by Bruce Adams
Reading the thoughts of a human was not a challenge but compelling obedience was tricky. Humans were mentally undisciplined and scattered in their thoughts. T’sell likened the experience to swimming in a low tech sewer system – random thoughts clogged their brains. Weak willed humans were easily manipulated yet those rare individuals that possessed strong psyches were almost impossible to control. Fortunately for her objectives, most humans she met belonged in the former category. She confirmed her target’s name was attached to apartment 7915...and that he employed four armed guards.
She reached into his mind and took control of his cerebellum. Open the elevator door and then forget I was even here. Erase the last five minutes from your surveillance systems. The guard mechanically obeyed and the nearby elevator opened. She told the elevator to take her to the seventy-ninth floor. She checked her laser pistol one final time, examining it and noting that the power pack was fully charged. She was an expert shot with sniper rifles, but in the close quarters of an apartment a gauss sniper rifle would be too unwieldy and slow to use. Her psionic power to control minds, pistol marksmanship, martial arts skills and surprise would have to do for now. She arrived in front of the apartment door and rang the buzzer. Her mental abilities reached out in front of her and she confirmed there were five humanoid males within. The viewplate beside the door showed a face with a scruffy beard.
“What do you want bitch? We don’t need whatever you’re sellin’!” snarled the mercenary.
All T’sell needed was to see him in order to reach out with her mental compulsion. Unlock the door and move to the side. Her power could only compel subjects to perform simple tasks to the exclusion of all other functions. Anything more complicated would allow the domination to be rejected. She entered the room with two swift strides carrying a modified laser pistol in her left hand and Darisu in her right.
“Good boy,” she whispered, “Now go to sleep…” She pushed him to do so. The man walked unsteadily over to a nearby black leather couch, lay on it and was unconscious in seconds. As he did so, another two mercenaries wearing gauss pistols on their belts emerged from the kitchen.
“Xem, who the hell was at the door?” Both were human and wore plasteel combat armor but were not wearing their helmets. Startled at the scene before them both hesitated for a fraction of a second, which was all the time she needed to act. T’sell reached out to the one on the right…shoot the man beside you in the head with your pistol.
As both mercenaries brought their weapons to bear, T’sell dodged behind the leather couch, taking cover. Two things happened almost simultaneously, the sharp tearing sound of gauss flechette projectiles ripping into the couch and one mercenary’s head exploding. She could sense the human was struggling under her domination and would soon break it. She ordered him one more time – kill yourself. As the man brought his gauss pistol just under his chin and pulled the trigger, an Orvod clad in plasteel and also not wearing a helmet burst into the room carrying a heavy plasma rifle.
In the close quarters of the apartment, T’sell was faster than the Orvod at swinging her pistol than he was at aiming his much more massive plasma rifle. She got off her shot first, hitting him in his neck. As he collapsed he fired his rifle wildly…spraying the apartment in all directions with lethal fire. Several high energy shots blasted massive holes in the clear transparent plasteel that was the living room’s window. The mercenary then fell twitching in a large heap on the floor. She knew Orvod’s regenerated their cells and recovered quickly from injuries. Moving to stand over him, she hefted her Darisu with both hands and performed a final stroke, severing the head from the torso. Try to regenerate from that. Killing these men had been necessary as they would have killed her. She had been lucky there had not been more of them. She still had her target to interrogate and he was hiding somewhere in the apartment. She reached out and detected a mind inside the master bedroom’s lavatory. However, without actually seeing the target, she could only detect a rough location; she couldn’t read his mind or control his mind. He was expecting her. Approaching the closed door, she made sure to stay to the side near the walls.
“Lakos, why don’t you come out? I promise I won’t hurt you. I only want the artifacts. You can be free to leave after you give them to me.” She rapped on the door with her Darisu held at arm’s length. Holes erupted through the bathroom door from a continuous stream of laser blasts. Let’s try something a little different. She didn’t have much time left. Working the last fifty years for Zari Protectorate Special Forces, T’sell had learned a variety of methods for killing, incapacitating, and interrogating enemies. Of course, she needed to know where he had hidden the Valdren artifacts; and for that, she required him alive and relatively unharmed. Taking a small electronic probe from her belt-kit, T’sell attached it to the wall. Within seconds, her neural implants interfaced with the probe to see a short human crouched at the back of the room. He carried a pulse laser carbine with a fifty round charged capacity. All she needed was the ability to see an organic sentient for her psionic abilities to come into play, as long as the target was within ten meters distance from her.
Put your weapon down now. Her mental domination seized control of the human’s mind long enough to force him to obey and he dropped the rifle. As he did so he kept muttering to himself.
“Wha…what’d you do to me, ya goddamn freak!” the man spat the words. Whenever she tampered with the mind of a living sentient the target had a rudimentary awareness of what was happening. That is why her compulsions could never last more than thirty seconds and usually only six seconds or less. She leaped against the door, kicking the already weakened portal apart with her armored heel. Splinters and large chunks of the artificial fiber door burst into the closet.
“Get down on the floor! Put your hands behind your back!” She barked orders at him and the cowed human obeyed. Producing handcuffs from her belt-kit she bound his hands and arms behind his back. She kept him covered with her Armand AV-21 laser pistol pointed straight at his head.
“Sit up,” she ordered, keeping her pistol trained on him.
He sat up and glared at her, a sullen look of defeat in his eyes.
“Give me the artifacts and I’ll let you live. Are they here in your apartment?” Her posture indicated she was ready to kill him in an instant.
“Nah, if I do that, you’ll just shoot me anyway, and then take ‘em and run away.”
She immediately shot him in the meaty part of the right arm where it joined at the shoulder, deliberately missing his bone. The shot went clean through and the smell of burned flesh filled the air. He yelled and started cursing at her while holding his shoulder with his left hand. She knew he would be in agony once the adrenaline and shock wore off in a few minutes. He continued to scream obscenities at her.
“Fuck! Goddamn it! Why’d you do that?”
“To get your attention.” She had another reason as well. “Tell me now, or the next shot will be between your eyes. Fear widened the man’s eyes as he fully understood the implications. She would do it.
“If I tell you, Vortex will hunt me down like a dog! Ya gotta offer me something else…” Snot was running from his nose and his eyes were leaking water.
His will is fairly strong for a human and it would take too much time to delve into his mind and extract the information - I must find another way.
She motioned for the human to stand. “Get up; go into your living room.” The man stood unsteadily. Shock from the wound she had given him was beginning to start. Purple blood stained his shoes as he walked by the decapitated Orvod. The giant alien’s blood was pooling all over the hardwood floor. Lakos paused and looked at his dead bodyguards, his eyes tracking all of them one after another. His mind began to radiate doubt.
“My shoulder is killin’ me. Where you want me to go?” He stared at the severed head while it seemed to stare back at him with lifeless eyes. She could sense the thoughts churning in his mind.
“Drop to your knees,” she
ordered with a cold inflection. As he did so, she touched his neck with the bare edge of her sword, drawing a bead of blood. T’sell then drew back and lifted her Darisu high over the human in preparation for the killing stroke that would sever his head and end his miserable life. His mouth opened as he lost all composure and begged for his life.
“The things you want are in my safe! In my closet! Don’t kill me!” he whined.
“Show me,” T’sell menaced him with her sword. He stood with some effort and then walked to his bedroom closet.
“It’s in the back, behind the clothes and stuff.” He waved with his undamaged arm, pointing at the back of the immaculate closet. Neat rows of suits, shirts and trousers lined both sides.
“Very well, open it. I am reading your mind and if you attempt to deceive me I will know it the instant you think it.” T’sell said. She put her sword in the scabbard she wore on her back and covered him with her laser pistol. She was reading his mind as he entered the code to the safe and it swung open without a sound.
Damn it, I knew she was one of those psychic freaks! She’s prolly readin’ my mind right now! He reached in and took a sealed rectangular box out of the safe. Standing up he looked from the box to T’sell and then tossed it over to her. She caught it
“Okay, you got your artifacts right there. You’ll let me live…right? That was the deal…right?” he pleaded with a whine in his voice. It disgusted her.
She gestured at him with the pistol, “Move back to your living room. Awaken the bodyguard that’s sleeping on your couch. You’ll have to slap him a few times…Do it now!”
T’sell followed the human back into his living room and watched as he attempted to wake his sleeping bodyguard.
“Wake up you fucking asshole! I paid you to protect me! Wake the fuck up!” With each word he slapped him with his left hand repeatedly. T’sell was waiting. The moment the supine mercenary stirred she entered his mind and took control. Tackle Lakos and run out the window with him. As her mental compulsion took over the human’s cerebellum, he rose, looked at her uncomprehendingly, then grabbed his erstwhile boss and half-dragged, half carried him careening into and through the shattered window. The screams from Lakos faded out almost immediately as he and his bodyguard plummeted to their deaths. T’sell opened the intricately carved wooden box and found three small alien data modules within. Her boss would be pleased she had completed her mission. She instructed the Nanite modules in her face to shift to pattern number six hundred thirty-seven. She then twisted the hilt of her Darisu and it shrank into a compact size and her clothes shifted as well.
No one noticed the red-haired dark skinned girl with the ponytail that came out of the elevator on the ground floor. The security guard was busy with a report of jumpers that had fallen from his building. T’sell T’savri made it back to the starport in less than twenty minutes and was headed to a debriefing five hundred and sixty light-years away.
CHAPTER 12
The city on the hill was far. It would take her many days to travel to it and her legs were already tired. The forest she had been traveling through was full of mist and shrouded thick trees. Monsters lurked in the forests ready to spring upon her at any moment, their green hellish eyes burned in the mist. Her bow in one hand and a steel tipped arrow nocked with the other, she was ready to strike them down if they were foolish enough to attack. Looking down, she saw that chains were attached at her ankles and then realized that monsters were holding the chains tight…
Eris awoke from her dream with a start and sweating profusely. Kyle Arneson leaned over, touched her arm and smiled. He was holding a leash in his hand. She heard a small whimper coming from somewhere.
“I’m glad you’re finally awake, boss – you had me worried for awhile.” He smiled again. “I brought you a gift…” He reached down while still holding the leash and picked up a dog – a white puppy. Scratching between her ears, the dog stuck her tongue out in happiness. She didn’t look to be older than a few weeks.
Eris lay in a hospital bed hooked up to tubes with devices attached to her chest, arms, legs and head. “A puppy?” she asked. “Why did you…” There was thin fabric covering her breasts and her groin, other than that, she was naked. She felt sore all over her body and immediately tried to swing her legs over the side rail of the bed. Doing so made her feel woozy.
“Whoa! Hold on there, Commander! You’re body is still being repaired…you’ve got to give it some more time before you try standing.” Kyle put the dog back down on the floor. He was shaking his head and began pushing her legs back into the bed. He wasn’t going to let her get up.
“Repair my body…what happened? I remember talking to Langdon in the command post about a discovery his team had just made…and…then nothing. That’s all I remember. Why can’t I recall anything else?” She frowned, furrowing her brows. It was then she noticed that her hair was falling into her eyes and that it rested on her shoulders. That can’t be, I have short hair.
“Commander, there’s no easy way to break this to you so I’ll just say it - you’ve been in a coma for three months. You suffered severe radiation burns all over your body. You came this close to death. It was touch and go the first month.” Arneson pressed forefinger and thumb together with the tips almost touching. Kyle began pacing back and forth as he continued discussing the past. “I found you in the mobile command center and got you off of Domovik as fast as I could.”
Eris felt as if a sledgehammer had hit her in the stomach. “What about the team? Did any of them…”
Kyle couldn’t look at her as he replied, “No, none of them made it. Commander…Eris…you’re damn lucky to be alive. It’s amazing you lived at all from the amount of radiation your body absorbed. Your doctor and the medical team here did quite a job patching you up…even if it did take three months. If you’d been inside the base, you would have died from the blast wave and heat like all the rest.” Kyle Arneson had seen death before – that was the grim reality of being a Special Forces soldier of the Republic. He continued, “Since the majority of the base was two kilometers underground, the dirt and rock mostly contained the blast but spillover reached the surface…the command post you were at on the surface.” There was another whine and a scratching noise. Kyle picked up the puppy once again. “She likes to be held.” He leaned down holding the puppy close to Eris’ face. “I named her Sif…but you can call her whatever you like. If you want to keep her that is.” Kyle said. The puppy licked Eris on the cheek. Kyle pulled her back and cradled the dog in his arms.
Eris broke down and cried. She hadn’t cried since the time she was ten years old and had watched her parents being killed. Kyle said nothing as she sobbed but put his hand on her shoulder to try to comfort her as best he could. She thought she was a strong woman but those were her teammates and they had been her companions…her friends. Moak, Promise, Pascha, I’m so sorry, I failed you…Thoughts raced through her head. This was the second time she had lost men and women under her command. Her emotions turned from sorrow to anger. Her anger was turning to rage with each passing second. She wanted answers.
“What happened? You mentioned radiation…” Eris wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. Her blue eyes had become red, puffy and glistened from her tears. Kyle had never seen Eris in such a state and he wanted to hold her and comfort her, but he restrained himself to offering a touch and only words.
“It was a trap. We found out just in the last few weeks that Vortex had been there before us. It was their blast marks we found on the elevator doors of the Valdren facility. They took everything of value…all the working ancient tech…stripped the place bare. They planted a tactical nuclear device inside of a Valdren artifact casing. The scientists actually set the damn thing off in their haste to open it up; like kids at Christmas opening presents. They should have listened to you, Commander. The military…we…should have cleared that place first like you wanted.”
“Vortex…mercenaries.” The anger in her blue eyes sh
one bright. Eris looked around her, noting DSD company logos on some of the medical equipment. “Where am I? This isn’t a fleet hospital, and it’s not part of the TEC.”
“I’ll tell you all about it in a moment,” whispered Kyle as a petite woman approached. The woman had short pink hair tied in a ponytail with blue strands interwoven in a delicate geometric pattern; a white doctor’s smock emblazoned with the DSD infinity symbol decorated her sleeves. A floating holographic datapad was projected in front of her chest at arm’s length. Her pupils were also pink.
“I see my patient is finally awake,” said the diminutive woman in a quiet voice. “Good morning, my name is Doctor Lia Xinhao,” she said while glancing at streams of holographic data projecting from the datapad, “I’ve been in charge of your primary care since you arrived at our facility.” She touched a few holographic keys and multiple three dimensional images began to appear showing Eris’ body. “Mr. Arneson, you should remove that animal…this is a sterile environment.”
“Please doctor…I’d like Kyle to keep Sif here…for a little while,” Eris asked wistfully. “Kyle said I owe you my life,” she replied weakly; fragile and feeling sleepy, her anger was fueling a drive to stay awake. Her muscles had little strength. “What exactly did you do to me?” She motioned at Kyle to bring Sif closer to her again. As he did so, Eris stroked the dog’s fur - Sif’s tail wagged happily. The dogs blue eyes were clear and bright. Doctor Xinhao ignored the animal and spoke to her patient.
“When you were brought to us three months ago, you were on life support… you barely had a pulse. The radiation burns were severe; the staff didn’t think you had any chance of survival. Our CEO put more faith in your recuperative abilities than I did, I’m happy to say… We had to quarantine you for a lengthy amount of time while the radiation scrubbers went to work throughout your system. Of course, that took a lot of time. You were put in an artificial coma to facilitate the healing. If not for modern medicine and our state-of-the-art facilities, you’d have died after the first twenty hours had passed.”
