Under Cover of Darkness

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “Can you still feel them?”

  “Oh, yes. They’re not far away at all. I could probably track them all the way across the station now.”

  “Then we’ll just stay here for a bit.”

  The gray color of disappointment floated across her link with Eperr, but she was not about to give in to his sulking.

  “Take it easy,” she muttered as she stretched out her legs. “This isn’t about having fun, you know.” She became aware of Eperr’s faint rodent smell mixed with the lingering aroma of partially rotten cabbage coming from a crate, which did not go well with the scent of burned rubber coming across her link with the Nlyx.

  “Spoilsport.”

  “Let’s relax a bit and see what they do,” she temporized as she pulled her dock hat out of her pants pocket and set it over her eyes. “We’ve until mid-third watch before the meeting.”

  In the end, what the Legionnaires “did” was “nothing.” Kyri actually managed to get some sleep between the watch chimes right up to the appointed rendezvous time. Her chrono buzzed her wrist five minutes before the appointment, warning enough to wipe the sleep from her eyes, clear her throat, and wake the Nlyx.

  “Can’t a guy get more than ten minutes of shut-eye in a row around here?” he griped as she gently rubbed him awake.

  “Try three hours, you lump,” she chuckled. “Besides, if you need to go, I’d like you to do it now rather than in my bra.” By the time the one-minute warning buzzed silently against her left wrist, they were both awake and ready to face the next “bite” of the mission. Kyri straightened up from behind the crates, stretched out her kinks, and walked into the main corridor.

  She spotted the male Legionnaire sitting in the bistro next to the hostel almost immediately. His business clothes and height set him apart from the normal station-side professional crowd that frequented the place. As Kyri followed an indirect path toward him, she subvocalized a request to Eperr.

  “Where’s the woman?” she asked.

  “She’s in the other hostel across the corridor and concentrating very hard.”

  Kyri risked a glance upward and saw the outline of a face in one of the second-floor windows, slightly distorted by a boxy shape that rested next to one cheek. She felt a shudder as she realized that the woman no doubt had a sniper weapon of some kind trained in the direction of the table that Kyri was about to approach.

  “You’re worrying again,” Eperr observed in an acid tone.

  “She’s got a gun.”

  “Of course she’s got a gun,” the Nlyx replied with an empathic eye roll. “Spies tend to be rather cautious when plotting treason.”

  Kyri felt a flush bloom on her cheeks. “If it was simply treason,” she snapped, “you and I wouldn’t be involved.” She felt Eperr cringe from the venom in her words and felt guilty.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in the best “soothing” voice she could manage subvocally while trying to put her worry out of her mind. “I shouldn’t let the past get to me.” A feeling of acceptance flowed from her tiny companion, and Kyri felt her confidence swell as she stepped into the tiny shop, her fretting left behind now that the wait was over.

  The busy mid-shift dinner hour had filled the small dining room. Kyri first moved to the corner bar and ordered her favorite pineapple-kiwi mixer, which allowed her to scan the people sitting in the room. None of them appeared to be paying either the Legionnaire or her much mind. Sipping at the juice, she strolled to the soldier’s table and slipped into the opposite seat. If her appearance surprised the man, he gave no sign.

  “You’re right on time,” he said in a conversational tone. Kyri shifted slightly, looking directly at the window where his partner was no doubt watching through her scope.

  “The woman is surprised . . . and now she’s worrying,” said the Nlyx. Kyri let the ghost of a smile cross her lips.

  “You’re on time as well,” Kyri said without looking away from the window.

  The man nodded once. “When is the meeting?”

  Kyri turned back to look the man in the eye, then downed her juice. “Right now,” she said in the coldest tone she could manage. She stood up from the table and began working her way through the crowd without looking back, another smile crossing her lips as she heard a muffled curse followed by apologies as the large man tried to keep up with her.

  “The woman is moving, too,” Eperr warned as she stepped into the main corridor.

  “Good,” she muttered. The second “bite” of her meal had gone down just as smoothly as the first, but plenty of protein waited in the vat. “Let the others know we’re coming.”

  At first, she walked to the side corridor that she had used to watch the hostel. Once she was out of the general flow of traffic, though, she ran to the hatch and into the tertiary tube beyond. Eperr kept up a running dialogue as she jogged from access tube to access tube, helping Kyri keep track of the Legionnaires even as she slipped in and out of the tight spaces. She had to make it hard enough to be convincing, but not so hard that she lost them. Twice she had to backtrack and allow first the man, then the woman, to catch a glimpse of her as she rounded a corner.

  Her route took them coreward through the conical station, farther and farther from the central docks at the rim. The corridors began to lose the polished look of the more “public” areas. Graffiti tags appeared, along with broken machinery and various kinds of garbage. Kyri even had to jump over a sweat-stained stim junkie who was sleeping off a hit in the middle of an accessway.

  At long last, panting hard and with sweat plastering her hair to her head, she entered the tube that led to the storage bay they had found for the meeting. She sprinted to the corroded hatch and put both hands on opposite sides of the lock wheel.

  “They’re almost here,” Eperr warned as Kyri’s straining finally broke the wheel free with its characteristic high-pitched squeal. A half turn was all it took before she was able to shoulder the hatch open, its hinges protesting the whole way.

  She stepped over the jamb and dashed into the shadows toward the back of the room where she could watch both the door she had just entered by and the side exit that led to the derelict front office. Fitful light from adjacent rooms cast the warehouse area into patches of black and dim yellow. Kyri brushed back a sopping strand of her raven hair behind her left ear and tried to control her breathing.

  “This is so exciting!” Eperr crooned as he stuck his nose out of the loop. “It’s just like being in a Max Vel thriller vid.”

  “You watch . . . too much . . . vid,” gasped Kyri between breaths. Her heartrate slowed, but beads of sweat still flowed down her face and neck. “Besides . . . have you ever . . . seen him sweat?”

  “Um . . . no, not really. I wonder if his Nlyx has to put up with a sweaty bra pocket?”

  Kyri’s transient urge to smash her small companion flat evaporated as the male Legionnaire peeked around the edge of the hatch.

  “Is that both of them?” she subvocalized.

  “Yes, although the woman is hanging back a bit.”

  The man slipped through the open hatch and moved to a bit of shadow on the right. Long seconds filled with soft footsteps crept by until another shadow crossed the opening. Kyri took a deep breath and stepped forward into a puddle of yellow light where she had placed a small foot switch.

  “You both might as well come in,” she called. “We know you’re there.”

  The man’s tall figure stepped out of the shadows and into another square block of reflected light. He turned his head and muttered into his collar, and then the woman stepped through the hatch to join him.

  “Kyri Trellan?” the male Legionnaire asked. Kyri raised her head and tried to look as impressive as possible.

  “I am.”

  The Legionnaire looked at his female partner, who nodded in affirmation. He turned back to Kyri.

  “Good. I am Commander Velk, Third Expeditionary. This is my aide, Lieutenant Kobe.”

  Kyri nodded in acknowledgment.
“Welcome to Cross-road Station, Commander, Lieutenant. You’ve come a long way to chase a rumor.”

  “Hardly a rumor,” Kobe interjected, her clear voice almost musical with some faint, colonial accent. “We have been trying to crack the Coven Project for years.”

  Kyri snorted. “Given what happened on Backtrack, perhaps you should have concentrated your efforts elsewhere.” Although she had spoken without overt sarcasm, the mirrored flinches her words elicited on both the commander and lieutenant’s faces told her almost as much as Eperr’s empathy.

  “Hindsight,” Commander Velk said after a brief pause, “is a merciless teacher, and we have had all too many lessons of late.”

  “Speaking of rumor,” Kyri broke in, “word on the docks is that First and Second Expeditionary magically disappeared. Neat trick, if it’s true.” This time, instead of flinches, she received faint smiles.

  “Like the commander said,” Kobe admitted, “we have learned many lessons.”

  Kyri nodded. The Oligarchy had been using the Senate to teach all sorts of “lessons,” and not just to the fiercely independent Legionnaires.

  “So,” she said, spreading her hands, “here we are. You wanted to speak to us, so . . . talk.”

  “Do you speak for all the members of the Project?”

  Crossing her arms, Kyri gave the commander a cold stare. “I was elected leader, but I hardly need to speak for them.” She stepped on the floor switch. Light fixtures attached to catwalks and walls hummed to life, and the Legionnaires gasped in surprise. Kyri felt a satisfied smile quirking at her lips . . .

  . . . Because she knew that behind her the teenaged host of the Coven had silently emerged from the shadows.

  “Here is the Coven, Legionnaires,” Kyri said as she stepped forward. “Now speak your minds.”

  “They didn’t show up on my scan,” muttered Kobe, obviously thunderstruck. Velk hissed through his teeth at her, and the lieutenant visibly stiffened.

  “That’s very impressive,” the commander allowed as he stepped forward to meet Kyri. “You must understand that we had no idea of your abilities or training. In fact, we weren’t even sure you’d escaped.”

  “Obviously,” Kyri agreed sardonically and felt a little thrill as the muscles in Velk’s jaw clenched.

  “Look,” he said, a little irritation leaking through his control. “We don’t have to play power games with each other. With the Senate putting out bounties on every Legionnaire and continuing to sniff for hints of the Coven, the obvious action is to join forces and begin working against the oligarchic puppet masters writing the legislation.”

  Kyri sighed. “You don’t ask for much, do you? The Coven is completely safe so long as we remain hidden. The moment we throw in our lot with you, we expose ourselves to far greater risk. We can disappear into humanity. You cannot.”

  “But what the Senate did to you . . .” Kobe began, but Kyri held up a hand, stopping her outburst.

  “That is the past. We not only survived, but we triumphed and disappeared. All that’s left of our eugenics tanks are the charred ruins of Escaflow. Can you say the same of the modification facilities on Sol?”

  “You can’t like what you’re seeing,” protested the commander, his temper rising. “They murdered an entire planetary population to take down the Fourth. We sacrificed most of the Third to save First and Second along with their ships. We didn’t come through all this just so you could keep hiding!”

  “And what shall we do, soldier?” Kyri answered him coolly. “You have two and a tenth bloodied Legions left. The colonies are already in shambles, and you’d be hard pressed to recruit from the inner worlds where the Oligarchy holds Senatorial sway. For our part, most of the Coven is fifteen standard years old like myself or younger. Most of us have yet to begin to reproduce, let alone raise families. What you see is what we are.”

  Velk clenched his fists and drew them together before his chin. “You can’t just give up without a fight!”

  “We can if it means we will survive.”

  As Velk opened his mouth to reply, Kyri subvocalized a single word to Eperr.

  “Now.”

  Doors along the catwalk and to the sides of the warehousing space slammed open as shock troops in Senatorial black and silver charged in. An amplified voice boomed into the storage bay.

  “Halt! You are all under arrest by Senate decree! Lay down your arms and surrender!”

  For a heartbeat, shock froze everything. Kyri stared hard at the commander and the lieutenant.

  “Kobe!” the commander yelled as he reached inside his jacket and began running, “Get them out of here!”

  Before Kyri could turn her head, the lieutenant had grabbed her about the waist and lifted her into a carry position. The soldier spun around and yelled back over her shoulder to the impassive ranks of the Coven.

  “Come on, you kids!” she called in a firm command voice. “Follow me!” With that she charged toward the door through which she, the commander, and Kyri had all entered the warehouse.

  The commander’s gun spat fire at the gathered Senatorial troops. Pulsor fire answered in kind and began to dance on the floor around the Legionnaire and his lieutenant. Troops fell before the commander’s accurate fire, but others shuffled to throw off his aim and allow for reinforcements to join them on the floor and catwalk. A burst of rounds stitched the floor beneath Kobe’s feet and she stumbled, hurling Kyri toward the door as she fell.

  “Run!” the Legionnaire screamed at Kyri before she rolled onto her back, adding her own return fire to the commander’s.

  Kyri staggered to her feet and brushed at her clothes.

  “Are you okay?” she subvocalized to Eperr.

  “Whee!” he answered brightly. “That was cool!” Kyri snorted and walked back to the lieutenant.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the woman yelled when she saw Kyri approaching. “Get out!”

  Kyri raised her hand and made a gesture in the air. She let her mind flow through Eperr to calm the panic flowing through the Legionnaire.

  “Be still,” she said softly as Kobe’s eyes lost focus. “You are safe and your part in this play is done.” The woman sagged to the floor and slept.

  Kyri looked up and watched as the commander continued to try and dodge the hail of illusory blaster fire he saw pouring in his direction. An imaginary hit took him in the leg and he fell, but he wobbled back to his feet and lurched behind a transit crate, firing all the way. Another shot took him in the shoulder and he spun to the floor. Once again, he forced himself back up, grasping his small gray energy pistol in the opposite hand.

  “How much more are we going to put him through?” asked the Nlyx. Behind Velk, the members of the Coven seemed to be evaporating and reappearing as some left the link and others joined. Maintaining the illusion between stars was taxing, but the rotation kept the image fluid, up to and including tricking the commander and lieutenant into believing that they had actually fired their weapons.

  “Only one thing left to do, Eperr,” she said softly. With that, she asked him to bring out her own creation.

  A young female Coven member ran in front of the commander, obviously confused and shaken. Through the Nlyx, Kyri could feel Velk’s shock and panic. The man staggered up from behind his pitiful cover and grabbed the child, rolling her into his embrace as dozens of pulsor shots sank home in his now-exposed back.

  “Enough,” she sent to the Coven through Eperr as she stepped forward. The host of Senatorial troops began to evaporate as the avatars of the Coven disappeared from the warehouse.

  “Peace,” she said as she neared the agonized Legionnaire, “and rest. Safe. You are safe.” She saw Velk’s pain disappear as his body relaxed into a trancelike slumber.

  She knelt down next to the commander and rolled him onto his back. Up close and with the sweat of effort covering his face, she could now see the spiderweb trace of old scars on his face, hands, and arms.

  “Here is one who has suffered
much, Eperr,” she said softly. “Let’s see what he can tell us.”

  She let her fingertips drift to the soldier’s temple and focused her mind through Eperr’s, seeking the man’s memories. From his early days as a proud volunteer, through training and thence to deployment, she walked the path of his life. As he traveled between the stars, she followed, fighting by his side across the worlds of man. She saw him always trying to hold back the dangers outside the colonies, still striving to do the right thing after witnessing selfish expediency so many times.

  Then came the betrayal.

  His rage and tears became her rage and tears. The skies burned above as Senatorial ships bombarded their own troops, the Legion too independent to be trusted by the oligarchic conspirators. She saw harried rearguard actions, desperate suicide charges of orbital ships, and finally the panicked flight into the Dark Cluster with the First and Second Legions . . . she witnessed and felt it all.

  Kyri came back to herself and reached up to touch the tears flowing down her face. She had seen their plans and hopes, and knew them to be like her own. The commander’s eyes flickered open, his eyes finding her teary ones.

  “Are we dead?” he asked, soft and confused. Kyri laughed through a sob and scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “No, Commander, you’re not dead,” she confided as she reached out to brush his hair aside, “and neither am I.”

  “What . . .” he began, but Kyri quickly put a finger on his lips to silence him.

  “Illusion, Commander, and an example of our power combined.” She put her hands behind his shoulder and guided him into a sitting position. “I am the only member of the Coven physically present on this station.” His gaze snapped to Kobe’s prone form, and he tried to struggle to his feet.

  “No, wait,” Kyri said as she held his shoulder. “She’s only sleeping.” Velk turned back to her, confusion once more taking root in his eyes. She chuckled.

  “I’d like you to meet someone.” She held out her left hand before the loop in her blouse and Eperr scurried into her palm.