murderer.

  She wept, a lost and lonely child in a blinding sea of light.

  Chapter 12

  Fifteen Years Later

  Ryelle stared at the request, her heart thumping slow and hard in her chest. Raising her hand, she slipped her fingers through the holographic words, watching the light play over her skin. After all these years.

  Request: Telenetic assistance.

  Location: Mobulus 3 Transfer Station, Benzai Quadrant

  Requesting Party: Master Chief Engineer Declan McCrae

  Declan. She swallowed hard, staring at the name ghosted on her skin.

  "Ryelle? What’d you find, another request from the Admiral wanting his landscape stones redone?"

  She snorted a laugh and turned to lift an eyebrow at Ignacia Salvo, Director of the Institute. "You wish, Sal. Can you tone down that crush you’ve got on the man? It’s embarrassing."

  The redhead stiffened, staring down her regal nose at Ryelle with a quelling frown. "I do not have a crush on Admiral Task. I would never be so juvenile. I merely covet his power and riches. Though he does have a nice ass," the woman added with a thoughtful tap of a finger on her chin and a faintly predatory gleam in her eye. When Ryelle snickered, Sal narrowed her dark green eyes and refocused. "I was just curious what had you so riveted on the requests. You aren’t thinking of doing another of those mining jobs, are you? Let me remind you that we had to stick you in decontamination three separate times to get the stink off."

  "No!" Ryelle shuddered at the memory. "No more trinium mining. The smell of that horrible mixer got stuck in my nose and nothing tasted right for a month after. Actually, I wa
s looking at this one." She tapped Declan’s request, her heart still battering her ribs in reaction. Text only, though—no visual of him. Damn.

  "Mobulus…that sounds familiar."

  "It’s the company that owns and operates those worm-hole stations on the spiral. This request is from one of their onsite managers, not a company head. Detail says…" She paused to read it and frowned. "That they’ve had a series of attacks on supply ships. Their security hasn’t been able to stop them or pinpoint the location of the attackers. Nothing stolen, just ships left adrift."

  Sal strode over until they stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the rippling display. "That’s odd. Oh, Master Chief Declan McCrae. God, I love he-man titles. Think he’s hot?"

  Ryelle burst into laughter, slipping an arm through the older woman’s. They’d been best friends since the day they’d met and the first words out of Ignacia’s mouth had been a threat of bodily harm if Ryelle even thought of calling her Iggy. "Director, I believe I’m going to go find out."

  Sal did a double take on her face. "Are you serious? That’s in the middle of nowhere. And minor pirates aren’t anywhere near your league. Be a bit like watering a potted petunia with an ocean."

  "Cute. But since there really isn’t any job that is in my league, this one will do nicely."

  Sal rolled her eyes, her voice turning dry as a fossil. "The Mirabella Heroine, the Sunfire Angel herself, is going to trek off to some distant spiral and deal with a couple of petty thieves?"

  "They didn’t steal anything."

  "Incompetent petty thieves, then. Ryelle, I feel it’s my sacred duty to warn you. They are unlikely to have any good restaurants."

  "It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. Especially when we’re due for another government inspection."

  "I knew it!" Sal cried with betrayal on her face and hilarity in her eyes. "I knew you had ulterior motives. I thought you loved me, you little creep. Abandoning me to the government goons—"

  "Have you noticed that the suits are getting tighter these days? And last inspection they sent a couple of stunners. Remember the guy with the shoulders like a mountain and eyes like melting honey—"

  "Sold. You go off on your little backwater vacation, darling. I’ll keep the place up and running somehow."

  Chuckling, Ryelle headed for the exit, crossing between their two work spaces. What had been the board room for the Institute heads had been turned into a spacious dual office for the new Director, Telenetic Ignacia Salvo, and the Advocate for Telenetic Rights, Ryelle Soliere. Five years had passed since their triumphant takeover—officially described as "restructuring"—of the Institute, and she still felt a warm glow of satisfaction on seeing the dual work space. Some triumphs never got old.

  And some pains never went away. She thought of Declan’s request and felt her stomach flip. He hadn’t asked for a specific telenetic. Did he even remember their time together? In the beginning she had tried, over and over again, to contact him. When she finally resigned herself to his rejection, she’d still watched him from a distance. He’d resigned his Fleet commission at Mirabella, hopping off ship at the first inhabited system. He’d made his way back home to the Nine Rings, only to head out again shortly thereafter on a series of increasingly complicated mechanical engineering jobs, until he found Mobulus and the wormhole project. They were made for each other and Declan swiftly became head of their project to create stable artificial wormholes for bulk goods transport. Currently, wormholes were still too dangerous for transportation of living things, but she’d heard rumors that they were getting closer to a breakthrough.

  In the secret recesses of her heart, she was enormously proud of him and pathetically still pined for him. She’d told no one, not even Samuel Task, of her continuing interest and feelings for the man. Declan had made it agonizingly clear years ago with his silence that he wanted nothing further to do with her.

  Until now. But he hadn’t specified anyone in his request. Remembering the details of that request, her heart jerked again. Someone was attacking his supply line, perhaps putting him in danger. Her skin itched with the need to leave right now and go to him.

  She took a deep, calming breath, grateful that Sal hadn’t suspected anything. Then again, she’d had years of practice hiding her deepest emotions. Keeping her stride measured and unhurried, she moved through the admin building and stepped out onto the skyglide, cruising to the dormitories where she had an on-campus suite of rooms. She preferred to be close to the students, as their teacher and rights advocate.

  The sun shown warm on her shoulders through the glide’s protective bubble and she could hear birds singing in the orchard below her. There seemed to be an extra sparkle on the world. Ryelle was both disgusted and amused by her sudden, light mood. Good God, she was as bad as the teenagers she taught, mooning over the boy of her dreams.

  It was a short trip from the skyglide deck to her rooms and she wasted no time packing for her newest mission. As she layered her travel bags with clothes and necessities, she activated the verbal system and worked on travel plans, rearranging her schedule, and posting notices of her departure for students, friends, and colleagues.

  In the middle of composing a quick message to the Admiral, letting him know she wouldn’t be coming to dinner that evening, her door chimed a visitor. Finishing with a flurry of goodbye-love-you-see-you-when-I-get-back, she manually touched the door release and smiled at the man standing there as she swept by. "Hey, Les, thought that was you. Come on in."

  Lester Smith stepped into her quarters, a fine-boned man with a quick smile and clever hands. "I saw you on the glide and wondered what would bring you back here in the middle of the day. I got jealous, thinking maybe you had a quickie planned with someone else." His tone was light, but she heard the underlying truth to his words and stifled a wince.

  "Quickies are so overrated," she answered with a flippant toss of her head and continued into her bedroom to resume packing.

  "Heading out?" he asked, following her.

  "Yes, I’ve got a job in the Benzai Quadrant. Sal thinks I’m crazy. She’s sure they won’t have any decent restaurants. I may have to pack my own food."

  "So why are you going?"

  "It’s a puzzle," she said without looking at him, keeping her voice and body language calm. "Attacks on supply ships with no apparent motive."

  "That’s odd."

  "That’s what Sal said. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone."

  "Ryelle," he murmured, wrapping a gentle hand around her wrist to catch her attention. When she looked at the solemn line of his handsome face, she felt another internal wince. "Do you need company?"

  Considering who was at the other end of her travels, she thought that would be a terrible idea. Lester was a great teacher, an excellent colleague, a good friend, and a considerate lover, but he was not ever going to be more than that. And not just because her heart already belonged to someone else. Unfortunately, he wanted to be more than a friend and occasional lover.

  She sighed and twisted her wrist until she could clasp his hand in hers. "Les, that’s not a good idea. Actually, I’ve been meaning to talk to you—"

  "Uh-oh," he muttered with a wry crook of his lips. "The big talk."

  "You should have been expecting it," she said with a bit more bite than she’d intended. "I’ve made it very clear that I don’t want a serious relationship."

  "And I’ve made it clear that I don’t understand why not. You’re beautiful, desirable, and single. Men line up at your door, but you turn them all away. Well, almost all," he added with a cheeky grin. "And guys like us you don’t keep. I just don’t get it, Ryelle. Is it fear?"

  She blinked at him then smirked. "Oh, yes, I confess. I have a terrible fear of men."

  "Of commitment, Lady Sarcasm. Of being intimate with anyone on an emotional level. Your mother’s death—"

  "Lester Tiberius Smith, do not psychoanalyze me. I had enough of that on the way back from Mirabella," she added sourly, pull
ing her hand free and retrieving another travel bag from storage. "Suffice to say, the chances of you and I having a serious, lasting romantic relationship are slim to none. I love you as a friend and I don’t want you to get hurt, so I’m telling you that our physical relationship is over as of right now. Clear enough?"

  She heard him sigh and cursed herself for allowing a physical relationship in the first place. He was a sweet man who deserved better than a woman who couldn’t rise above lukewarm on the emotional front.

  "I figured as much. But you can’t blame me for trying."

  She glanced over to see him watching her with a rueful smile. She returned it with a shake of her head. "I’ll be lucky if you don’t hate me."

  "Never." He stepped close and bent to brush a chaste kiss against her lips. "Safe trip, Ryelle. I’ll see you when you get back."

  "Thanks, Les." She watched his quiet departure with a pang of guilt and furtive relief. He was a good friend and she hoped she hadn’t hurt him too badly, but it had needed to end a while ago. She was guiltily glad it was done.

  The whirlwind of her preparations went swiftly and before dinner she was on the first of a series of transports that would see her to Mobulus 3. It would take several days to reach the station.

  By then she hoped to have figured out how to face Declan McCrae.

  Chapter 13

  Declan scrolled through the day’s log, resisting the urge to pull up the Institute’s response for the hundredth time. He knew it by heart, but some dark part of him would insist that he’d read it wrong and he’d pull it up again just to check. Or maybe just to stare at her name, a possibility that made him stubbornly resist the urge to reread the response.

  They’d agreed to telenetic assistance with a vengeance. Why the hell would they send their most powerful telenetic out here for this kind of low level trouble? He wished that HQ had ignored his suggestion to call in a telenetic. He wished he’d kept his mouth shut about telenetics and suggested military instead. Except he knew the military would have referred them to the Institute anyway. He’d just been sure that they would send a lower ranking telenetic or he would have figured out another way.