by Selina Rosen
She realized that it wasn't her imagination. The walls were closing in on her, and the air was getting thin and stagnant.
"David! RJ! Levits! Can you hear me?" she screamed. There was no answer, no sound, no smell – nothing at all to tell her where a door might be. And the walls seemed to move faster making the room smaller and smaller. She banged harder and more frantically on the walls and screamed louder. "Help! Help me! Help!"
* * *
Levits heard something and walked towards the sound. Now he had no idea where he was in the ship, or where the others were. He got on his com-link. "RJ, I have managed to get lost in your little archeology project. Apparently the builders of this ship thought it was a good idea that there be no rhyme or reason to the lay-out."
There was no response.
"RJ . . . This isn't funny. Tell me where you are. Better yet come and get me."
There was still no answer.
"Oh, that freaking David will have a field day with this," he mumbled. He thought he heard voices, so he went in that direction. "This isn't funny, RJ! All right, I admit it. I'm an idiot and I got lost. Now come and get me."
Then Levits smelled smoke. He turned around and saw that the hall he was in was engulfed in flame. He got on the com-link again. "Guys! When we turned this thing back on it must have caused a short! The ship's on fire! We have to get the hell out of here, except I don't know where you are. Hell, I don't even know where I am."
There was still no answer.
"Damned magnetic pulse." He forgot about the com-link and just started screaming. "We have to get the hell out of here. The ship is on fire!"
He ran around, franticly looking for some sort of fire extinguisher. Finding nothing and no one, he ran away from the flames looking for RJ and the others and a way off this burning death trap. He couldn't find anyone, and the fire was getting worse. RJ could hear anything. Why couldn't she hear him? "RJ!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "RJ!"
There was still no answer. She must be hurt – or worse. He doubled his pace, ignoring the smoke that scorched his lungs.
* * *
RJ tried her com-link for the fifteenth time. "Damned magnetic pulses." Then she found the monitors on the ship's console and started playing with the switches. Finally they came on. She started scanning the ship room-by-room and hall-by-hall. She found Janad first. She was being crushed in a room that was rapidly getting smaller. While RJ was busy trying to figure out where in the ship Janad was so that she could go to her aid, she found David being attacked by rats. Before she could find out where he was, she found Levits being consumed in a room full of fire and smoke. Even if she could locate their exact positions there was no way she could save them all. As she tried with every skill she had to find the exact location of even one of them, she watched in horror as one by one they died. As she saw Levits engulfed in flames, she fell into a seat and started to cry. When she looked up the screens in front of her were blank, but then they flickered back to life and David and Levits and Janad were dying all over again.
RJ realized then what was going on, and why the occupants had abandoned this ship never to return.
* * *
He was crouched in a corner screaming and the rats were rending his flesh. Suddenly the pain ceased and he found himself crouched on the floor of the bridge. His gun was still in its holster. Levits was screaming and RJ was shaking him. Janad was rolled up in a ball, crying.
RJ left Levits and shook Janad.
David realized that RJ must have woken him up, too
"It's all right," RJ said. "It wasn't real. None of it was real."
"What the hell happened?" Levits demanded.
"It was a weapon," RJ answered, still badly shaken from her own experience. "A weapon that attacks the mind. The perfect weapon to use against telepaths."
"But I wasn't here," Janad said. She stood up and stretched her arms out. "I was in a room alone and the walls were closing in." She shook with remembered terror.
"No one left this room. We must have triggered the ship's defense system when we walked in. The weapon put us into a kind of sleep, a dream state. Apparently the prisoners tried to take over the ship before it could land. They caused the crash, and the ship's internal defense weapon was triggered automatically. It wasn't a distress beacon this ship was emitting, it was a warning to other ships that there were escaped prisoners on the planet's surface."
"Well, at least we know why they abandoned the ship," Levits said running his hands through his hair. "It was so real. I swear I can still smell the smoke in my hair and on my clothes. I don't understand how anyone could have resisted. How they could have gotten away."
"I imagine they were all well aware that such a weapon existed. As soon as I knew that what I was seeing wasn't real, I was able to fight the visions in my head and wake up. It wasn't easy, but it wouldn't have been impossible. The worst part would have been keeping people awake. I imagine they worked in shifts to get free of the ship. It explains why they left the ship and everything in it behind. They just wanted to put as much distance between them and the weapon as quickly as they could."
"What did you do to it?" Levits asked.
"I found the weapon, located the switch, and turned it off."
* * *
Even knowing the weapon was off, none of them were eager to stay on the ship. They were not at all happy to learn that the thing that RJ found she absolutely could not live without, among all the wonderful things on the ship to chose from, was the accursed weapon itself.
She was digging around under the console, occasionally pulling out little parts attached to fiber-optic cable.
"Just leave it," Levits begged. "We don't need it."
"Yes we do need it. We do," RJ said. "Don't you see? Even I was rendered completely useless for several minutes. We may be able to use this weapon. If we get in a position where it would work perfectly, I don't want to be kicking myself that I left it here. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that you don't want to be the one that I'm kicking instead because you talked me out of getting it."
Levits mumbled and walked away.
"I don't think people should use weapons that attack the mind," Janad said disapprovingly. "It's sneaky and underhanded. There is no glory in it. No courage, no bravery."
"Gee!" RJ said, never stopping what she was doing. "I never thought of it that way. I just figured that the object of war was to kill the other guys before they killed you. I apparently missed the fair play class when I was in basic training."
RJ yanked the last of the components out and then started looking around at the top of the wall. She jumped up and grabbed something that looked like a normal surveillance camera. Then she started off down the hallway. They all followed her. Every few feet she jumped up and grabbed another of the camera-looking devices. Since they were all following her, all secretly afraid to be alone for even one minute after the ordeal they had just gone through, RJ handed the devices to them to carry.
"RJ . . . What do you want with surveillance cameras?" Levits asked as she loaded the third one on him.
"The weapon works in two parts. First by using sonic waves to interrupt the brain's normal function and causing sleep, then by stimulating the fear centers in the brain, causing your own brain to attack you. The components I pulled out of the console are the weapon itself. However these surveillance cameras hold the apparatus which makes the actual sound," RJ said jumping up and pulling down yet another.
"How many of them are you going to need?" David asked.
"A few. Why?" RJ asked, jumping up and grabbing yet another one.
"Because we have to carry them down the freaking mountain!" Levits practically screamed. "We have to cart this weapon – which none of us feels very safe around, and you don't yet know what you are going to do with – down the side of a freaking mountain."
"What is with this word freaking?" Janad asked. "You say it all the time for everything. What does it mean?"
"It's the same as t
he word fucking," Levits said.
"If you mean fucking, why not just say fucking?" Janad asked.
"Because when you do, certain people higher up in the ranks get all tightassed and you can get demerits, even brig time," Levits explained. "Get your pay docked or spend a couple of nights in the brig for letting the wrong word slip in front of the wrong prick and you learn real quick to say something else. It means exactly the same thing, but for some reason they let it slide."
"Huh?" Janad said scratching her head.
"It's military stuff, Janad," David explained. "It never makes any damned sense. Freaking encompasses a whole range of emotions from frustration and anger, as in The stupid freaking mountain, to excitement as in You've got such a freaking big wang."
"Poley has a freaking big wang," Janad said.
"Yeah, well, that's technology for ya," Levits said with a sigh.
RJ turned to look. "Do you people ever freaking listen to yourselves? Let's just get what we freaking need and get back down the freaking mountain." Looking at them she realized they were all carrying about all they realistically could. So she stopped getting cameras and started walking down the hallway opening doors and looking in.
"What the hell are you doing now! Let's pack this damn crap up and get the hell out of here." Levites ordered.
"If they had this weapon on board, it's a sure bet they had some kind of device the crew could wear to cancel out the effects. Ah ha!" She walked in the door she had just opened, and right up to one of the three mummified remains of humanoids that were in the cabin.
"Well . . . This is freaking creepy," Levits said making a face.
"They're all wearing the same uniform," David observed.
"No doubt they were part of the crew." RJ checked them out closely one by one.
"What the hell are you looking for now?" Levits demanded. "Are we going to need mummified Argy's later? Maybe you're going to make a freaking potion."
RJ ignored him, choosing instead to talk more to herself than anyone else. "Damn! The prisoners must have stripped the crew of the apparatus . . . That would have made it a damn sight easier for them to get out. Smart . . . of course if they had been very smart they would have looked for the weapon and turned it off like I did. Of course, criminals of any species are almost inherently stupid. Well, no sense hanging around here." She started walking back towards the bridge, and the others followed. "They obviously used the apparatus to escape from the ship, so they are doubtless on the surface of the planet somewhere."
"If they had the sonic disruptors, why didn't they use them to dismantle the ship? At least take something?" Levits asked.
"I imagine the units had a limited power supply. After all in most cases they would only have to last long enough to put down an uprising, and with that machine in place that shouldn't take more than a few minutes. They probably only had enough power to get out. They escaped with only what they could easily carry and could just grab," RJ explained. "With something like that thing playing in your brain, you wouldn't be thinking clearly, and most of them wouldn't have had the disruptors."
"If it's just sound wouldn't ear plugs work?" David asked.
Levits laughed loudly and gave David a 'you really are an idiot' look.
"Sound waves can penetrate practically anything," RJ answered. "You need something to interrupt the sound waves and change them into something harmless. We should be able to make something that will work fairly easily."
"Just to satisfy my morbid curiosity," Levits started, "what killed those people back there?"
"Well, they were tied into their chairs, there was no sign of blunt trauma to the head, no obvious laser marks on the clothing or skeleton, there was too much mummified flesh left on their bones to suggest that they had starved to death, so I would say off hand that the weapon killed them," RJ said. They had reached the flight deck.
"Well, isn't that a lovely thought? Everyone gets to die from their own worse fear," David said.
"Oh, it's worse than that. The Argy are empathic," RJ said conversationally. "They got to experience everyone else's fear as well." RJ pulled two backpacks from her own; she'd come prepared to carry a power supply back if they had found one. She used the radiation proof bags she had brought to wrap the components of the weapon, and Janad helped her pack them into the back packs.
"It can't work now, right?" David said as she slipped one of the packs on his back.
"Of course it can't work, you dildo," Levits said exasperated. "All the optics have been broken, and it's been disconnected from its power source."
"I was just making sure," David spat back hotly.
"You are such a dumb ass," Levits sneered.
David turned on Levits. "Get off my back, or I'm going to kick your scrawny ass."
"Why don't you go ahead and try it? I'll . . ."
"Get your ass kicked," RJ said. "David is bigger, stronger, and more experienced in hand-to-hand combat, so he'll kick your ass."
"I'd like to see him . . ."
"But I wouldn't. Nobody's going to be kicking anybody's ass." She held the second pack out to Levits, and he grudgingly put it on mumbling the whole time.
RJ moved to turn the ship's power off.
"Hey! Why'd you do that?" Levits asked as he raced to turn the light on his com-link on.
"No sense in leaving it on to run the power out. Who knows, we might need this ship yet," RJ said. She looked back around her, suddenly feeling a reluctance to go. She had an illogical feeling that for an instant she had connected with the other side of her heritage. The only way she had ever interacted with them before had been by killing them on planets in galaxies far away from here. She took a deep breath and walked out of the ship. If they hurried, they should be able to make it down the mountain before it got dark enough to impair her companions' vision.
They had been walking a little over an hour when she realized that Levits was very purposefully not talking to her. She let David take the lead for a while and held back with Levits.
"So, what did I do now?" RJ asked with a grin.
He glared back at her. "You know what you did. You took his side."
"I didn't take his side," RJ said in disbelief. "All I did was tell the truth. He can kick your ass. You and I both know that you would have talked your way out of it anyway, because you have an aversion to pain. So in the end the outcome is the same, and it was a lot quicker this way. You're smarter than he is; he's stronger. In all reality, which would you rather be?"
"You could at least pretend that you think I'm stronger," Levits said with a smile.
RJ smiled back and took his hand in hers. "I didn't ask you to pretend to be dumber just to make David feel better."
"RJ . . . What are you going to do with this damned weapon?" Levits asked, more than ready to change the subject.
"I really don't know yet. It could be modified to do any number of horrible things."
"Worse than what it does now?" Levits scowled. "I don't like the sound of that."
"Rather depends on who we use it on, doesn't it? Some people deserve a tortuous death . . ."
"I'm not sure anyone deserves that," Levits said a cold chill running up his spine as he remembered the terror. "RJ, I'm curious. What was your fear? I mean . . . I didn't think you were afraid of anything."
"I'm an empath, too, Levits. I felt your fear – all of your fears," RJ said simply. That was all he needed to know. She didn't want to talk about her only real fear. They could all avoid their fears, but on the other hand her fear was inevitable.
Chapter Fourteen
Haldeed didn't know what the Defrocked priest and the old one were talking about, he only knew that it was slowing down progress on the prince's hands. This was frustrating Taleed, so that he was bitching at Haldeed. He and Taleed had been catching colmaçon all day, and they had enough for a feast. He had shelled and cleaned them and was now pushing them onto a spit to be put over the fire.
"Hurry, Haldeed," Taleed said impatien
tly. "I want to see what the old one is talking about that is so important that he has all but stopped working on my hands."
Haldeed just looked exasperated and worked a little faster at poking the crustaceans onto the skewer. He didn't stop to explain to him that since Taleed was contributing nothing but aggravation, he could leave at any time. Haldeed grunted when he had finished the task, and together they walked over to the fire where Topaz was talking to the priest.
