She winced as her left leg now had to bear her full weight.
The other Krixis locked narrowed eyes onto her as he aimed his needle cannon at her, and she knew exactly what he was feeling: satisfaction.
With all the strength she could manage, she surged forward and leapt onto the ramp, heading downward. A burst of needles streamed overhead as she slid safely down, ending up at the door to Atmospheric Control. She climbed to her feet and touched the entry panel.
Nothing happened. It was locked.
Chapter Eight
Eyana Ora
“Three-digit passcode required, Ana.”
She punched in the three-digit code she had used before, but it didn’t work.
She suppressed a scream. “I don’t have time for this!”
“No, you don’t. You’ve only got a few shots left in your plasma carbine, your refraction cloak is offline, and your force shield is spent. At best, you only have time to switch out the power pack in one of them before those two insurgents turn the corner.”
“What about the emppy?”
“Still functional, Ana.”
She grinned as a plan both incredibly brilliant and stupid came to her. “Max it out.”
“Ana, I am not sure if—”
“Just do it!”
“Emppy at one hundred percent, Ana.”
The Krixis with the needle cannon hobbled onto the ramp, while the one with the electro-blaster headed down into the corridor.
“Override safety protocols!”
“Emppy at double safety maximum, Ana. Device failure imminent! Needles imminent! You had better do whatever it is you—”
Eyana blocked Silky out and accessed her full empathic self, opening what ancient Terran cultures had called the third eye, a spot they had believed to be located on the forehead.
She dropped all her attempts to shield her mind, hide her location, and safeguard her motives. This time, she actively scanned their minds, looking for a single scrap of information. All she needed was the three digits that could unlock this door. If she should learn more, all the better, but she had to get those numbers.
The problem was, she had never done anything like this before. As far as she knew, no empath had ever tried to directly raid a Krixis mind for information. That was beyond the scope of an empath’s abilities. Even emotionally charged memories were elusive. This would only be possible, theoretically, because of the emppy, but her superiors hadn’t wanted any of the agents to attempt it until the emppies were first proven reliable in the field.
She absolutely did not have permission to operate the emppy outside of its safety parameters. But she was a field agent, which meant sometimes breaking the rules…provided it was for the greater good.
The bioelectric and neurochemical surge caused by overcharging the emppy made her stagger. It was like someone had connected two electrodes to her brain and turned the juice all the way up. Her muscles twitched, she nearly peed herself, and then she nearly fainted. But she held on long enough to adjust to the sensations.
Her mind touched the minds of the two nearest Krixis and alien thoughts swarmed through her head, along with the accompanying images and cultural and social contexts. This mad jumble of indecipherable data poured in so fast that the whole world around her and even her own thoughts hardly made sense, to the point she wanted to scream and tear her hair out.
She could clearly read their every thought and feel their every desire. And not in the way she normally did but at a deep, intimate level, more intense than even a lover could experience. She knew them as only they could know themselves. Emotionally and intellectually, she experienced what they experienced. She was, for the moment, a part of them.
And they were a part of her, too. Eyana knew this not just through her empathy but through the physical reaction of the one who had leveled his needler cannon at her. He…or rather she…staggered back and dropped the cannon. Then she fell to her knees, grabbing her head.
Eyana’s awareness danced through the mindscape of the Krixis woman, encountering a mixture of images and seemingly random memories… A cloud of purple fireflies drifting through tall, alien oaks. Tender matings with two Krixis males. Walking through a field of flowers, trailing her fingertips along the petals. Charging across a battlefield, bombs detonating all around, plasma bolts whizzing by. Crying beside the remains of a beloved mate, his body blasted apart by a railgun shot. Returning home feeling lost and betrayed by a government unwilling to do whatever was necessary to rid the galaxy of the filthy humans.
At the same time, Eyana’s memories streamed into the Krixis woman, conveying her own loves and fears, memories of her long-deceased mother…funny books and sad movies…years of arduous military training she thought would never end…and a host of terrible childhood memories Eyana could never bear to face, at least not without a copious amount of opiates.
She had connected to the other Krixis as well, the male with the electro-blaster, but not as deeply. She bonded with the female at a level far beyond what she believed a normal Krixis could manage even in the most intimate of situations, and far beyond what any human had ever before achieved. Their two minds became one, and it was equal parts intoxicating and disorienting.
Eyana saw through the eyes of the Krixis woman, and though she was aware that she was staring back at herself, the image in no way resembled what she saw in a mirror. This was what she looked like through Krixis eyes: distorted, pale skinned, and lacking the mood auras Krixis saw in one another. She might as well have been a zombie as far as how she appeared to a Krixis.
And so she saw herself looking at herself, like an infinite series of reflections in opposing mirrors. Meanwhile their memories and emotions looped back and forth, completely out of control.
It was a loop in which Eyana would have lost herself save for one thing: Silky’s voice in her mind.
“Ana, you are slouching and drooling, and you’re starting to worry me a lot more than you normally do. Snap out of it.”
She was only vaguely aware of what he was saying.
“Ana, you’ve got a job to do!”
She didn’t care what he was saying…or maybe the Krixis woman sharing a mind-space with her didn’t care what he was saying, or didn’t understand him.
Eyana shook her head and tried to force her empathy to close off, but she failed.
“Ana! Remember your training! Remember…remember your sister.”
A sudden, visceral burst of emotion struck her. Sadness and anger and despair welled up within her chest, closing up her throat, churning her gut. Then a sliver of herself separated from the Krixis woman, who had no context for these deep, dark feelings, since Eyana always kept the memory of her sister buried.
She tried to speak to Silky, to tell him to turn off the emppy, but the thoughts she shoved toward him were not in human words but Krixis ones and a garble of them at that.
But he seemed to understand. Silky switched the emppy off, then she tried to close off her mind again. It didn’t work. She was still connected. But the strength of the connection had diminished, and she was now fully aware of herself and her situation again.
Her enemies were both on their knees at the top of the ramp. They were still stunned, so she had a bit of time to work with. She spun back toward the locked door and the keypad.
“Did you get the combination, Ana?”
She shrugged. “I…I don’t know.”
“Stop thinking Krixis at me! You are human. You are Eyana Ora of the Empathic Services. Human, damn it! Human!”
“Right…sorry.” She took a deep breath. “Human.”
“Good, Ana, good. Now, did you get the number?”
She searched her mind and found a smattering of memories and thoughts and dreams that didn’t belong to her…but there wasn’t a useful number among them. She shook her head. All of that effort, and the agony of their alien thoughts still tumbling through her head, and all it had bought her was a little more time. Soon, her enemies wo
uld recover and kill her.
“I was in deep. Too deep. I was so swamped by emotions and charged memories that I failed to uncover any useful information whatsoever.”
“You know, Ana, human brains are funny, the way they store information, facts all tangled up with emotional states. Nothing tidy and discreet like with the way I store things. So close your mind, stop thinking, and just enter the number in. Trust your instincts.”
Eyana cleared her mind and hovered her hand over the keypad. Nothing. She shook her head.
“Try to feel what they felt, Ana. Summon an emotion one of them had that was related to working on this ship.”
Eyana locked onto the strongest emotions still resonating within her from the Krixis woman: sadness soured into anger over the death of her mate then channeled into determination to take on this mission to right all the wrongs of her people and exact revenge.
Suddenly, her fingers moved, and she punched the code in.
The door slid open.
Eyana darted in and closed the door behind her. Then she went to the control panel and keyed the code in again, followed by a second code that popped unbidden into her mind. After the numbers on the panel all flashed red three times, she entered in a new three-digit code.
“Did you just reset the code, Ana?”
“Yeah, but it won’t slow them for long. Any of them can do the same override.”
“You need to find a way to barricade the door, Ana.”
“There’s an emergency blast door,” she replied, surprising herself. It wasn’t something she’d known about before. “In case the ship is boarded.”
“I am surprised they didn’t activate it to keep you out of this room.”
“It can’t be triggered remotely.” She glanced around. “Now, where is the switch for it…”
“I am not seeing one in my feed, Ana.”
“It’s hidden.” She focused on the emotions again, as uncomfortable as it was. “Ah, got it.”
She stood on her tiptoes, wincing as that made the pain in her left leg worse, and slid her fingers along the top of the doorframe until she found the hidden switch. She flipped it, and a second, reinforced door dropped down behind the first and locked into place.
She nodded with satisfaction. “I’m almost certain there isn’t an override for that. They’d have to blast their way in.”
She drew a shaped charge out of her pack and placed it against the door, activating the adhesive system since the maglock wouldn’t work against the organic Krixis material.
Still brimming with empathic awareness, she projected a thought outward, using “words” she thought the Krixis would understand: “Blast door deployed. Shaped charge activated. Enter and you will die.”
Satisfied, she glanced around. The open part of Atmospheric Control was a small chamber, only a quarter of the size of the rear section she’d first entered. Most of the space in this part of the ship was taken up by the atmospheric filter systems, along with additional storage tanks. The control panels meant nothing to her, though she suspected if she dared to dig into the Krixis emotions echoing through her brain much of it would come to her. The mechanical sections with access panels for making repairs, those she could probably figure out with Silky’s help.
She slumped down against an access panel on the wall opposite to the door. The pain in her leg and arm had started to diminish, the counteragents finally neutralizing the toxins. She pulled off her backpack and placed it in front of her. She pulled out the fresh power packs she had available. Each of the three black, rectangular batteries could fit comfortably within the palm of one hand.
“Silky, that bit about my sister…that was low.”
“I had to do something, Ana. And it did work.”
Eyana’s sister had been an empath, too, and at the age of five, they had declared her to be the most powerful ever born, a savant among savants, one so powerful that Eyana could only approach her abilities with the emppy. But her sister had lived a forlorn life—maladjusted, sickly, and miserable. At fifteen, she had run away into the wilderness, no longer able to stand the constant oppression of the thoughts and emotions of others, because no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t turn her ability off. But even in the wilderness, with no one around within miles, it had all been too much for her, and she had leapt off a cliff.
Eyana ejected the power pack from her plasma carbine and replaced it with a new one.
“Yeah, well, don’t ever mention her again.”
“Understood.”
She checked her HUD. Her antigrav unit had ten percent power remaining. Her refraction field had just over seventeen.
She replaced the power pack in her force shield.
Suddenly, a powerful wave of emotions…Krixis emotions…overwhelmed her. Despite her emppy being off and having achieved some separation, her mind once again merged with that of the Krixis woman.
Anger…despair…hatred.
Disgust…complete and utter disgust.
She had been defiled…forever. There was nothing left for her…not even the mission. There was only one option.
She lifted an acid blaster, placed the barrel under her chin, and pulled the trigger.
Eyana cried out, pushing herself back into the wall as the shot fired up through her head…up through the Krixis woman’s head…and into her brain, killing her instantly.
Eyana thrust out her limbs, scrambling, as if she were trying to keep some terrible monster from pinning her down. Her limbs knotted. Dizziness swamped her. Tears streamed down her cheeks, even as she began to convulse uncontrollably, as if she were having a seizure.
“Releasing a sedative from the medibot implant into your system, Ana.”
The spasms in her muscles eased, and an overwhelming sense of fatigue swamped her. She slumped back, crying.
“Ana…I’ll monitor everything and let you know if anything comes up.”
She could only respond by nodding. Despite the haze of the sedative, she again felt the extreme sense of shame and watched the Krixis woman, and herself, lift the gun up and pull the trigger. With a flash of light, it would end, only to cycle back again.
And now she felt another emotional presence, that of the Krixis man with the electro-blaster, standing over his dead comrade. She couldn’t shut him out anymore than she’d been able to shut out the woman when she had killed herself. She had connected to them, and even with the emppy off, the connection was strong.
He turned toward Atmospheric Control, anger blazing within him. His mind was filled with terrible thoughts and memories. She tried to block it out. This insurgent wasn’t just a warrior, he was a cold-blooded killer. He had done more than take out Benevolency soldiers. He had killed innocent human colonists: the old and infirm, children, even pets. And he had done so with glee.
She had to get him out of her head.
“Is the emppy still working?”
“Yes, Ana. Though I should run it through a full diagnostic before you try to use it again.”
She shook her head. “Set its field to reverse.”
“You want to try to hide from them again, Ana? What is the point of that?”
“Turn on the dampening effect, then max it out.”
“You want to sever your tie to them?”
She nodded. “I formed a connection, and even with the emppy off, I can’t fully end it.”
“Ana, I am not sure if the emppy can take the strain of another—”
“I can’t endure this any longer. I’m going to crack…just like Illia did, only my cliff will be the gun in my hand.”
Again, she flashed back to the Krixis woman pulling the trigger and ending her life.
“Understood, Ana. Powering up the emppy and enabling empathic dampening.”
As the emppy’s power level ramped up, she recited the Fibonacci sequence and tried to focus on the image she’d trained with when first learning how to block her ability, an image she hadn’t thought of or even considered in years, maybe deca
des. She hadn’t needed it since. And she probably wouldn’t have even thought of it now if not for Silky bringing up Illia.
Eyana and Illia had shared the blocking image just as they had shared their training. The Benevolence’s top empathic experts had worked with them, trying to help her sister block out her powers. They had hoped that in studying together, the two girls would be able to help one another.
And so as Eyana recited the progression of numbers, with the dampening effect washing over her, she focused on the image of a gray and white teddybear.
The dampening intensified, and then suddenly she was free of them. A clean break. No more Krixis thoughts and sensations passing between her and them. None of them could sense her anymore. And she couldn’t sense them either.
But their thought patterns and language still tumbled around in her mind, alien echoes she desperately wanted to go away.
As the effect continued, she felt as if the dampening field pulsed in time with the rhythm of how she recited the numbers. Steadily, her mind numbed, and slowly all the lingering Krixis thoughts seeped away, as if…as if she were mediating deeply…or falling asleep.
“Ana, I can’t get the thing to power down.”
“It…it will run out of power soon enough. Stop…stop bothering me.”
It was peaceful now. The Krixis words were gone, the memories and thoughts and experiences faded like graffiti washed away by rain and wind. There, but just barely.
“Ana, you do not understand. It’s still powering up.”
“So?”
“So, Ana, it is not good for you or for the device.”
“Enh…who cares?”
“Ana, you need to manually eject it. This is dangerous.”
“Silky…leave me alone, okay?”
“Oh, this is not good. Not good at all.”
A wave of silence passed over her, and was broken by a loud pop as sparks shot out from the socket on her right temple. Smoke trailed up from the device. She half smiled at it as she slumped down onto the floor.
Forbidden System: A Benevolency Universe Novel (Fall of the Benevolence Book 1) Page 6
