Sea of Stars (Kricket #2)

by Amy A. Bartol

  Next, in rapid succession, and while the hologram spins to show several angles, I view Trey’s adolescence to his early days of military training. My heartbeat accelerates; I can’t hide the smile that forms on my lips. Some of the tension I’m feeling melts away as I see him grow from child to adult in a matter of moments.

  Then the holograms of Trey slow and blink off as the film changes. Booming sounds of cannon fire dropping nearby rumbles my chair from the holographic images that emerge next. Soldiers scramble to strip off blood-soaked clothing in exchange for clean smocks in a makeshift medical unit on the outskirts of a war zone. A few medics pace by the gaping mouth of the entrance to their enclosure with an air of expectation. One of them shouts for everyone to make ready. My empty hand goes to my mouth from shock as my other hand tightens on the znou petals when I recognize Trey in the center of a pair of soldiers being ushered into the medical unit. Tears spring to my eyes, and I fight them back when I see both of his legs are gone below the knees. He’s brought to a podlike surgery table. The table resembles half of a tanning bed positioned under an enormous laser mounted on a robotic arm. The laser-mounted tool goes to work, slicing Trey’s armor from what remains of his body. Bloody and torn apart, Trey moans as he writhes and trembles in pain from missing limbs and scalded skin. Agony and fear flatten my lips. The crackle and bubble of flesh is audible as surgeons cauterize the hemorrhaging arteries and scrape dead flesh off his sheared stumps. Trey’s repeated vomiting as his flesh is sutured to reattach his hand makes me taste bile in my own throat. One of the physicians screams at the anesthesiologist, directing him to put Trey under before the pain kills him.

  I look away, unable to watch anymore lest I vomit. It is a wonder he didn’t kill me upon sight when he found me, I think. I look just like the monsters who did that to him.

  “Manus won’t require the kind of extensive regrowth as this—” Minister Telek pauses. “Is this too much for you?” he asks with a bit of an amused laugh, then orders, “Console on.” A different holographic screen the size of a laptop illuminates in the air in front of him. He squints at icons, activating them by his eye movement. The small screen disappears as a compartment opens in the surface of the table between us. A stout but elegant silver urn with matching cups and saucers arises from the surface on a silver salver. “Would you like some kafcan?” he asks. Steam rolls from the spout of the pot. He pours the hot, dark-roast beverage that is very similar to coffee into a delicate cup.

  “No, thank you.” I make a vow never to take a thing from him. Owing him would be a crime. He keeps the cup of kafcan for himself, setting it on the table near his hand.

  “The Alameeda nearly killed Gennet Trey, did you know that?”

  I nod my head. “I knew. He told me.” I swallow hard.

  This doesn’t sit well with Minister Telek. His hand moves violently to swipe the steaming cup off the table. It shatters on the floor in front of us with a loud clatter. “Trey will do anything for you, won’t he!” he accuses with a growl. The abruptness of his rage is not a foreign thing to me. I saw it seething below the surface, and I know better than to answer his question.

  When I remain silent, Minister Telek barks an order to his console. “Stream current headline.”

  The hologram of Trey disappears and is replaced by three-dimensional images of Trey and me from just moments ago in the Sonic Rail Station. I’m throwing my arms around Trey’s neck. Trey leans down and kisses me hard on the mouth. My heart strains the wall of my chest. To Minister Telek, this is somehow damning evidence. The love letter Trey wrote on my paper heart is there; Minister Telek can read it.

  His rage is barely restrained as he says between clenched teeth, “They’re calling you two star-crossed lovers, romanticizing your relationship. It was already viral by the time you arrived at my office.” He wants me to be penitent about it.

  “That poses a problem for you,” I murmur. “You were hoping we’d look like criminals—that’s what you were going for by allowing the media to ambush us.”

  “You’re a master manipulator, just like your mother!” he seethes.

  “I doubt you knew my mother,” I reply. My heart is beating out of control with panic, but I try to appear as if I’m not bothered by what he says or the violence he displays. I don’t know where the line is with him, but the kafcan mess on the floor in front of me indicates that I’m close to it. I have to decide if I want to cross over it.

  “I knew your father. I couldn’t save him from your mother. I will not make the same mistake again,” Telek promises.

  “What mistake?”

  “Pan was the brightest officer in my arsenal. He was like a son to me. He had a brilliant mind—intuitive with defensive strategy. Your mother ruined him.”

  “How’d she do that?”

  “It was after the Terrible War. He discovered her while on patrol near the border of our territory. She planned to escape the Brotherhood by disappearing into the masses on Earth—or so she claimed. Pan helped her seek asylum in Rafe, and then they chose to violate our laws by deserting to Earth together. She manipulated him into protecting her, much like you’ve done with the Cavar sent to retrieve you, and again with our Regent. We managed to avoid another war with her. That won’t be the case with you.” He’s laying all the blame for my being here upon me.

  “I didn’t ask to come here,” I point out. “You brought me here.”

  His fury bubbles to the surface again. “I did not bring you here! If I had ordered the mission, it would’ve been extermination, not an extraction. The mission to remand you was ordered by Minister Vallen and the Regent.”

  “To what end?”

  “It doesn’t matter. One is dead and the other is very near to it.”

  “You don’t know,” I goad him to see if he’ll give me a better answer. “You don’t know why they went looking for me.”

  “Minister Vallen believed that your mother had the gift of prophecy,” he says with disgust. “He was foolish enough to hope that she’d come back and help him see if the aggression we were witnessing on the borders of Peney were the Alameeda mobilizing for war. He didn’t understand that the only gift your mother possessed was the one for manipulating men.”

  “You don’t believe my mother could see the future?” I ask.

  “No more than I believe that you can,” he says honestly. “You’re just like her: a charlatan—a spy. You use your femininity to deceive.”

  He thinks I’m with the Alameeda! I snort with derision and ask, “How did you come to that conclusion?”

  “If you’re not a spy, then explain how you became Haut Manus’s most trusted adviser in such a short time after arriving here from Earth? Was it your stunning grasp of Etharian politics or just the fact that you are stunning?”

  I blanch. I don’t want to reveal to him my ability to divine lies. I make up a plausible excuse. “Maybe Manus was hoping ambassadors from Peney and Wurthem would open up to me because of my mixed heritage? Maybe I appear neutral to those in power?” I suggest as I get a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “It’s quite interesting to me that when Minister Vallen sent a team to look for you, so too did the Alameeda. Don’t you find that an odd coincidence?”

  “No. They have priestesses. One of their genetically gifted priestesses could’ve alerted the Alameeda Brotherhood to Rafe’s plan.”

  “Ahh, psychically, right?” he asks with sarcasm. “You still think I believe that?”

  “You should.”

  He brushes aside my comment. “If you’re not with the Alameeda, why did you run from the Rafe team when it made contact with you?”

  I look at him as if he’s mental. “They scared me. I believed I was human. Running was a natural response to fear.”

  Minister Telek pushes out his bottom lip and shrugs. “It could be. Or, you could’ve been running to meet with Kyon Ensin, your A
lameeda handler, in order to brief him on having made contact and receive instructions. You are, after all, his intended consort, as decreed by the Alameeda Brotherhood.”

  “I don’t care what the Alameeda Brotherhood decreed. Your grasp of events is wrong. I attempted to kill Kyon just a few parts ago. You have misread the situation, Minister. The only thing that lies between Haut Kyon and me is malice.”

  “As an agent of the Alameeda, you needed to plan exactly how to infiltrate our ranks. The alleged hostility between you is feigned.”

  “You’re implying that the knife I left embedded in his chest was just a little friendly banter between friends?”

  “You had to make it look like you were fighting back. You didn’t deliver a death blow, choosing instead not to strike at his heart.”

  I feel sick, remembering the twinkling sound of empty shell casings tumbling down the staircase. The smell of acrid smoke hanging in the air from the barrels of the Alameeda mini-Gatling-like mechanized weapons; it mingled with the alpha-male scent of Kyon as my knife first nicked his bony chest plate before it slid around it and into him. “If I’m a spy, as you say, why would I try to warn Haut Manus about the attack last night? I told Ustus Hassek, the head of the Regent’s police, as well.”

  “Manus is in a coma and Ustus is conveniently dead,” Minister Telek points out. “There are witnesses who saw you kiss Kyon last night.”

  “He kissed me! To him, I’m a possession—he thinks he owns me.”

  “Does he?”

  “No.” I’m falling fast, faster than I ever expected. “I’m not your enemy! Review the incident of the previous Alameeda attack—”

  “I have.”

  “So you know then. You know I saw that Alameeda attack before it happened—the one to extract Kyon.”

  “That’s not what I saw,” Minister Telek replies. Something horrible is growing in me; it’s an ache in the back of my throat. “You were privy to the Alameedas’ presence—you met with Kyon that evening and you had access to many of Alameeda’s allies at the swank you attended that evening. The Alameeda staged the fake extraction attempt in order to manipulate the Regent, Manus, into believing that a feeble Etharian”—he gestures to me with a look meant to discredit—“possesses foresight.”

  I’m in my own dark ages, I think, except in reverse—I can’t prove that I’m a priestess. “I’m not the enemy.”

  “But you are. You killed Minister Vallen.” He takes another deep draw on the silver cig-a-like, and the scent of brown sugar envelopes me.

  “How could I have done that?” My voice is feeble. “I’ve only just arrived here. I don’t even know what he looks like.”

  “You had ample time last night to do it. You convinced Gennet Allairis to help you. He’s in love with you—anyone can see it by watching your kiss in the station. You convinced him to help you. You promised him sanctuary in Alameeda—a promise I doubt that you intended to keep.”

  I crush the silky znou petals in my hand. “You’re an amazing storyteller, Minister Telek, but that’s all it is: a story. You don’t even believe it yourself. You know it’s a lie.”

  He looks intrigued that I’m calling him on his complete fabrication of facts. His smile is worrisome to me. Setting down his cig-a-like on the table between us, he says, “Minister Vallen’s death I mark as your doing. And you’re going to confess to it.”

  My mouth opens in disbelief for a moment as I prepare to defend myself from such a ruthless accusation, but I close it after a moment. Something occurs to me. “You killed Minister Vallen,” I murmur in understanding.

  His eyes narrow, as if in affront. “You’re accusing me! No one would believe it! I’m a well-respected officer. I have no motive,” he lies, “whereas you will be implicated in the attempted assassination of the Regent as well. I’ll show everyone that you can no more predict the future than you can save yourself—or the Cavar you seduced. But it won’t come to that, because you’re going to confess to the crime. ”

  “I don’t think I’ll be confessing to your crime.”

  “My crime? You have the motive—he was your enemy. You were sent by the Alameeda to kill him.”

  “Your motive is better, Minister Telek: You killed him for power—a seat on Skye Council—total control over the Declaration of War you signed this morning. How very Machiavellian of you.” His eyes widen. “Oh, you’re surprised I figured out it was you?” I flick my hand at him. “I can’t understand why that would shock you, since I know I didn’t do it and I’m positive that Trey didn’t do it. That. Leaves. You.”

  “Had you never returned to Ethar, there would’ve been no need to end Minister Vallen’s life. I mark his death your doing.”

  It takes me less than a second to realize he just confessed to killing Minister Vallen. “So you’re going to try to pin it on me anyway by making me look like a spy,” I breathe.

  “You are a spy,” he says honestly, believing the worst of me without any proof.

  “I’m not, nor am I a murderer.”

  He ignores me, looking away as he turns on the watery-blue light of Manus’s med-tank again. Then he says, “After you confess to killing Minister Vallen with your accomplice Trey Allairis, I’ll make it a painless death for you both. You can simply go to sleep and never awake. But if you refuse, I’ll have to torture a confession from you both . . . and you will confess.”

  My throat aches with my struggle to hold back tears. I open my clenched fist. What he’s saying is true, at least in my case. I will probably confess, even though I didn’t do it—with a long enough time line, I wouldn’t be strong enough to endure pain forever. “You don’t know Trey,” I say with a tight voice. “He’d never confess to anything he didn’t do, and I’d never condemn him in that way to avoid pain. I won’t be euthanized like some unwanted pet at the pound.”

  He looks at me again and shrugs as only a powerful man can. Reaching for the kafcan pot again, he pours out another cup of it for himself. “Either way you die. A part of me is delighted that you’d choose pain. Nothing will bring me more pleasure than to see you die horribly: a fitting end for an Alameeda priestess.”

  My eyes fix his. He gives me a checkmate smile, and then he takes a sip of his kafcan, swallowing it like it’s the best he’s had in his life. I watch him savor it.

  “I changed my mind. I do have something to confess,” I murmur.

  He’s amused. “Ah, so you aren’t as tough as you wanted me to believe. The threat of pain already has you agreeing to confess to the murder of the defense minister?”

  “Umm . . . no. I’ll confess to the poisoning of the defense minister.”

  “That won’t work. The defense minister’s throat was cut.”

  “No, it wasn’t. He was poisoned, and if he doesn’t get an antidote for znou axicote,” I reply, opening the lid of the kafcan pot so that he can see the znou petals floating on the surface of it, “he’ll be dead by the end of the rotation.”

  Minister Telek’s eyes snap open wide as he rises to his feet, the kafcan cup slipping from his hand to shatter on the floor in front of his Regent-souvenir. He puts his fingers in his mouth, gagging himself so that he vomits. Wiping his wrist over his mouth, it leaves a blood trail on his sleeve. He turns away from me and stumbles toward his desk on the other side of the room.

  I rise from the enormous chair and follow him on shaky legs. “I was never interested in botany when I lived in Chicago,” I explain conversationally as I trail him. “There was never any need for it. But here, it seems like a useful thing to know, don’t you think?”

  Minister Telek bumps into the table in the center of the room, knocking the vase of znous off it. The flowers scatter as the vase splinters into a thousand pieces. I step on the flowers as we move across the room. “I found it interesting that most of those who had turbine worms drill into them didn’t die from that—they died from the
poison the worms ingested after eating the petals of the flower. I only steeped two petals into your kafcan—I had six. They’ll want to know that when they come for you. I don’t think two will be enough to kill you, but you’ll begin to feel the poison eating through your stomach soon. There are several cures available if they act fast: Abersuctonal, Hesterfastok, or Lamb’s Bottom—I like the sound of that one, Lamb’s Bottom—it just sounds sweet. You should ask for Lamb’s Bottom. But they’re probably still going to have to repair part of your bowel; it’s a very caustic poison. And painful.” I fake a cringe. “Ooph, it’s supposed to be one of the worst.”

  He makes it to his desk, leaning on it heavily. “Console on,” he moans. “Geteron, I need you!” He collapses into his chair, unbuttoning his collar as he pants and writhes.

  “Don’t look so shocked,” I say, sitting on the corner of his desk as I study him. I hold my hands in my lap so that he can’t see how they tremble in fear. “I’m my father’s daughter. I, too, have a mind for defensive strategy. But I’m nothing like you. I’m not a coldblooded murderer. This is your only warning, Minister: Don’t mess with me. And if you try to hurt Trey, I’ll kill you.”

  The overup’s doors open and several uniformed soldiers enter the room with weapons drawn. I don’t move as they swarm in around us. A couple of soldiers haul me off the edge of the desk and restrain me. As they do, I murmur, “Think about what I said. You need me to bring the future back to you.”

  CHAPTER 3

  BEYOND THESE WALLS

  The Brigadet next to me in the overup has a brand new matte black harbinger in his hand. Judging by the way he’s holding the pistol-like weapon on me, he’d feel tough if he got to use it. It’s a bit of overkill, though; they’ve already shackled my hands with spray foam and locked a collar restraint on my neck. It’d take only one press of the remote button to make the collar tighten around my throat and have me on my knees fighting for air.