“I felt what the others did.”
“And that’s why you are here. That’s why you are coming with me to the meeting.”
“That meeting is suicidal,” Rykus said.
Tersa turned her attention to him. “I don’t believe it is.”
Dietz started to lean toward Tersa again, but the prime waved him away. This time Ash watched him. He was the person in the room she knew the least about. He’d been appointed to his position of lead magistrate. That meant he’d had a complete and thorough check of his background, but War Chancellor Hagan had been fully vetted too, and he’d become a telepath’s drone. It was possible Dietz or Tersa could be one as well, but no matter how Ash mentally pushed and pulled at their minds—and really, Ash had no idea what she was doing—she felt nothing from either of them. She felt nothing from anyone in the room except her fail-safe, and that had nothing to do with telepathy.
With effort, Ash shifted her thoughts from Rykus back to the prime. “You think the Sariceans have been…” She glanced at Liles. “Affected?”
After a long hesitation, Tersa said, “I do.”
“Affected?” Liles frowned. “I’m not following. What is this other threat? And what does Ashdyn have to do with it?”
Tersa’s blue eyes remained on Ash. “You need to make a decision, Lieutenant. We can continue to speak in vague terms about the other enemy, or you can trust a man we’ve chosen to bring into our circle. You can trust a man that your fail-safe respects. Or we can leave him ignorant and see how that unfolds.”
Another attempt to pretend the power was in Ash’s hands. Tersa’s pretenses were getting old.
Liles turned his body to look at her, a confrontational pose. He had been patient. He’d played the mediator between her and the other two members of her new team more times than she could count. And he knew she was an anomaly and hadn’t told anyone. He was probably trustworthy. But the more people who knew about the existence of telepaths, the greater the risk that the knowledge would spread.
“This is the best lead we have.” Tersa softened her voice as if the hint of sympathy would change Ash’s mind.
“That’s not true.” She leveled a glare at the prime. “You have Valt.”
“Valt is no longer useful.”
“The only way he’s not useful is if he’s dead.”
The sympathy faded from Tersa’s eyes. “He’s told us everything he knows. His people aren’t a society in the traditional sense. They are spread out and compartmentalized.”
“Give me five minutes with him. We’ll see how compartmentalized they are.”
“You’ve assured us you will kill him if you see him again.”
“I will.”
Tersa pressed her lips together. “We can’t allow that.”
“If Valt has told you everything he knows, you don’t need him anymore.” Ash slid her hands down to the sides of her chair’s seat back. She wanted to pick the thing up and throw it at the prime.
“Who is Valt?” Liles pronounced each word separately and in a tone that said he’d had enough.
Tersa looked at Ash and arched her eyebrows. An invisible fist rattled the chains that controlled Ash. She wanted to fight the loyalty training to prove that she could, but there was no credible reason to. Liles was a good man.
She squeezed the edges of the chair harder, then released it to wave one hand through the air in a go-ahead motion.
“Thank you,” Tersa said coolly. Then she turned her attention to Liles. “You weren’t at Ephron, so you didn’t hear the rumor.”
“The rumor that one of our own turned on us and betrayed us to the Sariceans? Everyone’s heard that.”
Ash rested her forearms on the back of the chair again. She’d been cleared of charges, but that accusation still stung.
“As rumors are, the tale is twisted,” Tersa said. “There was a betrayal, but to the best of our knowledge, the timing of the Sariceans’ attack was not caused by it.”
Liles nodded once, acknowledging the words.
“War Chancellor Hagan was compromised,” Tersa said. “He had an assistant, Tram Stratham. The man was a telepath and a traitor. He manipulated Hagan’s mind, stole information, and forced decisions on us that benefited an unknown contingent of additional telepaths. He’s dead now, courtesy of Lieutenant Ashdyn, but another man, Jevan Valt, attempted to do the same to her. He did not succeed. His failure is the reason we know these telepaths exist and are a threat.”
Liles watched the prime with eyes only slightly narrowed in skepticism.
When he didn’t speak, Tersa continued. “Ashdyn is the only way we have to detect telepaths and their drones.”
Ash shook her head. “You can get more out of Valt. If he’s not talking—”
“He is talking,” Tersa said. “He talks and talks and talks. We’ve learned that his goal was to control the leaders of our Coalition. We learned that you, Hagan, and the senator Valt worked for were drones. We learned Valt can’t manipulate you from a distance and that you have difficult walls to break through. He’s also told us that, now that you’re aware of your exposure to telepaths, you can feel when they’re nearby.”
“And of course you trust everything he says.”
“We have reason to believe he’s telling the truth.”
“What reason?” Ash demanded.
Tersa’s nostrils flared. “Our interrogators are good at their jobs.”
“I’m very aware of that,” Ash said.
Tersa snapped her mouth shut, and beside Ash, Rykus shifted. Guilt radiated from him. Even though he hadn’t known the Coalition’s interrogator had been sent in to torture her on the Obsidian, he felt responsible. When they were on the Fortune’s Citadel, he’d told her he should have discovered the truth sooner. He should have trusted her completely from the beginning.
Ash had told him playfully that yeah, he should have. Then she’d climbed on top of him and kissed him.
She didn’t blame her fail-safe. None of this was his fault.
Tersa erased her chagrin and started again. “Valt indicated a rival faction may be influencing the Sariceans. I need you to verify if that’s true.”
Faction. Her previous team lead’s last words—words she’d misunderstood until she’d confronted Valt in a capsule’s cargo bay—were an order for her to fight the factions. She intended to do that, but first she had to discover exactly what those factions were, how to find them, and why Trevast had known anything about them.
“What else has Valt said?”
Tersa studied her. Ash met the icy blue eyes and made sure not a trace of emotion remained on her face. She wasn’t sure she was successful. When Tersa finally spoke again, Ash felt as if she’d been calculated.
“Assist me at Ysbar Station, and perhaps I’ll secure the interview transcripts for you.”
“I can get to him on my own.”
“Can you?” No inflection in that question, just two words spoken monotone. And two words that made a good point.
Ash was an anomaly and had the right training. She could break into wherever they were holding Valt except for the one little fact that she’d have to hurt or kill Coalition men and women to do it. She’d done her best not to kill or permanently injure anyone when she’d escaped the Obsidian, but those circumstances had been different. She’d had to survive so that she could protect and preserve the Coalition. Now that the existence of the telepaths was known by more than just her, she’d lost that excuse to wiggle free from the yoke of the loyalty training.
This was precisely why the Coalition had begun brainwashing Caruth-trained soldiers, this and the assurance that it kept anomalies from snapping. She might be able to circumvent her fail-safe’s compulsion every now and then, but this would be going directly against an order from the leader of the Coalition. The loyalty training wouldn’t allow that.
“Evidence,” Liles said. “I need evidence before I can believe any of this.”
“There’s Ashdyn,” Prime
Tersa said, “though I can understand if you don’t trust her. There’s also Jevan Valt, who is imprisoned on Caruth. The other men who could attest to the truth of this matter are dead. You will have to go on faith and the fact that no one sitting in this room is a fool.”
“You said Valt made a senator his drone,” Liles said.
“He did. The senator from Rimmeria.”
Liles’s glower deepened. The senator from Rimmeria was assassinated a month ago. She and Rykus had learned that while on board the Citadel.
Liles folded his arms across his chest. “The telepaths, if they exist, are killing off the evidence.”
“Yes,” Tersa answered.
“They don’t know Valt’s alive?”
“If they do, they can’t reach him. He is well protected.”
Valt shouldn’t be protected. He should be dead.
“None of this matters though,” Tersa said. “Your team’s mission is decided. You will escort me to the meeting on Ysbar Station, and we will determine if the telepaths have had anything to do with this war between us and the Sariceans.” Tersa held up a hand. “And before you interrupt again, Lieutenant, detecting telepaths isn’t the only reason I’m meeting with the eminence. It’s a reason I am meeting with him.”
“Which eminence?” Rykus’s deep voice reverberated through the air, and awareness of his presence refocused Ash’s attention. He had the ability to make the calmest, quietest words sound like they were delivered via every voice-link in the KU.
“The eminence.” Tersa tapped a command into the data-table, and an image of a robed figure projected above its surface.
Liles straightened. “You arranged a meeting with Eminence Avesti?”
“Now you see why I must go.”
Ash stared at the Sariceans’ leader. Their religious law stated that all the eminences had the same amount of power, but in practice, influence pooled around one individual, the pearl-faced man hovering above the data-table. The holo picked up the arrogance in the eminence’s unnaturally blue eyes, a color that was a side effect of radiation poisoning from the Saris System’s suns. The iridescent freckles and sunspots covering his face were another side effect. They could be easily prevented, remedied, or covered up by cosmetics, but the Sariceans chose not to, believing them to be marks of wisdom and, ironically, health. According to doctrine, all the followers had to do was visit the chosen planet and they wouldn’t be touched by cancer. Inexplicably, living on Saris or staying for a long visit seemed to work.
“Are you sure we can’t assassinate him?” Ash asked.
The question was half in jest, but Tersa must not have picked up on it. She scowled at Ash. “We will not. Admiral.”
Bayis took the cue and retrieved something from beneath the data-table.
“Commander.” Bayis held out a comm-cuff. He waited until Rykus took the device before he continued. “I’m sending the mission brief to all three of your profiles. I mentioned the new sentient-class ship that was just commissioned. Her name is the CSS Kaelais. I’ve assigned Captain Naethan Furyk to her helm. The Kaelais has arrived in Merykian space. She’ll pick up a full contingent of soldiers. Rykus will be in command of them. And he’ll accompany Trident Team and the prime to the meeting with the Sariceans.”
Ash glanced at Rykus. They’d be on the Kaelais together. It wasn’t how things were supposed to go. Loyalty-trained anomalies were deliberately kept away from their fail-safes when given assignments. It was the solution the scientists had come up with to the whole must-follow-their-fail-safe’s-orders side effect of the brainwashing. Ash had other ways of fighting that side effect, but one look at Rykus’s grim face said that didn’t matter. On the Fortune’s Citadel, they’d agreed their relationship only had a chance if they didn’t work together.
“You don’t need me there,” he said.
“Of course they need you, Rip.” Ash rested her arms across the back of her chair. “They don’t trust me.”
“We would trust you more if it weren’t for your”—the prime waved her hand—“escapades. But if we encounter telepaths on this mission, I need assurance they won’t gain control of you again.”
“I was there last time,” Rykus said. “My presence didn’t help.”
“She didn’t shoot you.”
“Because I shot her.”
“And you will shoot her again if someone takes over her mind.”
“That’s something we agree on,” Ash said.
Rykus’s gaze jerked to her. She saw the dissent in his eyes, the absolute condemnation of the idea. Ash couldn’t remember Valt’s order to kill her fail-safe or her struggle against it. All she knew was she’d had the crosshairs of her weapon aimed between Rykus’s eyes. If she lost control again, Rykus had to take her out.
He shuttered his emotions and focused on the prime. “This mission should be canceled.”
“It won’t be,” Tersa said. “You have ten hours to prepare for departure.”
A protest tried to crawl up Ash’s throat, but the loyalty training shoved it down. Ash was a soldier, the Sariceans were an enemy, and she would wage this war no matter how much she wanted to slip out of the assignment and focus on more personal demons.
But she didn’t yet have enough intel to track and kill those demons. If Tersa happened to be right and there was a link between the telepaths and the Sariceans, the trip to Ysbar Station might not be a waste. And if Ash took care of a few things before she left Meryk, she could use the transit time for research.
“I need something first,” Ash said. The words weren’t intended as an objection or ultimatum, but the way Tersa stiffened indicated the prime expected an argument.
“Yes?” Tersa asked.
“I want my accounts unlocked.” Unlocking her financial accounts would resolve a few of her problems—the damn body armor for instance—but not all of them. Not the one that really bothered her.
Tersa’s face formed a cold mask. “Your accounts will be unlocked when you tell us where your credits have gone.”
Her accounts had been frozen when she was accused of treason and murder. They’d tried to track her withdrawals, but Ash had been careful. The only transactions the Coalition investigators had been able to trace were the ones planted by Valt, and Ash wanted to keep it that way. “It’s a private matter.”
“Then your accounts remain closed.”
“Then find yourself another telepath detector,” she said. “I won’t reenlist when my term is up at the end of the month.” The bluff burned her throat like acid, but Ash maintained her relaxed, almost insubordinate posture. Her term of enlistment did expire soon, but she’d never given one thought to leaving the Fighting Corps—no loyalty-trained anomaly had ever left it. Tersa didn’t need to see her struggle though. She didn’t need to know how hard it had become to breathe.
“The Coalition needs you,” Tersa said. “And violating this order would be a good way to end up back in a cell.”
Ash clamped her hands on the back of her chair and was about to rise and tell Tersa to try it, but Rykus stood first.
“There’s a fourth charge against me,” he said quickly. “You haven’t read the verdict.”
Verdict?
Ash’s gaze shot to the three-person panel, and she felt something in her mind slip. They were here to sentence her fail-safe, to convict him of crimes.
“Major Liles, Lieutenant Ashdyn,” Tersa said. “You are dismissed.”
Her heart punched against her chest, and she squeezed her hands into fists to fight off the sudden, cold pricking sensation crawling around her fingers. Rykus shouldn’t be facing any charges. He’d saved her life. He’d protected the Coalition. If they found him guilty…
No.
She closed her eyes.
No.
They wouldn’t. Tersa needed him to keep Ash in line. Plus Bayis had already stated Rykus would be in command of the Kaelais’s soldiers. He wouldn’t be given that responsibility if he was imprisoned or court-martialed.
3
The faded silhouette of the CSS Kaelais hovered in the sky between Meryk and its nearest moon. The atmosphere and angle of the sun allowed it to be seen even in the bright afternoon. It was a sleek, graceful ship that looked more like a pleasure cruiser than a lethal killing machine, and nearly everyone in the park gazed at it instead of the children playing.
Ash was one of two people whose attention wasn’t locked on the heavens. But unlike the other individual, she watched a blue door in the row of homes across the street from the park. It was a door she had entered before, but the simple steps she’d taken two months ago were impossible to take now. Her feet were leaden, her heart unwilling to pump enough blood to allow her the strength to rise from the park bench. She might very well be sick.
But she needed to enter that door. She couldn’t put it off any longer. Her ride to the warship overhead would depart in an hour. Who knew when she’d be back on Meryk? She might not make it back at all.
She rubbed her thumb over the smooth, transparent device in her hand. It was the same type of data-drive her old team had used on their last mission. Due to its speed, capacity, and stealth—not just visual stealth, but also digital—it was illegal to possess outside of approved military operations. And this operation definitely wasn’t approved.
She closed her eyes. It was distasteful to think of what she was about to do as an operation. She should be here for personal reasons. She should be here because it was the right thing to do. She should—
“Ash?”
The voice jolted Ash to her feet.
She turned. Lydia stood a few meters away with Grant, her kid.
Trevast’s kid. Even at five, he looked like his father.
Emotion clawed through her, triggering the instinct to flee. She glanced up at the Kaelais, then scanned the park before her gaze went back to Lydia.
These were the people Trevast had left behind, the people who had been told Ash had murdered their husband and father. Did they know what really happened? Shit. Ash hadn’t thought to ask, and the way Lydia stared made her think no one had revisited with the truth.
Shades of Honor (An Anomaly Novel Book 2) Page 3
