Exile's Throne

by Rhonda Mason

  Larsa looked incapable of making the call, so Kayla just nodded. “Right, I’m glad you agree. Ariel is on guard duty in the control room with one of the rebels; I’ll have her monitor me. And I’ll wake one of the other rebels to spot me too.” She pointed at Noar. “Get a schematic ready to load to my EMU infopad. Larsa, find the airlock closest to the vent and meet me there. I’m suiting up.”

  ::Are you really doing this?:: Vayne asked her. She had no idea which level he was on now, trying to find the stepa hideout. She’d asked Noar to find him telepathically and give him the details.

  She lowered her mental shields and Vayne slipped gently into her mind—so unlike Corinth’s happy puppy rush that felt like a hammer between the eyes.

  On my way right now. Her heavy boots clunked down the molychromium decking.

  He was quiet for a moment, but she felt his worry.

  I’ll be perfectly fine. There’s no better candidate.

  ::You couldn’t send one of the imperials?::

  I’m already awake and this has to be done now. And can you please stop using the term “imperials” like a slur?

  ::Sorry.::

  Liar.

  He chuckled in her mind. ::Tia and I haven’t found anything yet, not so much as a shoe left behind, and certainly no people.::

  Keep looking. We know they’re there, on one of the powered levels. It’s not like they’re sleeping in EMUs on the lower decks.

  There were a lot of powered levels to check through, sadly.

  ::Will do. Kayla— Be careful.::

  I always am.

  ::Liar.::

  14

  Kayla met Larsa at an airlock she hadn’t known about.

  “This being the closest I can get you.”

  “Understood. One of the rebels, I think his name is Shimwell, is coming to spot me as soon as he’s suited up.” Kayla closed the screen on her helmet, ready to go.

  “Wait for the spotting of Shimwell. Is protocol.” Larsa looked adamant, but all Kayla could think about was the frantic beeping of the temperature sensors in the engine control room.

  “I’ll wait for him outside. You go back.” The engineer was practically hopping from foot to foot in her rush to get back to the monitors.

  “Spacewalking is not solo for anyone on board.”

  “Understood.” Kayla picked up the toolkit, stepped past the first door of the airlock, and hit the mechanism to vent the atmosphere. “Ariel’s monitoring me, and Noar will be guiding me,” she said over the comm. “I’ll be fine.” She gave a thumbs up, activated the magmatism in her boots, and opened the airlock to space.

  In moments she was out the second door and climbing onto the Yari’s outer surface. It was beautiful… and terrifying. She immediately hooked her tether to the link near the door. Space was so wide open all around her, it felt like she would be pulled into the emptiness at any moment.

  Better to not consider it at all.

  She kept her head down and started moving. Noar had told her to take a straight path “down” in relation to the “floor” of the airlock. He would lead her from there via comm.

  It wasn’t long before she heard Shimwell. “I’m at the airlock, coming out.” He’d keep watch there, ready to come for her if she got into trouble.

  Which she had better not.

  Please let this be as easy as jamming a telescoping rod into the door to wedge it open.

  As she approached, it quickly became apparent that things were not as simple as she’d hoped. The pewter gray of the ship’s heat shielding was interrupted by some kind of black… blob. The closer she got, the stranger it looked. It wasn’t a single blob; it was a mass of smaller blobs, which seemed to crawl over one another. Each had a delicate blue light twinkling on and off along its dark exterior.

  What the frutt?

  The vibrations from the stress testing rumbled through the ship’s outer shell and into her boots. The exhaust shaft must be the perfect conduit. When she was within fifteen meters she could begin to discern the true shape of the blobs on the pile. They looked like a mass of… octopuses? Cephalopods in space? Each was no larger than her hand with fingers spread. Bulbous “heads” pointed up as tentacle appendages curled and crawled around each other. Occasionally one would break away from the pile and “swim” through space, circling until it found a spot that was more to its liking.

  “Its?” Was she looking at critters? “Do you see this?” she asked Noar over the comms. The cam in her suit sent images down to the control room.

  “I… have no idea what to make of that.”

  The life forms were completely unconcerned by her presence.

  “Well, I’m not getting any closer until someone can tell me what those creatures are.” They better do it quickly because based on the schematics her suit’s datapad listed, the things covered the vent.

  “I’m checking the Lorius’s database against the image,” Trinan said. Apparently the whole ship was awake and involved. “I doubt the Yari has any similar data in its complinks.”

  “No need,” Ariel said. “That is having the shape and color patterns of a rook.”

  Kayla froze, not even daring to breathe.

  Suddenly everyone was flashing mental pictures back and forth, rapidly comparing their own memories of the rooks against the image from her suitcam. The Yari’s crew had the most experience, and their memories flooded her mind with proof that despite the incredible disparity in size, she was definitely looking at rooks.

  Her breath came back, shallow and loud in her eyes. Ice prickled across her skin.

  “Get out of there, Kayla,” Trinan said, at the same time she heard Shimwell say, “I’m coming to you.” That’s all she needed, more chances of something startling the miniature rooks.

  Strident beeping filled the comms as Larsa spoke from the control room. “Needing to abort the test, captain.” Natali then argued against it.

  “Everyone shut up!” Though her mind was screaming for silence, Kayla’s voice was no more than a hiss, terrified that the rooks—baby rooks?—would hear even that. “Shut up and stay where you are.” She held still, watching to see if that startled them.

  Not at all. They just kept piling on top of the heat vent, squirming to get under, over, and around each other for the best spot. Blue lights shimmered down the rooks’ tentacles in hypnotic patterns. What drew them: the vibrations? The warmth?

  Kayla pushed all other thoughts from her mind and cautiously, slowly, took her first step backward.

  Nothing happened. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath in anticipation of a much deadlier outcome. She forced herself to breathe normally as she took another step backward, and another.

  Just as she convinced herself she might survive the encounter, the entire heap of rooks dislodged from the ship in a flurry, like a startled flock of birds taking flight. Several of them winked out of existence entirely. Kayla ducked reflexively as the cloud launched toward her.

  I can’t believe I’m going to die out here, like this.

  Instead of attacking, the creatures swirled around her, their black bodies gleaming. They tumbled and bumped into each other. Occasionally one would bounce off her EMU and ricochet back into the cloud. Apparently that was vastly entertaining, because they kept doing it.

  ::Don’t move:: Corinth said. ::We’re venting the engine room.::

  The vent’s three giant louvers, which protected the inner workings from ice, cranked open successfully. Her hope that the activity would draw the rooks’ attention was dashed as they continued to investigate her. One rook landed on her forearm and wrapped its stubby tentacles around her suit like a wrist chronometer. Her mind screamed Get it off! but she couldn’t have moved if she wanted to, her body locked in place by fear.

  ::It worked! Kay, it worked.::

  This time. The test was only half over, though, and the rooks had looked plenty happy piling onto the vent and trapping it shut before.

  Now what? She couldn’t sta
y crouched out here forever, terrified to move. The creatures grew bolder, settling on her arm, shoulder, and even the helmet of her EMU for seconds at a time before flitting away. Maybe she could—

  All rational thought ceased when, from nowhere, an utterly massive ebony form blinked into being no more than three hundred meters from her face. It was so large that she couldn’t see around it to the other end. The breath caught in her throat. “Holy—”

  Someone had hit comms, and all she could hear was the proximity alert klaxons blaring.

  No shit.

  The babies spiraled up in a frenetic cloud of bodies that was either extremely happy or very, very upset. They zoomed over to the gigantic black form, winking out of sight, then appearing again many meters ahead.

  People shouted in her ear to run back to the hatch, while in the background a debate raged about why they couldn’t just shoot at the enormous life form when it was so close to the ship.

  The shape of the blackness blotting out the stars shifted as the adult rook—for that’s what it had to be—reared up. She could only stand there stupidly, watching as it rotated up up up, and its tentacles came into view. Beautiful blue lights lit patterns along its skin.

  She flinched back when the tentacles flared wide, and then the rook settled on the ship’s surface with the gentleness of an atomic bomb landing, its tentacles draping like a skirt in each direction. The force knocked the Yari out of its current position. A noise that must have been sub-hyperstream thrusters firing reached her as Ariel corrected for the impact.

  Kayla waited for a terrible ripping sound or a wrenching crunch as the rook went to work destroying the ship. Instead…

  …nothing.

  Nothing happened. The rook seemed perfectly content to sit still, lights glowing almost peacefully, tentacles laying along the ship’s hull with its bulbous… head? pointing out to space. The tiny rooks swooped and circled around the adult, brushing against the creature in apparent happiness.

  Her first coherent thought since the adult’s arrival was: Run!

  She released the magnetic lock on her boots, and hit the retract mechanism on her tether almost simultaneously. She barely kept her grip on her toolkit as the tether yanked her back to the airlock.

  “Has the vent been open long enough to combat the overheating?” she whispered over the comms. Would the arrival of the adult be enough to distract them from piling onto the vent again? Already one or two of the baby rooks seemed to have noticed her movement.

  “For the time, yes,” Larsa answered. “But the test has many hours of the lasting still, and heat build of major for the duration.”

  Of course it was.

  Shimwell caught Kayla as she neared the airlock and pulled her in. “Then we’ll handle it if a blocked vent becomes an issue again. For now, let us the frutt back into the ship.”

  * * *

  ON BOARD THE IMPERIAL STEALTH SHIP STEEL DOVE, WYRD SPACE

  Senior Commander of the IDC, and now Occupation Leader Jersain Vega, fought off an attack from Agira with all her might. They’d been sitting together on the loveseat in their tiny cabin aboard the stealth ship, when all of a sudden Agira had blasted her across the room with telekinetic punch to the chest. The force slammed Jersain into the wall and knocked the wind out of her. Another punch followed that before Jersain had got her shields up.

  She would have been really pissed…

  … if she hadn’t asked for it, quite literally.

  The trip from Falanar to Ordoch was a long one. With little else to do aboard the cramped Steel Dove, Jersain had been practicing with her psi powers every chance she got. She now had an excellent command of them, and felt confident in her ability to protect herself. Which would be essential, considering they were going to a planet populated by psionics who hated her and her kind. She’d ordered her thrall to spring sneak attacks on her, both telekinetic and telepathic, to see how quickly she could recognize them and react.

  Not that the shot to the chest had been hard to recognize.

  Jersain fought back, flinging a spear of psi force at Agira’s head. Agira deflected the bolt even as she lifted Jersain off the floor, shield and all. Jersain winced as she collided with the ceiling.

  “You have to think in three dimensions when it comes to fighting a psionic,” Agira called, and let her fall to the floor.

  Jersain glared at her thrall. She’d grown sick of that advice, mostly because she kept forgetting in the crucial moments. She opened her mind and let the full force of her power—Vayne’s stolen power—rush through her. Vayne was a stronger psionic than Agira could hope to be: surely Jersain could best her, now that she could control her purloined powers.

  The fight ranged back and forth in the small cabin. Agira finally burst through Jersain’s shield. Instantly she had a telekinetic hand around Jersain’s throat, lifting her off the ground and cutting off Jersain’s oxygen. She pounded on Agira’s shield, clobbering away with all her fading might. Spots appeared in her vision. Wham, wham, wham, she hammered desperately. She would not lose this fight, not when she was the superior psionic.

  She took one last, gigantic swing at Agira’s shield, which gave way with the feel of splintering glass. The constriction on her throat faltered. Jersain dragged in a breath and lashed out, knocking Agira to her knees.

  Agira immediately withdrew her power from Jersain’s throat and set her gently on her feet. Jersain coughed and fought to take a deep breath while Agira rubbed the shoulder Jersain had clobbered.

  “Good job,” Agira said, and smiled, looking like a proud momma bird gazing at her chick.

  Jersain felt inordinately pleased. Well, pleased and annoyed. “I was almost asleep.”

  “I know.” This time her thrall’s smile was a little more devious. “But you said you wanted a challenge.”

  Jersain harrumphed, then relented. She smiled in between coughing and helped Agira to her feet. “I suppose I should thank you for being so devoted to me.”

  “Even when that devotion means knocking the snot out of you?” Agira blinked her eyes innocently, but Jersain wasn’t fooled.

  “Try not to enjoy it so much, next time.”

  Agira laughed, then quieted down as she took a close look at Jersain’s throat. “Let me get a cooling cell on that welt. Sit back down.”

  Jersain was happy to comply. The fight had completely drained her. Now it was over and the adrenaline was starting to fade, she sank onto the sofa like a puddle of melting ice cream. She had enough pride to keep herself upright, but just barely.

  Agira returned with a coolant cell in hand and sat beside her. Jersain let her fuss for a moment, twitching the coolant cell into the perfect position, then pulled Agira’s hands down onto her lap.

  “Enough, I’m fine.” Better than fine. She’d beaten a natural-born psionic in a fight. Again. She felt like a warrior. A limp warrior, at the moment, but a warrior nonetheless.

  “You did an excellent job keeping your focus, and it took me even longer to break through your shields this time.”

  Even though Agira said it in a glowing tone, it still irked Jersain to be reminded that she’d faltered her grasp on her shields. It was a strange thing to be trained by one’s own thrall, and Jersain struggled with Agira’s superiority in this arena. She liked it much better when the balance of power was tipped entirely in her favor.

  “Your control has improved immensely in the past few weeks.” Agira tilted her head to look at Jersain. “I think you need to continue working on the finer aspects, but—”

  “But I’m an excellent blunt-force instrument?” Jersain quipped. Only… it was true. She still struggled to control the minute movements of writing with a stylus with her mind, but she realized only practice could perfect that.

  “How does your head feel?” Agira asked, instead of answering the joke.

  “Not even a hint of a headache.”

  “That’s a great sign of how far you’ve come. Controlling your psi powers is much more natur
al, doesn’t take as much mental energy.” She gave Jersain’s hands a little squeeze.

  Jersain herself believed that. Well, she did in part. She really felt that things had become more natural for her, which was amazing considering she’d been psionic for less than a year. What gave her pause was the tremendous amount of success she’d had in recent weeks. Stunning, really, how easily she called the power up without feeling overwhelmed or likely to split at the seams, these days. In the last weeks she’d taken a leap forward, experiencing an almost exponential growth in her abilities when compared to all the months before that. She’d almost convinced herself she’d had a breakthrough.

  “They’re fading, aren’t they.” Jersain made it a statement rather than a question, because she already knew the answer. “Vayne’s powers: they’re starting to fade.” Which explained why suddenly she was strong enough to control them.

  “Don’t say that.”

  Jersain dropped Agira’s hands, unreasonably annoyed. She hadn’t known how much she’d wanted to be wrong until her thrall’s evasive answer set her off.

  “It’s true. I feel stronger than ever, as if I’m in control of my power instead of the other way around now, but…” And it was that “but” that made her grind her teeth in frustration.

  Instead of pulling away or cringing in the face of Jersain’s ill temper, Agira situated herself in the corner of the sofa and drew Jersain against her, so that Jersain’s back rested against her chest.

  Agira draped her arms around Jersain. “We don’t know that for certain. Dolan seemed confident that the procedure would be permanent.”

  Jersain sighed, the temper bleeding from her body. It wasn’t Agira’s fault. Agira would give her own powers, and happily, if Jersain asked her to.

  “Dolan could never find a permanent solution for himself. I was foolish to think he’d be any more successful with imperial physiology.”

  Agira didn’t answer. There was nothing to say, really. She merely laid her cheek against Jersain’s hair.

  As far as doing something about the problem… Jersain had handled that beautifully. The Steel Dove should reach Ordoch any day now, and then she’d have her pick from a planet full of psionics.