His mouth found hers, gently. He always started gently. Still cautious. Still unsure—but of her or himself or both, she didn’t know. She wasn’t yet ready to ask. Odd how she could lay here naked with him and yet not be able to ask a simple question such as “do you trust me?” But she couldn’t. So she kissed him back instead.
He broke the kiss with the same gentleness with which he started it.
“You okay?” she asked, because that was the kind of stupid thing first-time lovers always said. More so because their first time was really his first time.
“Beyond wonderful.” His deep voice rumbled between them. They were almost nose to nose. “But I don’t think I was—it was—that wonderful for you.” He stumbled over the last few words.
Her heart ached for him. Mister Perfection. Ol’ No Excuses Kel-Paten. “It was incredible for me,” she said, brushing her fingers over his jaw. “And not just because I finally know more about something than you do.”
“Gloating is unprofessional.”
She laughed softly. He did have a wry sense of humor.
“But thank you,” he continued. “I hope—I’d like to do better.”
“I’m available for private lessons.”
He reached for the blanket. “You should get some sleep first,” he said, drawing it up over both of them. “We have an hour fifteen before we need to be at the controls.”
An hour’s nap sounded like luxury, and she said so.
He kissed her forehead. “I’ll wake you.”
No. She’d wake herself in forty-five minutes. And teach him just how much fun they could have in thirty.
THE OUTPOST
Jace wove his mind tightly into Reilly’s until he wasn’t sure where the furzel started and he ended. It seemed the best way to utilize the healing energies of Novalis that were so much a part of him and so foreign to the furzel. The Ved continued to thrash at his memories. He ached at his father’s rejection, cried at his mother’s disdain. Through it all he held on to Reilly, now rapidly growing stronger. The furzel seemed to blossom in Novalis.
So did Jace’s knowledge. The collective memory of his people resided in this dream state. Linked to the furzels, amplified by the power in Novalis, Jace learned exactly how the Ved had infiltrated the Triad.
A PsyServ experiment? Eden, bonded to Reilly, was stunned by the revelations.
A dangerous one. Exiled to the malleable dimension of the void centuries before by their creators, the Ved had found an escape route when a dangerous PsyServ mind experiment opened the first pathway into Dreehalla. And the Faction was born—a parasitic symbiosis between human and Ved in the Triad. The human—the host—eventually died. But until that point, the Ved provided the human with a feeling of invincibility, power, omnipotence—whatever the human craved. And the human would crave, because the Ved needed more emotions to feed on.
The humans in PsyServ learned to offer the Ved sacrifices to keep them from destroying the host human: sacrifices such as ships’ crew, like Degun’s Luck and the others before it.
They answered the hail of a PsyServ pinnace with engine trouble. Jace relived the scene with the information the furzels had pulled from the Ved they’d neutralized. The Ved fed off the kidnapped crew’s terror but also off the resulting fear as it spread through Lightridge. Mass hysteria was a tasty tidbit. Even stronger than the pleasure they were created to amplify for the Nasyry.
The Nasyry? Eden’s shock was palpable.
One of my people’s shameful secrets, Jace admitted. So long ago that the Ved’eskhar became legend, not fact: an energy being bred for the purpose of pleasure enhancement. A link to a Ved could make a simple kiss feel like an adventure into ecstasy. Then that memory could be augmented and you could experience it over and over, in greater intensity each time.
Like trefla, Eden said. Only a thousand times worse.
It drove people to the brink of insanity. To suicide. And then a Ved, released from its human host, would be frantic to find a new one. Its quest for pleasure changed to a quest for fear and pain, one where they no longer simply merged with a host’s mind but drew the host into this dimension with them, thereby opening a greater range of emotional experiences. Though our scientists said they couldn’t, the Ved learned, evolved. Thousands of Nasyry died in our attempt to banish them into the dimension you call the void—an empty place where, feeding on one another, they’d die. But they didn’t. Because of PsyServ, they’re able to move in and out of the void. And control my sister. He knew from her aura that Bianca was beyond his help. The Ved liked oullums. Though their lack of telepathic talents made them more difficult to bond with initially, oullums made stronger hosts because they had no ability to detect and possibly defend against a Ved. That’s why the Ved encouraged the Intergalactic Psychic Concordance and Protection Statutes and the harnessing of telepaths. No one to warn the oullums they were coming. They’d learned from their mistakes with the Nasyry.
Reilly stirred, stretching his back legs. His tail twitched. Friend? JaceFriend?
Tank, sitting in Eden’s lap, shook himself, then licked a spot of fur on his side. Friend? Food?
Jace felt Eden smile, even through her fear and heartache. Time, he told her. Mara, our keeper, grows restless as we rest.
But I’m not ready! The operation is too risky. Eden’s panic flowed into Jace.
He sent back warmth, a mental embrace. And a plan. There’s no way we can neutralize every Ved in this place. But with the furzels healed, maybe we can use them to open a single path out.
And how, Eden asked, are we going to get past Mara, the guards?
You pretend to put me under. I can put myself into a deep enough trance to muddle the med-sensors. Mara and her assistant will be focused on the operation and, with me unconscious, won’t consider us a physical threat. Then you say there’s a problem, something to bring Nando leaning over me. I’ll grab him. You handle Mara. I’m guessing they’ll be armed. We take their weapons and make a run for it, using the furzels to clear the way.
Jace. Eden’s tone was firm. So many things could go wrong. Not the least being I’m no expert in hand-to-hand combat.
If we can get to my old ship, we’ll make it. All you have to do is knock Mara down. There must be some piece of medical equipment in here you can use. He felt her confidence waver. I can take Nando out easily. And I’ll be there to help you. You can do it, Eden. You have to. He touched her in a ritual blessing: forehead, cheek, chin, and then brought her and the furzels out of Novalis. It’s our only chance.
THE WINDBLADE
Sass woke, her internal alarm opening her eyes at the forty-five-minute mark. A small smile touched her lips and, stretching, she turned toward him. He wasn’t there. She levered up on her elbow, shot a quick glance around Angel’s cabin. The sanifac door was open. No light from within, no sound of water splashing in the sink.
“Hey,” she said softly to the quiet room. “Kel-Paten?”
No answer. Damn. She sat up fully. Her clothes were on the floor. His weren’t. Had she dreamed making love to him? Or had Bad Thing struck again, transporting her somewhere, somewhen else?
She threw off the blanket, then grabbed for her clothes. “Kel-Paten?” Her voice was stronger. But not strong enough to drown out the damning thoughts racing through her head or the small ache growing around her heart. She’d been too aggressive; some men didn’t like that. He needed to make the first move and she’d taken away that prerogative. She scared him off.
Kel-Paten? Scared? another part of her mind argued.
Yeah, well. She had no idea he was a virgin. She would have done things differently. Been…what? Gentler? She gave a soft snort at her own ruminations as she sealed her shirt and tucked it into her pants. There was a comm panel on the wall by the door to the corridor. She headed for it, keyed it to intraship. “Captain’s on duty. Status.”
There was a moment of silence, then: “Twenty-six minutes forty-one seconds to the jumpgate. All systems green.”
So much for dreams. His and hers.
She missed Tank. If nothing else, she’d get her fidget back on HV-1.
She palmed open the cabin door and headed for the bridge.
The hatchway was open. He swiveled in the pilot’s seat when she was halfway down the corridor, and even at this distance she saw his eyes were luminous. Powered up. Habit or precaution?
“Trouble?” she asked, stepping through the hatchway.
He frowned for a moment. “You could have stayed in bed longer.”
“So could you,” she said pointedly, because if he thought making love to her was a mistake, she wanted to hear it now.
“I don’t need as much rest—”
“I’m not talking about sleeping.”
He stared at her. She rested one hand on the back of the copilot’s chair, swiveling it around, but didn’t sit.
“You wanted me there when you woke up?”
She nodded slowly. “Uh-huh.”
“May I take you up on that offer at a later date?”
He looked so sincerely chastised that she had to laugh, the ache fading from around her heart. The trock-brained idiot did care about her, about Lady Sass. “You damned well better,” she told him as she sat.
“Sass, I’m sorry,” he said as she turned toward the console. “I didn’t want to bother you. You needed the sleep.”
Sass. More and more, he called her that. She glanced at him. “I needed you,” she said softly, and was rewarded by his small, crooked smile of surprise.
“You damned well better,” he said, echoing her retort.
“Aye, sir. Now tell me why being here was preferable to being in bed with me. Trouble?”
“Preventive measures.” He clasped her hand briefly, then tapped at the console’s monitors, bringing up data. His gloves were off, and she wondered if he’d found a way to spike in. “I’ve been thinking about those fighters that chased us into the jumpgate at Panperra. I’m hoping they came from here.”
“From the void? So you’re thinking there is some charted way in and out, that this isn’t a parallel universe?”
“It can’t be parallel or our being here would violate the law of physics,” Kel-Paten said.
“But that wasn’t Zanorian or Angel, not as I know them. What else—”
“A dimension of its own, based on what data I’ve been able to collect. How much is tailored to the observer and how much is externally controlled, I’m not sure. But if those fighters can move in and out, so can we.”
“And if they can’t?” Sass asked, with a strong feeling she wasn’t going to like his answer.
“Then we can’t use this ship, or anything created in here, to get home. It would cease to exist once we crossed through the gate. We’d die.”
“But there are options,” Kel-Paten told her, as Sass’s stomach executed a few flip-flops. She did not want to spend the rest of her life in the void being emotionally tortured by blue glowing psi-creatures. Dealing with her feelings for the admiral was tough enough without adding Bad Thing’s influence into the mix.
“Assuming this is another dimension,” Kel-Paten continued.
“Can’t you tell?”
“I’ve narrowed it down to two hypotheses.”
She knew that. But she didn’t realize they might be conflicting and said so.
“We’ve been here a relatively short period of time, with malfunctioning equipment and no correlative database to work with. What’s here,” and he tapped the Blade’s console, “is the first functional system I’ve had at my disposal. But I don’t know if it’s reliable.”
“The data could be part of the illusion.” Garbage in, garbage out.
“Exactly.”
“There must be some way to differentiate—” A question surfaced. “How do you know I’m real?”
He glanced down for a moment, and she had a feeling her question wasn’t one he wanted asked. “I imprinted your biosignature years ago,” he said when he looked back at her.
“Imprinted?”
“Dr. Fynn reads auras. I read biosignatures.”
“Like a datalyzer?”
He gave a short, curt nod.
His ’cybe functions again. Something he wasn’t comfortable with around her. “That’s why you’ve stayed powered up?” The glow in his eyes made sense now.
“If it bothers you—”
“Hell, no!” She was relieved there was at least one thread of sanity in all this lunacy. “So I’m me. How do I know you’re you?”
“Objectively, you don’t.”
So much for sanity. She pinned him with a hard gaze. “I’m overjoyed to hear that.” She thought for a moment. “Did Zanorian’s biosignature match?”
“His isn’t one I have on fi—memorized. And I don’t have the Vax’s databases to work with. But his appearance was different, and you noted there were associational inaccuracies. That’s one of the reasons I question if this is a parallel universe.”
“A parallel universe doesn’t preclude variations of the original.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, but a small smile played over his mouth. “I do love the fact you punch holes in every hypothesis I come up with. But nothing so far confirms the parallel hypothesis. I do need to determine if we have to find another means of transportation. If the Galaxus was in better shape, we could use her, since we brought her into this dimension with us. But she’s not, and I don’t know what would happen if we repaired her with components created here.”
She did not want to die in jump. Or, worse, be stranded in stasis, the ship in a kind of hyperspace paralysis. Given that, she’d opt for the void. At least the scenery was better. And she was sure she could find a bar. Unless…
“The Mystic Traveler,” she said carefully, because her mind was just now grasping the idea, “might have come from our existence. Maybe Andgarran didn’t disappear after he stole the ship—”
“He stole it?”
She shot him a narrow-eyed look of disbelief. “I bet Serafino told you he sold it, right?” She laughed. “Andgarran stole it, embarrassing the hell out of ’Fino, which is why we all thought he took off. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was caught in the same kind of jump we were. And ended up here.”
“Or else this place created the ship out of Serafino’s memories.”
“Except that getting the Traveler back wouldn’t be a negative memory. And so far that’s all I’ve seen here—Bad Things creating bad things.”
“But we can’t be sure.”
She shook her head. “Serafino would know. Just as I can tell you that this ship,” and she ran her hand over the edge of the console, “isn’t the real Windblade. And I can’t tell you why, other than I’ve been in the real one and this isn’t it.” Like Zanorian and Angel.
Kel-Paten leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers together. “That would mean abandoning this ship, hijacking the Traveler, locating Fynn, Serafino, and the furzels, locking them in a transbeam, and getting everyone on board, off planet, and through the jumpgate. Without anyone at the outpost taking retaliatory action. And without any more enemy fighters waiting to blow us out of the space lanes when we arrive.”
Hell of a list. And a hundred things that could go wrong. A hundred ways to die. “Piece o’ cake. Anything else?”
“Yes.” The perimeter warning chimed. He turned to it, then slanted her a quick glance. “Don’t forget you still need me when we get home.”
The Blade flowed out the jumpgate, a flawless machine of speed and stealth, weapons hot, scanner array parsing the starfield for anything that could remotely be considered a threat. Which encompassed, as far as Sass was concerned, everything. It had be
en more than three hours since their last Bad Thing-induced episode. They were not only overdue but she had a strong suspicion the void was collecting interest on it. She wanted to be long gone when it presented the invoice.
“Nice to know no one’s moved the planet while we were away,” she said, seeing HV-1’s data on the nav comp.
“Let’s confirm the Galaxus and the outpost before we celebrate.”
An hour before they could do that. Another twenty minutes before they made orbit. The Blade had considerably more speed than the damaged shuttle and, thanks to Kel-Paten, had exited the gate on the proper axis.
Sass brought the sublights to max, then coaxed them a bit more. It had been only a few hours since they were dumped on the raft; the outpost was still in the dark of night. But the worry she’d held in abeyance now rushed to the forefront of her mind. Eden. Tank and Reilly. And ’Fino, that damned Nasyry pirate.
A lot could happen in a few hours. A lot had happened already.
Kel-Paten was running his simulations, data streaming down one screen, charts and schematics revolving on another. Tension hung in the air like a storm cloud riding the horizon. She thought of Lethant again. The storms there were fierce, violent.
No. She pushed the thought away. Don’t draw it to you. Don’t give the void anything to work with. Even though Kel-Paten had confirmed there were no Bad Things slithering through the corners of the ship, Sass was nervous. She didn’t know how big one would have to be to grab them, sending them reeling again. A little one could be tucked inside a conduit on board.
She focused on HV-1’s data, now coming in more detail. Fifteen minutes later she whooped in joy. “Got her!” The Galaxus was a mere pinprick of data at this distance but recognizable. Kel-Paten confirmed her finding with a nod.
But they were too far for the Blade to scan for biosignatures at this distance. The Strafer-class ship wasn’t the Vax.
Minutes later they confirmed the outpost and then, surprisingly or perhaps not so, a few other scattered small settlements, no apparent threat. Illusions? Reality?
Games of Command Page 35
