Guardian

by Knight, Angela

  Serious hacking wasn’t the kind of thing you charged into. That was a good way to get yourself killed triggering a Trojan or viral bomb, especially if you were trying to work without backup in a system that had obviously been compromised.

  Mother Goddess, he missed Riane. She excelled at this kind of thing. He could do it, of course, but it was hardly one of his specialties.

  Which didn’t make a damn bit of difference, because he had to do it anyway.

  His stomach coiled into a knot, but Frieka ignored it as he leaped up on the bed and settled down. He closed his eyes and opened a data channel to the Outpost mainframe.

  This was going to be delicate work, because he’d just as soon not get caught at it. He knew the Chief and his team had worked to tighten the central computer’s security system to prevent hacking. Obviously, the real traitor had found a way in anyway. Whoever it was had probably planted various defenses to keep someone from following his tracks.

  Lethal defenses.

  Carefully, Frieka began to search the network, probing for the evidence he was looking for. He started with the surveillance system, since he knew at least one recording had been tampered with. Unfortunately, as he scanned the recording of Dona’s supposed crime yet again, he could find no evidence of direct interference in the image. Since he knew the recording was faulty, that had to mean that interference was deeply buried.

  Luckily, he also knew there was a particular style in which each program was written. For a creature who was as much computer as Frieka was, variations in that style were as vivid and distinct as scent.

  So Frieka went deeper, scanning through the underlying program script, seeking anomalies. It was a slow, tedious process that could not be done quickly. More than once he thought he’d found something, only to have the trail peter out.

  He refused to give up.

  Until, at last, Frieka caught a faint, distinctive pattern he knew from years spent in combat with Vardon’s military space fleet. It was complex and impressive, somehow inhuman in its glittering intricacy.

  And it was definitely Xeran.

  Ha, you bastard, Frieka thought. I’ve got you now.

  Carefully, wary of booby traps, the wolf began to probe the alien thread, working his way back along it, seeking to identify the traitor who had planted it.

  He sensed something, a bit of code attached to the Xeran pattern. He probed harder.

  Something dark and vicious and Xeran came raging through his com channel. An instant later his awareness was jerked out of his link to the mainframe.

  He couldn’t draw a breath.

  Panicked, Frieka fought to suck in oxygen. The muscles of his chest ached savagely with desperate effort, but they didn’t move. He tried to struggle to his feet, only to discover his body was completely paralyzed, his rib cage frozen.

  Seven Hells, I’ve triggered a Trojan!

  • 23 •

  Nick walked beside Riane, staring around them in fascination. He was seeing more variety in the alien trees now—some of them were bright red, others a vibrant shade of purple. Their knobby outgrowths reminded him of coral.

  He spotted a strange little creature perched on one of the globular clusters. It had six limbs and a long, narrow muzzle. Its eyes were huge, dark, and liquid, and it watched him warily before scampering away.

  As a boy, he’d watched grainy old films of the moon landing, then bounced around the living room pretending to be an astronaut. Now he was actually walking on an alien planet, surrounded by alien life. “This is amazing.”

  “What?” Riane blinked at him as if trying to figure out why he looked so awed.

  “All of this.” Nick gestured around them. “This world, these trees and creatures. I can’t believe I’m really here.”

  She shrugged. “It’s a planet.”

  Nick smiled at her seen-one-you’ve-seen-’em-all tone. “Philistine.”

  “Hey, I’m more interested in getting home.” Riane gave the area another wary look. “And avoiding anything that might want to kill us.”

  “You think something’s going to . . .” He broke off at a sudden strong tug and a stabbing jolt in his biceps. Automatically, he set off in the direction the Stone indicated.

  “Where are you going?” Riane hurried after him. “Wait a minute.”

  “There’s somewhere I have to be.” He lengthened his stride, driven by the sense of urgency that had suddenly started pounding in his brain.

  “Where?” She sounded frustrated and worried. “Nick, dammit, you don’t just go charging around a planet you don’t know. That’s a good way to get kacked by something.”

  “I can protect myself.”

  “Against the local equivalent of a T. rex?”

  They rounded a stand of trees to see a towering, rocky black cliff rising in the midst of a rolling field of moss. Nick headed in that direction, knowing his destination when he saw it.

  Riane made no further protest, instead padding along beside him watching their surroundings. She’d obviously appointed herself his bodyguard.

  They reached the cliff, and Nick began to scramble up its face, hands and feet finding rocky handholds.

  “Dammit, Nick!” Riane called up at him. He glanced down over his shoulder to see her climbing after him, exasperation on her pretty face.

  Nick and Riane lay side by side on the motel room bed. Only their chests rose and fell.

  Light flared in a blinding explosion. When the glow faded, the Victor stood beside the bed with His chief cohort of guards arrayed around Him. He had used a dampening field to keep the sonic boom of the mass Jump from wakening everyone in the motel—including their two targets.

  Warrior Priest Gyor ge Tityus watched his god bend over the two. Given the low ceiling, the Victor had been forced to appear at less than His usual regal height.

  Now He cocked his horned head, studying the Vardonese and the Demon with narrowed black eyes.

  Gyor dared to look past the god’s massive shoulder. The eyes of the Demon and his whore were open and glowing green from corner to corner, without whites at all. Yet the two appeared completely unaware of the Xerans. “Do they sleep?”

  “It does not seem so.” The Victor tilted His horned head, eyeing the couple with interest. For once, He did not use the Xeran priest tongue. “Their brains are as active as if they’re awake. Even the whore’s computer is active, yet there is no indication it senses us at all.” He crouched to study the T’Lir clasped around the Demon’s forearm. Green energy boiled around it. “Judging by the quantity of Coswold-Barre energy, this would seem to be a state induced by the T’Lir.”

  Gyor decided to risk another question. “Why would the Demon render himself vulnerable like this?”

  The Victor shrugged His massive shoulders. “Who knows why the Demon does anything? If indeed it was his idea.” He made a deep, rumbling sound in His throat and reached out until His hand hovered just above the snapping green gem. “I wonder,” He mused, “what would happen if we cut off that arm?”

  Riane climbed after Nick, frowning in worry. She hoped to hell he knew what he was doing.

  Her misgivings only increased as she realized he was heading toward the entrance to a cave over their heads.

  “Do sensors detect any sign of danger?” she asked.

  “No life-forms are present in the cave,” her comp said. “There is no indication of energy or chemical booby traps. The atmosphere within the cave is breathable by humans, and the structure of the cave itself appears stable.”

  Well, that was something anyway.

  Nick reached the cave mouth, scrambled upright, and walked inside.

  Blowing out a breath in frustration, Riane heaved herself over the cliff edge, rose to her feet, and strode in after him.

  The Stone cast a bright green glow around the dark interior of the cave. Long shadows wavered where their bodies blocked the light.

  Riane glowered at their surroundings. Was it her imagination, or did the walls look a bit
too smooth to be a natural formation? And there was an opening in the back of the cavern that appeared to be a tunnel. It was pitch-black back there. She didn’t like the looks of it at all. “Okay, Nick, we’re here. Now what?”

  “I have no—”

  “Hello, Nick.”

  Nick turned toward the tunnel—and went pale. Startled, Riane jerked around. Her sensors hadn’t warned her anyone else was present.

  A woman dressed in jeans, running shoes, and a blue polo shirt stood in the dark opening of the tunnel. Though she looked much older than the woman Riane had seen just two weeks before, she was recognizably Charlotte Holt.

  She was also transparent and glowing.

  A chill crawled up Riane’s spine. “Is that a trid recording?”

  “Sensors do not detect any energy source. They also do not detect the image itself.”

  Oh, that wasn’t good. Her sensors could detect any known form of energy, no matter how faint. She swallowed.

  “Mother . . .” Nick took a step toward her, then hesitated.

  Charlotte’s foggy face smiled, a little sadly. “Yes, I’m dead.”

  Frieka was dying.

  His vision flooded with dark spots, going gray as he fought to breathe. The Trojan had speared right through his antivirus protection program to attack his central nervous system.

  Calm down, he told himself. I’ve triggered Xeran Trojans before. I know what to do.

  Xeran attack programs always used a particular structure with certain predictable weaknesses.

  Frieka looked for them, but the Trojan’s structure was completely unlike anything he’d ever seen before.

  The electronic contagion was spreading through his computer system with appalling speed, overloading the neuronet computer system that enhanced his intelligence to human levels.

  There was no way to destroy the Trojan in time. There was only one thing left to do, but Sweet Mother, it was risky.

  He had to shut down his neuronet computer completely before it could kill him. It was a strategy human cyborgs used when they encountered a virus they couldn’t defeat, though as a last resort. It stripped them of access to their nanobot enhancements, leaving them easy prey for enemies.

  But unlike a human, Frieka was nothing but an animal without his comp. Far more intelligent than any ordinary wolf, true, but still, a wolf. He’d lose the capacity to think, to reason, to communicate as humans did. He’d cease to be Frieka.

  Unfortunately, it was that or die. If he shut his systems down, the Chief and his team would realize what had happened and be able to debug his comp.

  So he gave the one command he’d never before given in his entire life.

  “Deactivate.”

  In seconds. Frieka felt his mind begin to bleed away. It felt like dying.

  His sensors shut down first, then the vocalizer that gave him the capacity to speak. Next his higher-level systems went, and his intelligence faded with terrifying speed. He wanted to panic, but there wasn’t enough air.

  Then his chest lifted, and there was a great inrush of cool, precious oxygen.

  He could breathe again.

  The wolf lay on the bunk, panting in great, desperate huffs.

  Images flicked through his mind, sensations, fragments of conversation he could no longer understand.

  And feelings.

  Those he understood very well indeed.

  A man, his face marked along one side with an intricate design, cuddling the wolf when he’d been only a puppy. There’d been warmth in the man’s big hands, affection and kindness in his eyes.

  And strength.

  The wolf remembered fighting alongside the man. Fear, anger, the taste of blood in his mouth as he sank his teeth into enemies with metal horns on their heads.

  A redheaded woman, putting a bowl in front of him, a smile on her face. Later, watching her grow round with child.

  The child. The smallest human he’d ever seen, plump, hairless, helpless, hands waving aimlessly, feet kicking, staring up at him with bright, curious eyes. A toothless smile.

  Tiny fist buried in his fur as she held on to him, taking unsteady steps. Losing her balance and plopping down on her butt, only to grab his foreleg and struggle to her feet again.

  A cloud of red curls topped a face with the tattooed man’s eyes. The child lay curled around the wolf, crying because another child had hurt her. Helpless rage rose in the wolf’s chest. No one hurt his baby.

  A horned man carried her away, up into the sky. The wolf howled in panic, running after her. Finding her again, watching the tattooed man kill the horned one. Feeling her hands in his fur again. Joy too huge to be contained.

  Waking up as the child crawled into his bunk, crying softly. Licking away her tears, tasting salt and lingering fear.

  He lifted his head as fear stabbed through him.

  Someone had taken the child again.

  Silent as death, the wolf leaped off his child’s bunk and slipped toward the door. It opened at his approach, and he started down the corridor. He was going to find the one who had taken her.

  And he was going to kill.

  Nick stared at the misty figure of his mother. “How . . . is this possible?”

  “Just what I was wondering,” Riane muttered, circling around to examine the back of the so-called ghost.

  Charlotte turned to look at her. “No, this is not some kind of Xeran trick.”

  “You know, I’m not finding you all that believable.” She curled her lip. “Can’t imagine why.”

  “If you’re my mother, what was the name of my favorite toy when I was six?” Nick demanded. His eyes had gone hard, suspicious.

  “Charlotte” looked startled before her face softened in a smile. “It was a stuffed toy. You named it after the furry creature from that movie—Return of the Jedi. The Wookie. Damn, what was his name? Chewbacca! You slept with that thing every night. We lost it in a restaurant one time, and I damn near panicked. Had to go back and search for it.”

  His eyes widened. “Mother?”

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Riane told him firmly. “Scientists have been investigating haunted sites for centuries with the best tech we can develop. They’ve found absolutely nothing. Ghosts are only superstition.”

  Nick pointed at the wispy figure. “She’s standing right there, Riane. How much proof do you need?”

  “It could be an illusion created by a telepath for all you—”

  “I didn’t say I was a ghost,” “Charlotte” interrupted calmly. “I said I was dead.”

  • 24 •

  “So what are you, then?” Riane challenged Nick’s so-called mother. “And why are you taking advantage of this man’s grief?”

  “I’m not taking advantage of anything,” the figure snapped with a trace of anger. “I am Charlotte Holt’s spirit. When I died, my life force was captured by the T’Lir.” She spread her arms. “Now here I am.”

  “But . . . why?” Nick asked. “How?”

  “Charlotte” sighed. “Your T’Lir is one of the repositories of the spirits of dead Sela. It’s their power that reinforces your own.”

  “My T’Lir? There are more?”

  “Many more. Others are with the other Sela colonies, while—”

  “You’re buying this?” Riane rocked back on her heels to stare at him, incredulous. “Nick, this doesn’t make any damn sense at all. Your gem is powered by the spirits of dead aliens? As my mother would say, ‘Give me a break.’ ”

  “We just woke up on an alien planet, but you didn’t even blink. Why is that any less believable than this?” He folded his arms and glowered. “Shut up and let her talk.”

  Riane opened her mouth to snap back at him, but Charlotte forestalled her. “Perhaps it would help if I started at the beginning.” The spirit sank down on the sandy floor of the cave, folding her transparent legs. Looking up at him, she patted the ground to either side. “Have a seat, children. Get comfortable. This is going to take a while.”
r />   Nick settled tailor-fashion next to his so-called mother. After a pause, Riane warily followed suit, ready to spring up at the first sign of a trap. “Comp, alert me at any sign of danger.”

  “Scanning.”

  Trouble was, she wasn’t sure how much good it would do. Sensors apparently weren’t much use when it came to ghosts.

  Or whatever the Seven Hells “Charlotte” really was.

  “This all started about ten billion years ago,” Charlotte began, then smiled slightly, “on a planet far, far away.”

  “Do we really need to go that far back?” Riane asked drily.

  “Patience, child.” She gestured, and images filled the air before them, three-dimensional and vivid, of a violet world with wide swaths of land in blue and yellow. “It was a lush planet, with a wide variety of life-forms all fighting one another in ruthless competition for food, mates, and territory.”

  Riane snorted. “Just like on every other life-bearing planet we’ve ever discovered.”

  “True, but for some reason, this competition resulted in a biological arms race that was even more intense than usual. Not only did species grow steadily bigger and faster—developing claws, fangs, and horns—but three different species evolved intelligence. Separately and simultaneously.”

  Riane winced. “Ouch.”

  “Why ouch?” Nick asked.

  “Because when evolving species develop intelligence at the same time, they become even more warlike and competitive against one another than a species that engages in tribal warfare,” Riane told him. “So what you end up with are species that are really, really violent. Even more so than humans.”

  “Exactly.” As they watched, a lizardlike race and two vaguely mammalian ones began to use tools, then create weapons. They fought bloodily, each species trying to wipe the others out, weaponry growing ever more complex as their intelligence grew. “Eventually the species we call the Sela succeeded in killing its rivals, then began a period of intraspecies warfare.”

  Riane blinked. “Those are Sela?” Instead of the cuddly six-legged aliens, they were brawny creatures that reminded her of six-limbed tigers. Their pelts were dark, striped, and they ran swiftly on two sets of powerful legs. Their arms were thinner, with long, agile fingers tipped with vicious claws. Their heads were vaguely feline, with pointed ears, large, intelligent eyes, and lots of sharp teeth.