But Satori hadn’t turned away.
“We have to go back,” she said, and a little shot of ice ran through her. Though Jess knew it was coming. “We can’t keep this here. We did what we came to do. Zac is safe. Kang is gone.
“It’s time to take it back.”
She meant, of course, the Reaver.
When Jess failed to meet her gaze, unable to confront what must be faced, Satori went on. “You’ve got some decisions to make. We all do, but especially you.”
Jessica’s mind buzzed. She could feel her head thrumming. The sheer uncertainty of the moment had her receding.
“I can’t go home,” she said, voice distant in her own ears; not sure whether she told Satori in the hope she might have an answer, a way out, or if she even told Satori at all. Maybe she told no one, simply stating aloud that which she could not yet believe.
Satori studied her, then glanced again at Zac. Made the kind of observation only she could.
“You’re afraid to leave him.”
Jess tried to speak but couldn’t, able only to shake her head. The emotions of the moment were piling on. Her lip trembled.
“He loves you,” Satori drove the sadness deeper—though Jess knew it wasn’t on purpose. “If you stay he’ll try to stay with you. If he’s not awake we can leave him with you, but I don’t know how that will work on your world. He’ll be quite an oddity.”
“I can’t stay,” Jessica’s voice dropped. She looked up at Satori. “Don’t you see? I have nowhere to go.”
“You have choices.”
“I can’t go anywhere.” And she wondered, had the forced ambivalence of her life been merely a shield? A way to protect herself from the very pain she was feeling now? After all, if you didn’t really care about something how could losing it hurt you? Had she never allowed herself to fully embrace the joy of friends and family—all so she never had to experience the agony she now felt? Because right then, the stark realization that those relationships were all but gone, in such a permanent way ...
She ached. No way to comfort it away. There was nothing to be done, no hope to put in its place. No substitute for the pain. Now that the moment was finally upon her, no longer just a future speculation, no longer merely a bridge she would cross eventually …
The bridge was here. She was standing at the edge, now, and she must, without question, cross it and leave behind her old life; and, though made true from the moment she ran for the Skull Boy in the barn, gun in hand, bound for Anitra one last time, the moment of permanence had finally arrived.
She drew a shuddering breath.
“I have no idea what to do.”
“Well you need to decide.”
Satori’s lack of sympathy twisted the ache harder.
“Kang could still—”
“Kang’s not here and he’s not coming.”
Jess swallowed. Hating her right then.
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“We know it well enough.”
“We don’t!” Jess recoiled at her own outburst.
She needed time.
“We don’t know what happened to the Icon or him,” she calmed her voice. “He could still come through.”
I just need time! If they left now … it was forever. Once they took the Reaver back to the Venatres … It was over. And though she had nothing to go back to on Earth, no feasible way to return, the thought of actively deciding to accelerate that moment, to leave it behind for good, once and for all—now that they were here, now that she was back—had her nearly panicked.
She couldn’t leave.
She couldn’t stay.
Satori glared at her.
“We’re taking this back,” she said with finality. “You need to decide whether you’re going with us or staying.”
And with that she turned and walked from the room.
The door hissed shut, marking the end of that passage of time.
Jess watched after her bitterly, staring at the closed door long after she was gone. Crushed that Satori, the one person who should understand her plight, who should at least have something kind to say—no matter how hardened she was—showed no compassion whatsoever.
She put her face in her hands.
CHAPTER 14: AN AUDIENCE IS GRANTED
Drake Hauer took a sip of coffee. He held the cup halfway to the desk as he was setting it down, a new bit of information on the computer screen catching his eye. At some point he realized his hand was hovering and finished the action, placing the cup in its spot amid the clutter.
“Did you see this?” he called out. A moment later Bobby came from the bustle taking place in the other room. His junior agent grabbed the door frame and leaned around, sticking his head and most of his shoulders into the relative quiet of Drake’s office.
“What’s up?”
“This info on the access point.” Drake pointed to his screen. “It came from an ISP in New Zealand.”
“From the girl?”
Drake nodded. “That’s where the signal jumped on.”
Bobby stepped more fully into the room.
Drake looked up. “Does that make any sense?”
“I guess. I mean, there’s been nothing else.”
Drake turned his eyes back to the screen. This odd, random “Like”, from the girl’s friend, Bianca Devnani—or at least from someone using her account—was bugging him. Now they’d determined whoever it was accessed the internet in New Zealand.
Strange.
What were they doing there? They already knew the two girls blinked out of existence back in Boise, using the other device—the one Jessica Paquin somehow ended up with—along with a very alien piece of military hardware. A suit of powered armor that laid waste to a dozen city blocks. Could the Jessica device go to … New Zealand? That was ridiculous. Based on what little the Project knew about the teleport devices they were crafted by an ancient alien race and used to travel between worlds. Not between landmasses around the same globe.
Drake cleared his mind. He had to stop obsessing over this random occurrence. It was a fluke. A spoof. Something. Someone found a way to get logged on as her friend, Bianca, and click a button. Drake’s group captured the login and the click, but would never be able to confirm who actually did it. If it was the girl, and she was dumb enough to do it once, why hadn’t she done it again?
And how the hell was she back on Earth?
He’d already spent too much time chasing this small lead.
He noticed Bobby staring.
“I’ve got to let this go,” he echoed his own conclusion.
“We’re all a little stressed.” Bobby paused, then left to get back to what he was doing.
The shock of what the two girls had pulled off still seethed within the whole agency. It had taken way too long to identify Jessica from the chatter—months—and when they finally did ID her the execution of her capture was beyond sloppy. The result was a fiasco, ending in the loss of not only the device she held but the one the Project had as well. They’d gone to get hers, and she got away with theirs. She got them both. Admittedly they’d exhausted every form of study they could on their own, but the loss was huge. And not just a little embarrassing. The wake of destruction had been massive, all driven by their botched attempt to nab a teenage girl, and every aspect of that incident tested every last bit of the Project’s ability as a bottomless budget, limitless access operation.
Now they had no alien technology.
None.
Drake leaned back. The chair creaked as he turned from the screen, running his palms over his dark, close-cropped hair. He stared at himself in a mirror on the wall. Though his eyes were bloodshot he still managed to look fresh, blessed as he was with good genes. A handsome Hispanic with a medium-light complexion, he had an athletic build and a razor-sharp intellect. The good looks and an innate sense of style gave him an extra edge of professionalism, no doubt, but it was his mind that had propelled him to the rank he held within the Proje
ct: Running the operation to capture the girl (which had so far failed; he had no illusion of finding her after she transited to God-knew-where using the other device), simultaneous with being in charge of the efforts to gain insight into, if not the outright capture of, the Esehta Bok.
He glanced at the activity in the other room. Bodies moving back and forth, calling out information—preparing for a mission that would achieve that vision in a big way.
Since the Esehta Bok first came on the scene the Project had been in a losing battle to learn what they were hiding. It was possible that, at the end of all this, the Project would learn the Bok had nothing. No other devices. Nothing else. So far, however, based on what was known, that was not likely. Nor did Drake actually believe it would prove true. The Bok were hiding something. They displayed too much knowledge, projected too much power (helicopter gunships right in the American heartland, for crying out loud!), their tendrils ran too deep, their understanding and speed of reaction was far too great …
The Bok knew their game. They were for real and, the more the Project managed to uncover, bit by agonizing bit, the more those discoveries painted an increasingly disturbing picture. These guys had been around at least a thousand years. The Bok knew of the device held by the Project, most likely had one of their own, if not more, and their (claimed) ties to an ancient Space Opera society had, so far, borne out enough to give the Project every reason to believe the Bok story was legit. And now a breakthrough. Thanks to the ego of their newest leader, Lorenzo, the Project was about to get a whole lot closer to the truth.
Lorenzo Fertiti. Current head of the Esehta Bok. A self-described vampire type who was having delusions of world domination. The Bok modus operandi until then, all through the centuries, had been to remain securely in the shadows. Lorenzo was bringing them into the light. He was tired of hiding and saw the Bok as superior to “normal” humans, imagining the Bok and their pedigree as somehow “superhuman”, intending to corral the cattle of the world beneath Bok rule. According to what little the Project knew the Bok background included religious doctrines that taught ways to tap universal sources of power and bring psionic abilities to life. That was all a bunch of hooey as far as Drake was concerned, but in the face of everything else he had a hard time simply dismissing it out of hand. So far no credible evidence of such things had been found but, from Lorenzo’s increasingly easily intercepted manifestos, the Bok believed that sort of power was real, believed they possessed it and intended, with it, to gain dominance and rule the world.
Now, remarkably, due to that cavalier bravado, Lorenzo’s overconfidence—call it what you like, the Project knew where he and some of his cronies were going to be. Drake and his team had specifics, and, thanks to Lorenzo’s careless lapses, a trap was being set. Most of the team working in the other room would be transferred shortly to a safehouse in the target country, to continue preps and stage that operation. An operation that, if successful, would expose the Bok secrets once and for all.
* *
Kang watched with growing fascination as the world before him resolved, moving closer, growing larger on the wide forward screen until it swept in a massive arc from side to side, filling the lower half of the view. There the Kel warship came to a stop, imperceptibly; held above it, the movement more like watching a film than actually changing position in space. There was no sense of real motion he could discern. It could all have been a dream.
As it came to a halt he gazed down, feeling as if a god looking upon a new kingdom.
The commander—Eldron—had informed him of his audience with the Praetor of their world. Kang calmly accepted that—thrilled he was getting his way, in fact, but trying not to show it—and the intervening wait had become interminable. Soon enough, back out near the purple gas giant, dozens of other ships arrived, several of them looking more daunting even than the one on which he stood, each bristling with weaponry—confirming his suspicion that these aliens indeed commanded a mighty army. By then he realized the Kel must want the Icon he held and, perhaps to a lesser degree, him. At least inasmuch as they feared him and wanted to understand this new threat. The purpose of the arriving fleet, from what he could glean, was to take up guard in the event the intruding spaceship returned.
Eldron’s ship then departed for their homeworld, a trip that was near instantaneous. The crew went through a multitude of actions, lights dimming and warnings sounding as they prepared for the transit. Each took their seat, even Eldron who had so far only stood. No one suggested to Kang that he do the same. Of course they knew he was indestructible. Maybe they hoped the leap would somehow injure, or maybe even embarrass him.
It did neither. Activated, whatever propelled the ship moved it, feeling not unlike the action of the Icon itself, now that he recalled it, delivering them to an orbit above their homeworld, the planet he gazed on now. The sensation of that transfer was strange, perhaps even amplified by his greatly attuned senses, but it did not wobble or fell him. He stood firm, easy; impressed with the power of the ship more than anything.
Eager to learn everything these Kel could do.
From there the ship began moving forward in a more usual way, if impossibly smooth, impossibly quick. The warship changed position with hardly a lurch or sense of acceleration. Whatever means they used to hold everything in that artificial gravity also seemed to nullify the action of movement. At least to a great degree. Such that they slid forward rapidly, reaching proximity to the world in no time and coming to an equally fluid stop in close orbit.
Kel.
A dark world, Kang mused, even there on the daylight side; covered in vast swaths of what appeared to be black, volcanic rock, near-black inland seas, all of it split by one massive ocean of a color that was not much lighter. White covered the poles and the many peaks—Kel was a rugged, mountainous world—snow blanketing the persistent black. So black and white was it, in fact, he wondered how it supported life at all. There was no green to be found.
But this world clearly had air. The haze of atmosphere wrapped it, clouds here and there, some formed into the swirls of storms; seas and oceans, snow on every surface, as far as the eye could see. It had water, it had air. He looked back across the bridge at the crew.
It had life.
He found himself quickly unconcerned with particulars. Only that he was here and that these Kel were powerful beyond any reckoning. He looked down at the Icon in his hands. With the Kel—with this, he thought, gazing at the Icon—he could rule many worlds.
Eldron spoke and the computer echoed his words with a translation. Kang had learned that when they spoke directly to him the machine ran its routine. The rest of the time it remained silent, allowing them to scheme their plots right in front of him.
The situation was far from ideal, but already he’d made progress. They would try and subvert him. Of that he was sure. Probably even try to kill him. But he would have his way. Their intentions would fail.
He would rise superior in the end.
“Praetor Voltan is on approach,” the computer told him. This Praetor was going to come in person—a gesture that continued to garner his respect. So far he liked the warrior mentality of the Kel. He also realized this was his first real test. Threats, sheer physical force would get him no further. Now came the moment of reckoning. He’d never been a politician, never a negotiator; never in his life. Even as a Kazerai results were gained through domination, not talk. Now … after all he’d done, he had to bring this Praetor around through communication alone. After his opening salvo of violence he must talk. Convince. The fact that their leader was willing to meet in person was a start. Kang’s goal was to earn their trust. To do so he must become something he was not. In some ways, he thought, he must become an actual emperor. That thing he’d always dreamed of, that mantle he snatched for himself back on Anitra with simple brute force, no one able to stop him. Now he must become it for real.
But the promise of force …
That would certainly help.
Again he smirked. Felt like a child that couldn’t stop giggling. Determined, he gathered his composure and looked out the view screen at the vast openness.
Other vessels moved in orbit above the world, in irregular patterns, other objects floating in space that appeared to be base stations or satellites. The Kel moved through the void much like the Dominion moved on the ground, vehicles in motion here and there, destinations to receive them. The concept of harnessing what he witnessed was thrilling.
Among the bustle he caught glimpse of a smaller craft, probably some sort of shuttle, heading their way, moving from the clutter. It had an escort of sleek craft that looked to be fighters. It was the Praetor, he decided. Soon it reached them and the crew announced its arrival.
Eldron rose.
“Come,” he instructed. Kang followed, allowing himself to be led off the bridge, down a corridor to a large stateroom. The room was modestly furnished, though by the minimalist standards he’d seen elsewhere on the ship it was lavish. It had a small screen to one side which gave the appearance of a window, looking out into space. On it two of the three orange suns hung visible in tight opposition; titanic dance partners, gripped in thrall.
“The Praetor will meet you here.”
Eldron locked eyes with him, held his gaze an instant … then turned and left. The door shut behind.
Star Angel: Dawn of War (Star Angel Book 3) Page 13
