Jericho Falling

by Jaleta Clegg

  "What's done?" I asked. I wasn't expecting an answer.

  Lowell smiled. I could almost see the tension seeping out of him. "Data insertion. Within two weeks, any of my people anywhere in the Empire, those who know the right codes that is, can access that information. Roderick can't hide now." He stood, stretching and yawning. "Along with the files on Typoll, he doesn't stand a chance. And we will have our names cleared. Of treason at least."

  I wished I could be as certain as he was. Treason was serious, deadly serious. And any information coming from him would be suspect. I knew. I'd been in that position myself before. No one believed me and I didn't have anyone who could back up my story. It was my word against everyone else. And Lowell was the one who had believed me and saved me. Who was going to believe Lowell and save us this time?

  "Want to play, Dace?" Beryn asked behind me, riffling a deck of cards.

  "Not right now." I was reluctant to leave the cockpit. Here I could keep an eye on the ship and its connection to the station.

  "Only because you're currently winning." But he said it teasingly. He went back to the common area.

  Mart was sleeping again, his dreams riffing through my emotions.

  Marshal leaned back in his chair. "I need newer charts. I can't finish this yet." He left me alone in front of the controls.

  I watched the indicator lights fluctuate as the station automatics serviced the ship.

  Paltronis entered. I watched her warily. Was she here to yell at me? I didn't want to listen to her. Whatever guilt trip she wanted to send me on, I had already sent myself on a worse one. She sat in the chair next to me. She didn't say anything for a long time.

  "I'm sorry, Dace," she said finally. "I talked to Lowell. He explained what's going on between you and Mart."

  "What did he tell you?"

  "That I shouldn't be so hard on you. That it wasn't your choice."

  "It was my choice to shoot Tayvis," I said.

  "That I understand. If you hadn't, all of us would have been caught. And none of us would have stood a chance."

  I shot a sideways glance at her. She studied the controls, her hands folded tightly in her lap.

  "You still think I'm betraying Tayvis with Mart," I said.

  "I saw you sleeping with him. What am I supposed to think?"

  "You could have asked me, instead of Lowell. Did he tell you what he guessed about my ancestry? Did he tell you about Jericho and the Hrissia'noru?" I was just warming up to the subject. All of my own anger and doubts poured out. I couldn't have stopped if I'd wanted to. "Did he tell you he was one of them? Did he tell you they were genetically altered? He's one of the race of highly telepathic people. Mart is one of the empaths. And one of my ancestors was the third race. The ones that had no powers at all."

  She turned her chair and stared at me.

  "I had no choice about bonding with Mart. It was genetically programmed to happen. Whatever you think we're doing together, I can promise you it isn't my choice. And there isn't anything happening. Physically." I ran out of anger. I pulled my feet into the chair, curling up into a ball. "It wasn't my choice," I repeated.

  The silence stretched out into long minutes. She finally shifted in her chair.

  "Tayvis—" she began.

  "He won't forgive me, ever," I broke in. "I know that. I betrayed his trust. I had to."

  "I don't blame you, Dace. I think I understand about Mart now, too." She sighed. "It's just, seeing you together like that, always touching, it was hard not to jump to conclusions."

  "It was the only way to keep from itching out of my skin."

  "You aren't doing it now."

  "Because he isn't more than a few feet away."

  "You know exactly where he is? All the time?"

  "Yes, I do. Although if he gets too far away, I can't stop myself from closing the gap. It's like being tied to him. All the time."

  "You hate it, don't you?"

  "Yes. I still like Mart. Even if his mind is full of holes. Even if he's guilty of betraying his people. Because it wasn't him that did it. Not Mart as he is now. It was someone else who was wiped out of his head. Am I making any sense at all?"

  "I think so," Paltronis said and shrugged. "Lowell doesn't think he did it. Lowell thinks he's as much a victim as the others."

  "What a relief," I said sarcastically. "As if it changes anything. Mart still blames himself. And I get to live with his guilt constantly."

  "You share emotions with him?"

  "It's gotten so bad I don't know which are mine and which are his."

  She looked back down at the controls. "I'm sorry for being upset with you, Dace. I didn't want to see Tayvis hurt again. And I saw how he looked at you. I was jealous. I wanted to protect him."

  "I never wanted to hurt him," I whispered. I was close to tears again, remembering the look in his eyes after I'd shot him. I wiped angrily at my blurring eyes.

  "I know. Now." Paltronis shifted, standing without any apparent effort. She moved like a cat, sinuous and stealthy with coiled power just waiting to be released. I was glad she wasn't angry at me anymore. "I'm sorry," she said again.

  "So am I," I answered.

  I heard her leave, closing the door behind her. I wanted to give in to the tears that burned my eyes. I wanted to wallow in my guilt and pain. I felt Mart stir. Maybe it was his guilt and pain mixed with my own. I didn't want him coming in the cockpit and watching me cry. Again. I shoved my feelings away and made myself concentrate on the engine readings. A single tear escaped and splashed on the controls.

  If I could roll back time and do everything over, I would have run away from Mart as fast as I could. I would have called in the Patrol and let them deal with him. I would never have gotten involved. I would never have bonded with him. I would never have had to shoot Tayvis. That line of thought brought the tears back. I was almost glad when the station signaled the refueling was complete. It gave me something else to do besides brood. I disconnected our end and paged Lydia. We were ready to fly again.

  By the time Lydia and Marshal returned, I had the ship ready to fly. All we needed was the final undocking code from the station.

  I half expected the station to tell us at the last minute that we were under arrest, that we were not going to be allowed to leave. No such order came. Lydia made the final contact with the station control. The ship nudged away and we were on our own. I engaged the engines and sent us curving out into space.

  "The course is set," Marshal told me. As soon as we hit the jump point I could send us through. And then it would be a very long six days to Onipas. We only had two days there. And then we were on our way again, to Calloway. And then everything would be over. Lowell had promised. We expose Babylon and what was going on there and it would be over. I could find the Phoenix and just trade again. And maybe the Emperor would invite me to dinner. The way my life was going, things weren't going to be nearly as simple as Lowell kept insisting.

  The six days passed without incident. We played a lot of cards. Even Lowell joined in. He was much more relaxed. He was still a lousy card player. Somehow I didn't feel as elated to be skunking him as I'd once thought I would.

  Lydia had two stunners on the ship. That was the sum total of our weapons, unless Lowell had some smuggled in his luggage that he hadn't bothered to tell us about. He insisted he didn't.

  Paltronis spent an hour cleaning and checking both stunners before shaking her head over them. "Pitiful pieces of junk," she said.

  "There will be plenty of weapons at Calloway." Lowell picked up his hand then frowned.

  "Bad cards?" Beryn asked innocently.

  "Did Dace teach you to cheat?" Lowell answered.

  "I was cheating at cards long before she even knew what they were," Beryn said.

  "You aren't that much older than me." I sorted my hand. I had too many low cards in the wrong combinations.

  "How would you know how old I am?" Beryn dropped a card on the table.

  "I guessed." I p
layed a card out of my hand that scored a decent amount of points.

  "Sneaky," Marshal said. He played a card that tripled the score for both of us.

  "What I don't understand," Mart said, "is why you keep playing with her if she cheats so badly."

  "I only cheat when Jerimon plays," I said defensively.

  "I know," Mart said and grinned as he played his card. "Triple comet."

  "How did you do that?" Lowell asked, frowning at the cards on the table.

  Lydia joined in the next hand. Since comets couldn't be played with more than five players, Beryn dropped out. He was ahead of me by almost a hundred points, Mart was ahead of him by over two hundred. We switched to simpler rules for Lydia. And started over on the scoring.

  Beryn and Paltronis went into the cockpit. I heard the murmur of them talking. Beryn laughed at something Paltronis said. The conversation got quieter after that.

  "It's your turn, Dace," Marshal said, nudging me.

  I glanced at the table and realized I was going to lose that hand no matter what. I played a card that made it hard for anyone else to score off it either. Mart still managed to score.

  Chapter 34

  Onipas was the same as the last time I'd been there—a long way from anywhere. It was only barely settled. The entire population was less than ten thousand. Even though it was day on the continent where the settlement was located, it still took an hour before we got someone to answer the com. I was talking this time. I'd left Onipas on very good terms with the people there, unlike most worlds I visited.

  "Who is this?" the man who answered the com asked again after I identified myself. "How come you ain't flying your own ship? I thought it was the Phoenix Rising."

  "It is, Bart. I brought some friends to visit."

  "You bring more of them plants with you? Or seeds?"

  "This isn't a cargo ship." I was trying to be patient. I'd already explained to the kid who'd answered first, before Bart took the com away from him.

  "Then why are you here?" Bart asked.

  "Like I said, we came to visit." I glanced over at Lowell, sitting in the copilot's chair and looking like he was enjoying playing with the scanners. "I've got some friends with me who want to invest in your planet. Bring in more equipment and things like that."

  Lowell raised his eyebrows.

  "We're landing, Bart," I said, raising my voice to drown out his squawking questions. "Turn on the beacon for us, please."

  "Who wants to invest? We don't need no outsiders telling us what to plant. We don't need nobody's money. You just tell that friend of yours to take his advice and shove it where the sun can't shine."

  I handed the com over to Lowell and let him talk to Bart. He was smooth, promising things without really promising anything. I kept the ship steady in a slowly decreasing orbit, waiting for the beacon. It started blinking a few minutes later, while Lowell was getting Bart to describe the various products Onipas could produce.

  I set the ship down on a grassy meadow perched halfway up a hill above the town. Lowell managed to end his conversation with Bart with a promise to tour his farm later. He cut the com and pulled a face.

  "I am not an agricultural investor."

  "And I don't work for you. Get over it, I did," I answered as I shut down the ship.

  "I don't think I'd want you for an agent anymore," Lowell said. "You're impossible. You have no respect for authority. And you get much too personally involved."

  "Good. I don't want to be an agent."

  He laughed and patted my shoulder.

  "There's a welcoming party on its way," Lydia said from the open hatch. She shivered. The air coming in the ship was cold. It smelled fresh and clean, like plants.

  We all went outside. A group of people hiked the trail from the settlement.

  "Isn't that a lot of people?" Beryn asked me.

  "Normal for here, at least the one time I was here," I said. "Frontier world, ships usually only come about every six months. They like to see new faces."

  "You were only here once?" Lowell asked. "Ah. That explains why you haven't been banned yet. They don't know you very well."

  "Shut up, Lowell," I grumbled.

  He laughed.

  They came over the crest of the hill. Omar was in front, like I expected, but he looked grim, which I didn't expect. He stopped a few paces away.

  "When I heard you were here, I rather expected your ship to be here," he said. I was beginning to wonder if he'd had a personality transplant. He wasn't the happy, welcoming person who couldn't get enough of us the last time we were here. "And your crew. You put me in a difficult position, Dace. We had another visitor only ten days ago, a Patrol courier carrying special bulletins. You're on their most wanted list."

  "I can explain," I began.

  He cut me off. "For treason. That isn't a light charge. Smuggling we can look the other way. But treason? We may be distant, but we're still part of the Empire." He shifted his glance to Lowell. "You must be Commander Lowell, the only person they want more than Dace." His look was sour as he turned back to me. "I'm sorry, I enjoyed your visit and looked forward to another, but not like this. I'm going to have to arrest you. The Council is meeting this afternoon. They'll vote on what to do with you." He waved at the burly men who had followed him up to the ship.

  "Do we get any say in this?" Beryn asked.

  "You're aiding and abetting a known criminal," Omar said. "There's a reward out for any and all of you."

  "Is that why you're doing it? For the money?"

  "I'm sorry," he said and turned away.

  The men he'd brought were big and toughened by lots of outdoor work. We didn't stand a chance of fighting our way back into the ship. Even Paltronis realized that, though she might have been able to fight at least three of them at once. There were too many of them and they looked like they knew what they were doing. They herded us away from the hatch. One of them had enough sense to shut the door. The air overhead was thick with clouds and a chilly wind blew. We were marched down the path to the settlement. They locked us in a storage shed and left us.

  It was cold. There wasn't any heat in the shed. And nothing else except a dirt floor.

  "You said it would be safe here," Paltronis said. "You said they'd welcome us. Well, you were right. They definitely prepared a welcome for us, just not the one we wanted."

  "Leave her alone," Lowell said sharply. "It was my fault. I miscalculated. I didn't think they'd send out couriers this far. A message capsule, maybe."

  "They're probably sending ships to all the worlds that still let her land," Beryn said. "The list can't be very long." He grinned to let me know he was teasing, it still stung.

  "So what do we do now?" Marshal asked.

  "Wait," Lowell said. "Unless you can dig through dirt packed solid or tunnel your way through plascrete walls."

  "Dace can pick the lock," Beryn offered.

  I shook my head. "It's on the outside of the door. I can't get to it."

  "So we're stuck for a while." Beryn pulled the deck of cards out of his pocket. "Anyone want to play?"

  He played with Marshal and Lydia. The three of them huddled close to each other for warmth. The day was definitely getting colder. Lowell took Paltronis to one side and they whispered fiercely at each other. I went over to Mart.

  He sat near the door, looking defeated. His head hung down, he stared at the floor. His hands dangled in front of him, propped on his knees. He was cold, beginning to shiver, but he no longer cared. I sat next to him and nudged him.

  "At least they could give us a heater," I said.

  "They don't care what happens to us," he said. "As long as they get their reward money. I'm surprised I'm not on the wanted list."

  "You are, just not the Patrol's." I shifted my feet, pulling my knees up close. "Who is chasing you, Mart? Who was it on Verrus? Who was it on Shamustel?"

  "I don't know. I think it may be the people who raided Jericho."

  "The Emperor's cousin?
Lowell said it was him, Roderick Medallis. He would have the resources to do it."

  "Why does it matter, Dace? We've lost. They caught us. None of us are going to live very long." He'd given up what little hope he'd managed to find. "It's probably better this way."

  "I'm not going to die like this, Mart." Anger warmed me. "I'm going to go down fighting."

  "Then why didn't you fight them at the ship?" He didn't care about the answer. He wanted to curl up and die.

  "Because I pick my odds better than that. There's no reason to get beaten up when you're going to lose." I grabbed his collar and jerked his head around. "Stop it, Mart. Don't do this to me. You have to fight with me. If you give up and die, I'll die with you. It's not just about you anymore." I let go of his collar and sat back against the wall. I stared at the floor in front of my feet. I twisted the rings on my fingers, the plain gold wedding ring and the carved rowan wreath. There was no spark of energy this time, no golden power flowing into me.

  Mart came to a decision, I felt his attitude change. It was still bleak and hopeless, but now he had a sense of purpose. I don't know what he decided, he didn't tell me. He did take my hand in his. His fingers curled through mine, they were cold. I shifted closer to him, conserving warmth.

  "Zhrianotui," he whispered. He squeezed my fingers. "But not the way most are." He felt my confusion. "It's supposed to make you happy, make you complete. Maybe if I weren't damaged. Maybe if I could remember."

  "Then we probably wouldn't be sitting here talking about it."

  He squeezed my hand again. I laid my head against his shoulder and tried to sleep.

  The door banged open. A stout woman barged in carrying a bulky box. She put the box on the floor in the center of the room and fiddled with knobs on the top. A wave of warm air spread along the floor.

  "Going to snow soon. Can't have you frozen." She laughed, a booming sound that echoed in the shed. "If they don't decide by dinner time, we'll bring that by." She stumped out of the shed.

  A light flickered on overhead with a sharp buzzing. It was dim but it was light. I hadn't realized until then just how dark it had become in the shed.