She stormed off, her pawns following, and Hanuman scampered to keep up, Bast coming along behind. “My dear Psyche, what do you plan to do?”
“You don’t want to know, Hanuman. I don’t quite know myself yet. I’ve never had the chance to discover just how much prolonged anguish I can inflict on a human mind.” A sob tore out of her. “My father … he always urged restraint … patience … told me not to indulge myself too far.” Her hands convulsed into claws, tendons strained in her supple neck, and she erupted. With a roar, she grabbed one of the shorter delegates by the lapels and pulled him up clear off his feet. “And where did that get us?!” she screamed. Slamming him into the wall, she tore at his face with her long, sharpened nails, kicked him savagely in the shins, kneed him in the groin. Deep under her spell, he just stood there and took it, sobbing in her broadcast grief as well as his own pain. The other delegates fidgeted but did nothing to intervene, their faces showing profound sympathy and forgiveness. Hanuman stayed well back. He’d gotten a booster injection of countermeasures to her psychoactive agents this morning, but he wasn’t about to take any chances.
Her fury expended for now, Psyche fell on top of the hapless little man’s shuddering body and heaved deep breaths. Her eyes flashed at the other delegates. “What are you standing there for? Find the Troubleshooters!” They hurried to comply. But Psyche did not go with them.
After a moment, she looked at Kwan and said, “You’re right, Hanuman. I … we can direct the search better from the hub. I need to … stay focused.” She took his hand and let him help her up to a crouch, not sparing another glance at the delegate. “Thank you, Hanuman. You’ve always been so good to me. I’m sorry I yelled, Hannie. Daddy would’ve been so disappointed in me.”
“No,” he insisted, putting his arms around her. “He would have understood. He knew how much you loved him. And he loved you just as much.”
She accepted his embrace for a moment, but then moved clear and rose to her full, impressive height. “But he would want me to be strong for him. I’m the leader of the Vanguard now. It’s up to me to ensure his legacy.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s the spirit!” Taking her warm, supple hand, he led her toward the nearest radial shaft, with Bast going ahead, ostensibly to guard against Troubleshooter assassins (while actually to keep Psyche in line in case she got suspicious). “With your powers, and with the brilliance and vision you inherited from Eliot, there’s nothing you can’t do. And I’ll be right there with you, helping you unite humanity once and for all.”
“Not all of it,” Psyche answered. “Not the Sheaf. Not Earth. And not the Troubleshooters. They killed the greatest leader history has ever known. And I will make them pay.”
Ohh, how perfect! He had her right where he wanted her. Eliot’s dream of systemwide unity had been grandiose but misguided. Humanity belonged in the bosom of Mother Earth, becoming part of Her once again, not trapping the spark of life inside a million tin cans in space. Earth had to be reclaimed—Her industrial masters overthrown, their bloated numbers culled to a sustainable minimum, their cities torn down to pave the way for the return of Her true acolytes, the Neogaians. With Hanuman Kwan ruling over them from his palace, of course. True, a palace filled with the collected riches of the Earth and a well-stocked harem/menagerie wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that generally came about through natural processes. But that was a minor detail.
And with Psyche working for Neogaia—and sharing her secrets so Neogaia could create more like her, missionaries whose sermons could win over the most resistant unbelievers—the goal of reclaiming Mother Earth would finally be in their grasp.
Of course, Psyche would eventually learn that Hanuman’s goals were not her own, and then he would have to have her killed. But by then, hopefully, the initial war against UNECS (who would be dragged into the war that would soon be launched against their Sheaver allies) would be won and Neogaia would have a small army of super-missionaries growing toward adulthood.
But who knew? Maybe over time, he could win her over to the Neogaian point of view. She was such a daddy’s girl. Smart of Eliot, to keep her psychologically dependent on him as a means of regulating her extraordinary power. Perhaps Hanuman could take over as her surrogate father figure—not too literally, of course, since that would preclude the frequent and ambitious sex he intended to have with her. But maybe, if he played his hand right, he could convince her of the joys of living as nature intended.
Hanuman smiled, watching Psyche’s perfect ass undulate before him, and contemplated how much more perfect she would be with a nice, long tail. Or maybe he would give her butterfly wings for real. Or why not both…?
* * *
Emry struggled toward the surface, but the dead weight she was dragging held her down. The cold water both stung and soothed where her bare skin was burned. Blood clouded the water, and Emry just hoped there were no Neogaian shark-people in this lake. Or just plain sharks.
It could have been worse. The charge had been calibrated to deliver all its force into shattering the observation wall and letting the inrush of high-pressure water and shards of wall material do the rest, so as to protect Selkie and the other lake denizens from the lethal hydraulic shock of a larger blast. But while the door may have trapped Emerald and Thorne inside, enough of a gap remained at the moment of detonation to ameliorate the overpressure shock as the lake burst in and compressed the air ahead of it. Nonetheless, the combined impact of the overpressure, the water itself, and the wall shrapnel would have been instantly lethal to any baseline human and most mods.
But Emry had been spared the worst of it. Once she’d come to her senses, she’d realized something had shielded her.
Eliot Thorne’s body.
Which had floated limp in the water, blood billowing from his lacerated back. The pale infrared ghost of his heart still beat, but weakly.
Emry owed Eliot Thorne her life. By chance? Or …
She’d had no time to contemplate it; even her oxygen-rich blood had its limits, and her inbuilt emergency reserve was all but depleted after that last fight. Scanning the room, she’d spotted a knocked-over cabinet with some gill rebreathers spilling out. She’d grabbed one for herself, sucked in the oxygen it extracted from the water. Then, sighing heavily into the mask, she’d grabbed a second one, strapped it over Thorne’s face, and dragged him toward the jagged hole in the wall.
It was no easy task getting him to the surface. All that muscle and dense Vanguardian bone meant he wasn’t very buoyant. For that matter, she wasn’t much more buoyant herself, thanks to her bionics and reinforcements. To minimize drag, she’d had no choice but to shed the lab coat and leave herself all but naked to the cold water, without the inbuilt defenses that Selkie and the others had. It was slow going. She was still weak and the rebreather wasn’t calibrated for her oxygen-hungry metabolism. She kept herself motivated by imagining the nice, cathartic trial she was going to take Thorne in for. Assuming somebody could figure out who had the authority to try him.
Suddenly a hand came from behind her and ripped the rebreather from her face. Emry shot an elbow back, grazing a well-padded body. She spun to see Selkie flinging her mask aside, then darting away as Emry swiped at her with her free arm. Emry tucked that arm under Thorne’s again and tried to increase her upward pace. But Selkie swam down from above and pushed down on Emry’s shoulders. Emry again freed one hand to swing at her, but Selkie somersaulted and took her in the face with a flippered foot.
Emry lost her grip on Thorne and had to head after him as he slowly sank. She pulled his mask free, holding her hand over his nose and mouth to keep him from inhaling water, and took a deep drag from it before strapping it back around him. Then she resumed her grip and started upward again, knowing Selkie would be there but having no choice.
As she closed on the seal-woman, Emry kicked at her, but Selkie dodged easily. This was her element, and Emry was too hurt, too weak. Again those hands pushed down on her. Strong, flippered legs churned
water, fighting her upward progress, reversing it. Emry’s lungs were crying for air. She felt her consciousness starting to fade.
But suddenly there was something else in the water, a silver dervish striking at Selkie again and again, driving her away. The figure descended toward Emry, took her in its arms, began to lift her skyward. An angel. Tenshi.
“Kari!” Emry gasped once she’d breached the surface and sucked in the sweet air. Coughing, she gestured toward shore with her head. Kari, clad only in her silver light-armor bodysuit, joined her in pulling Thorne to dry land, and then Arjun was there, wading in and helping them both to the shoreline, where Kari’s scarlet jacket lay crumpled on the sand.
“Oyamah!” Kari gasped when she saw the state of Thorne’s back. Thorne was starting to cough up water on his own, confirming he didn’t need respiratory assistance, so Arjun whipped a medical gel pack from his armor and sprayed it over Thorne’s back.
“Watch it,” Emry rasped. “He’s … he’s not an innocent.” She didn’t trust herself to go into it now.
“He’s not going anywhere,” Vijay said. “He’s barely conscious.”
“You don’t look much better,” Kari said, beginning to tend to Emry’s wounds.
Emry glared at her. “And you … what are you doing here? You need to be … safe. To testify against Tai.”
“I can take care of myself,” Kari insisted. “Better than you can, it looks like.”
“Yeah, well…” She laughed, gave Kari a quick hug. “Thanks. How’d you know?”
“Zephyr told us.”
“How?”
Kari grinned. “He sent his soligram.” Emry’s eyes widened at the thought of a naked, winged marble statue soaring through the docks, but Kari shook her head. “He made it look like a dockworker.”
“Clever boy.”
“So what happened down there?” Kari asked.
“Hanuman Kwan,” Emry said. “Sicced me on Thorne … had his pet seal try to blow us both up. Probably wanted to make it look like I’d killed him, or you had.”
“But why? What would he get out of that?”
Emry had been thinking about that, and only one answer had presented itself. “Psyche. She worships her father. If she thought he’d been killed … thought Ceres and Earth were behind it … with all the people she can control…”
“What?”
Emry brushed it off. “We have to find Kwan. He’s probably with Psyche.”
A hushed voice spoke over Kari’s selfone. “Tenshi, this is Hijab. I’ve been listening. I’ve already spotted Kwan and Ms. Thorne. They’re heading for the hub, accompanied by Bast. The Neogaians have secure facilities there that would be difficult to breach.”
“You have to keep them from getting there!” Emry cried. “Kwan was behind Chakra City … along with Thorne. It was all Thorne’s idea. And Psyche … she killed Sensei.” Kari and Vijay stared.
“Then she will not escape me,” Maryam said. “This I vow.”
“For her sake,” Emry said, rising to her feet, “hope you get to her before I do.”
She began to storm off, but Kari stopped her. “Umm, Emry … aren’t you a bit, umm, naked?”
“You think I care about that right now?”
“Well … you could use some protection,” Kari said. “And some warmth, Ms. I Just Nearly Drowned. Besides…” She made her way over to her fallen jacket and lifted it to reveal a bundle underneath. “Zephyr sent this along … he thought you might want it.”
Emry laughed with delight. It was a Green Blaze uniform. “Thank you, Zephyr,” she said as she began to put it on. “It’s been too long since I wore green.”
“Trouble coming,” Vijay announced as Kari slipped her own jacket back on. “I think.”
Emry spun to take in the small mob heading their way. “They’re delegates!” Kari said.
“Under Psyche’s spell,” Emry said.
“Okay, you need to explain that.”
“Just call it mind control. Sort of. Point is, they’re dupes. Hold them off, but try not to hurt them, okay?” she said as she finished pulling on her boots.
“Got it. You get going. We’ll guard your back.”
Emry smiled, squeezed Kari’s shoulder. “I know you will. Good luck.”
Tentatively, Emry set off into a trot. Being in uniform again felt good, and not just symbolically; the light armor gave her muscles (and bust) dynamic support, improved her circulation, boosted her strength. Soon she was able to increase her pace. Checking the utility belt, she found that Zephyr had packed a couple of energy bars for her. She devoured them both as she ran, leaving the wrappers as litter on Neogaia’s pristine soil and feeling perversely good about it.
Soon she came to the cave leading to the nearest radial shaft, seized a climbing vine, and began to ascend the spinward wall. She pulled herself up faster and faster, feeling her weight vector angle farther with the speed, and soon she was literally running up the side of the shaft. Her weight decreased with each passing second until she was able to take long bounds up the faux cliff face, and eventually she switched to pulling herself up the vine hand over hand as the wall sped past, only occasionally needing to kick off of it to maintain her distance.
And then she was in the transfer drum between the rotating wheel and the free-fall core of the habitat. Six shaft termini ringed its circumference, while on its flat faces, rotating slowly from her perspective, were multiple corridor entrances. Hijab’s tracking signal on her retinal HUD highlighted one corridor, and Emry grabbed its edge, taking a second for her perceptual frame to shift—now the side walls were standing still and the shaft adits rotating. Now entirely in free fall, Emry pulled herself along the corridor by its handholds, picking up speed. She took a moment to whip a hairband from her belt—Zephyr thought of everything—and tie her hair back into a bushy ponytail.
Soon a voice called out to her. “Blaze!” The wall seemed to distort, a subtle bulge in it unwrapping to reveal Maryam’s black-clad form inside her cloak. “I think Bast caught my scent, but I managed to elude her. They’ve taken a shortcut through the warehouse sector, though. They went in moments ago. But Arjun and Tenshi have just called for backup.”
“Then go. I can handle this.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve taken Bast before,” she said, neglecting to mention that she hadn’t been this badly hurt at the time. “Besides, once Psyche finds out her dad’s alive and Kwan tricked her, Bast’ll have to protect him from her.”
Maryam sighed. “Very well. I vowed she would not escape—I trust you not to make me a liar. Allah be with you, Emerald.”
“I hope so. I need Allah help I can get.” Maryam glared. “Sorry,” Emry said, clasping her hand and smiling. “Thanks.”
* * *
So, while thousands of arrows fell all around him and Uttara, Arjuna shot one arrow up into the sky and called down the weapon of sleep.
Or so Buck’s translation of the Mahabharata would have it. Despite taking his code name from that greatest of all epics, Vijay Pandalai had never found the time to read the original. Maybe that made him a dilettante, but he’d been rather busy, first getting modded to pursue an athletic career, then deciding (admittedly after his mods failed to compensate for a merely mediocre talent for sports) that his powers gave him a higher calling as a Troubleshooter. Not to mention taking care of his kid brother, who followed him in everything but needed Vijay’s guidance to keep his impulses in check.
Anyway, right now he wished he had his namesake’s weapon of sleep, or a good old phaser on stun. It wasn’t that easy to take down an entire crowd of angry, determined people without endangering their life and limbs. Stun weapons were not infallibly nonlethal, and if Arjun upped his shock laser charge enough to take out the stronger mods, it could endanger the frailer delegates. He and Tenshi had been willing to retreat to keep from harming the mob, but they couldn’t leave Thorne unse
cured if what Emry said was true, and carrying him would slow them too much. So they were relying mainly on crowd-control ordnance—tanglewebs, buckyball lubricant sprays, sonics, and plasma guns in flashbang mode. Kari made use of her tessen where she could, using the sturdy folding fans as shields to deflect rocks and fists or as clubs wielded judiciously against the tougher delegates’ weak points. She set their surfaces to flash bright, disorienting patterns as she spun and danced with them, confusing and nauseating her attackers. The mob had thinned as a result, but the stronger and more determined mods were still coming, and more Neogaians were showing up to reinforce them, surrounding the Troubleshooters.
Before long, it came down to hand-to-hand. At first, Vijay wished he could have his burly brother at his side, but after mere moments watching Kari in the grip of her “battle peace,” he changed his mind. The dainty girl was a dervish, moving faster than even his enhanced vision could easily follow, meeting every blow with perfect precision, just enough to incapacitate her foes—though he realized for the first time just how lethal that instinctive power and precision could be, and just how strong her spirit had to be to restrain the killer within. She was scarily beautiful to watch, and Vijay decided he’d have to invite her to his next strip poker night. His distraction almost cost him dearly when the cyborg Niihaman delegate attempted to cave his skull in. He dodged just in time, and the blow merely rattled the side of his helmet.
Now they were down to the few strongest foes, but they were backed up against the shoreline and aquatic therians were beginning to rise from the lake. Just then, though, a barrage of shock laser strikes flashed through the air from behind the mob. They fell, convulsing into full-body cramps, and Kari and Vijay hastened to restrain them with their last few tanglewebs. The swimmers retreated back into the lake, and Vijay rose to meet the red-and-black-armored figure who had fired the shots. Paladin had used more force than Vijay would have preferred, but since these were the strongest foes, he supposed it was excusable. And he hadn’t expected Auster to show at all. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
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