gaian consortium 06 - zhore deception

by Pope, Christine

  The rest of her, however, had to focus on getting away from the level where her room was located and over to the hangar, which was at the very bottom of the station and on its opposite side. She didn’t have a chronometer, but she knew the guard should be coming along at any moment. In fact, as she reached out with her mind, she could feel him riding up in the elevator.

  Damn. She wouldn’t be able to avoid him if she stuck to her current course. Luckily, there was an access stairwell just around the next corner, so she slipped in there and began hurrying down the steps. It would be a slog, as the space station comprised some fifteen levels, but at least she was headed down and not up. And really, this was probably better in the long run, since no one seemed to use the stairs at all. From what she could tell, the guards came this way every once in a great while, just to show that they were policing every section of the station, even the ones that weren’t used all that often. However, they only did that when directly ordered to.

  None of them seemed to be coming this way tonight, though, and so Trinity was able to slip down into the very bowels of the space station undetected. When she reached the bottom level, she paused next to the door and took a breath to gather herself, while at the same time dipping more deeply into Blake’s mind. His thoughts felt muddied and tired, almost as if he was about to fall asleep. That would be even better. And if Gabriel somehow came upon him there, passed out in her room…well, those would be some explanations she’d love to be around to hear.

  But she wouldn’t be there. By then she would’ve slipped aboard the supply ship and gotten safely away. It would be tricky, but she was fairly sure she could convince the crew of that ship — using a little extra mental persuasion — that she was supposed to be there. After all, they’d brought one woman to the space station, and had come to take another one away. It all made perfect sense.

  First, though, she had to get on board. And that meant making her way through the corridors that led to the hangar area without drawing any notice. The hangar itself had two guards permanently stationed there, along with a couple of technicians to oversee the atmospherics and the calibration of the membrane that kept air in but also allowed a ship to come and go.

  Trinity paused around a corner and focused on the hangar. Only one guard seemed to be present at the moment; maybe the other one had gone off to take a leak or grab a drink of water or something. Likewise, a single technician accompanied the guard. They were discussing the prospects for the upcoming low-G football tournament back on Gaia’s moon and didn’t seem particularly engaged. Good. That meant they were bored and probably not paying much attention. She would have thought they’d be a little more on the alert, since the supply ship was due to arrive at any moment, but maybe they’d been stationed here long enough that even the prospect of seeing a few new faces, however briefly, wasn’t that big a deal.

  Suddenly, though, a sort of whooping siren filled the hangar, and Trinity stiffened. Had her absence been detected?

  Poised to flee, she listened with her mind, realizing almost at once that the whooping noise was merely the station’s proximity alert, letting the personnel on duty in the hangar know that a ship was approaching. She let out a breath and began to creep closer, pausing just outside the heavy double doors that opened onto the hangar itself. Not too much longer now.

  A few minutes later, the floor seemed to shiver slightly under her feet. That must be the ship itself, settling itself on the surface of the hangar bay. Trinity reached out with her thoughts, wanting to know how many crew people were on board the supply vessel. She hoped it wouldn’t be more than three or four, because the more of them there were, the more difficult it would be to keep all of them under her control for a flight of eight or ten or even twelve hours.

  But then she stopped, her heart hammering in her chest. It couldn’t be…no, that was impossible. And yet somehow, she knew the touch of that mind. Familiar, comforting, like a warm blanket she wanted to wrap around herself.

  How he’d come here, she had no idea, but Zhandar was on board that supply ship.

  * * *

  “This shouldn’t take too long,” Ejiro told Zhandar. “Jackson located your girl on Level 10. So we’ll take the team and fetch her. You’ll stay here, along with our pilot.”

  Zhandar gave a resigned nod. By now he’d come to terms with the idea of having to wait while the commandos went to rescue Trinity. He certainly didn’t have any training in close-hand combat. And even if he had, he was far too conspicuous to be allowed along on such a mission.

  Something in Ejiro’s manner seemed to relax slightly. Perhaps he’d been expecting his Zhore charge to protest. But he didn’t waste any time after that, directing the men under his command to follow him into the hangar. Zhandar watched them file out, then began to reach out to close the hatch…right before he paused, his heart beginning to pound away in his chest. There was a touch on his mind, familiar, soft, for some reason reminding him of the fragrant night-blooming flowers whose scent he’d admired so much back at Lirzhan and Alexa’s homestead.

  Trinity.

  Somehow, she was nearby. Zhandar was sure of that, because although their bond was strong, he still couldn’t sense her if she was too far away.

  Which meant that Ejiro and his men had quite possibly gone off on a useless quest.

  But he couldn’t worry about that right now. Pausing at the open hatchway, Zhandar dared to peek out into the hangar bay where the stolen supply ship now rested. All seemed quiet and still. For a group of fifteen heavily armed men, Ejiro and his commandos moved with surprising stealth. Then again, going about their business as quietly as possible was probably a necessary part of their training.

  There must have been personnel of some sort guarding the hangar, but there was no sign of them now. Ejiro’s squad must have already subdued them and moved on.

  Judging it safe enough to step out of the ship, Zhandar had just put his booted foot on the gangway when he heard a single syllable in his mind.

  Wait.

  He froze. That was Trinity, he was almost sure of it, but they had never communicated in such a fashion before. Zhandar had no idea such a thing was possible, but then again, he didn’t have a very clear idea of exactly what her psi powers entailed. No one among the Zhore had those sorts of gifts.

  And a few seconds later, she appeared, quietly inching her way into the hangar, casting furtive glances over her shoulder as she did so. Zhandar longed to run down the gangway and go to her, but he did as she’d instructed and remained where he was. At least he knew that she was unlikely to be caught at this point, since Ejiro’s men had already taken care of the guards, but even so, Zhandar could feel himself tensing as he watched her, so conspicuous with her bright brown-gold hair and tunic and pants in a dark blue-green that matched her eyes.

  Eventually, though, she came to a place where she could no longer hug the wall. She dashed away from its spurious cover and came straight for him, light footsteps tripping up the gangway. And then she was in his arms, and he was holding her, inhaling the sweet scent of her hair, feeling how incredibly real she was, and yet so slight and delicate at the same time.

  “Trinity, how — ” he began, but she silenced him by going up on her tiptoes, then pressing against him and placing her mouth on his.

  She was all sweetness and fire, and he never wanted to let go. His anger now seemed like a pale thing, compared to the reality of her.

  But after a few seconds, she did pull away. “Zhandar, how are you even here?”

  “Because I couldn’t bear to think of you in his hands. And because it turns out we both have friends we never even knew we had.”

  Her expression was puzzled, but she nodded. “Which is wonderful. But if you have some way of calling those friends back — ”

  “I’ll let the pilot know.” He turned to head back into the ship. Her fingers slipped into his, though, and he looked down at her.

  “You’re — you’re not still angry with me, are you? I sup
pose I could go into your mind to find out, but I need to hear you say it.”

  Her eyes stared up into his face, shimmering blue-green, pleading. In answer, he bent down to her, reaching out to pull her against him again.

  But a man’s ironic tones interrupted them. “What a touching reunion.”

  Trinity stiffened at once, radiating sharp-toned worry. She squared her shoulders and said, “I think you’ve lost, Gabriel.”

  Gabriel. Zhandar’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the man who confronted them now, standing a few yards away from the end of the gangway. He was tall and dark-haired. No doubt many would have thought him handsome. But something about the way he stared at Trinity made Zhandar’s flesh crawl.

  The Zhore way was one of nonviolence, but in that moment, Zhandar wanted nothing more than to plow his fist into Gabriel Brant’s jaw.

  Brant said easily, “Oh, I don’t think so, Trinity. Granted, it seems as if your freakish friend here is a bit more resourceful than I’d imagined…and you, too. But it’s time to make a decision. Come with me now, and he gets to keep breathing. Otherwise….”

  The sentence died away into the air, but Zhandar didn’t need any more words to understand what Gabriel Brant was trying to say. No, his point was perfectly illustrated by the pulse pistol he held, pointed directly at the center of Zhandar’s forehead.

  * * *

  No. Trinity stared at Gabriel, at the squat, evil-looking gun he held with such cool authority. With some people, she might have said they were bluffing, but she knew Gabriel didn’t bluff. Either she stepped away from Zhandar, or the man she loved would be killed here and now.

  True, there were the men who had come here with him, but she couldn’t count on them returning in time to be of any help. Now she was cursing herself for not stopping them as they left the hangar. At the time, she had sensed them, had realized they weren’t the crew from the supply ship, but she’d been having a hard enough time keeping Blake quiescent from this distance and couldn’t delve into any of the strangers’ minds to discover exactly what they were up to. And right now she could also sense the presence of one of them, still in the cockpit of the stolen ship, but he was communicating with the team that had just left, and not paying any attention to the drama playing out just a few meters from his ship.

  “All right, Gabriel,” she said, then moved away from Zhandar so she stood in the center of the gangway. He reached for her, clearly trying to stop her, but she was too fast, and slipped out of his reach. Raising her hands, she went on, “Promise me you’ll leave him alone.”

  Gabriel chuckled. “No, Trinity, I don’t make those kinds of promises. What I will promise is that your Zhore will have a nice hole in his forehead if you don’t get off that gangway right now.”

  Son of a bitch. She knew she didn’t have much of a choice, so she continued to walk away from Zhandar.

  His footsteps sounded on the metal ramp behind her. A second later, a pale blue pulse bolt flew over both their heads. Trinity let out a half-scream, then whirled to look behind her. Zhandar seemed all right, but he had stopped almost mid-stride.

  “I mean what I say.” Gabriel lowered the gun so it was once more trained directly on Zhandar’s forehead. That last shot had clearly only been a warning one. Good thing that pulse bolts couldn’t wreak the same havoc on metal hulls as they did on human flesh, or they’d all be starting to breathe vacuum about then.

  “Yeah, kind of got that,” Trinity countered, then wished she’d kept silent. Her voice had sounded entirely too shaky. But she couldn’t change that now, so she just walked the last few steps to the end of the gangplank, then touched down on the hangar floor.

  At once, Gabriel’s free hand snaked out and caught her by the bicep, pulling her toward him. Zhandar let out a muffled sound of anguish.

  Something about hearing that groan, of feeling his pain and frustration at not being able to do anything to help her, made Trinity’s rage come boiling up from deep within. He’d come here to help save her, and now Gabriel was pointing a gun at Zhandar’s head and smiling. And although he had said he wouldn’t pull the trigger if Trinity came to him, she knew then that he was lying. Maybe it was because his barricades had finally slipped a little, now that he was about to experience his moment of triumph, or maybe it was simply that exercising her powers the way she had during this past hour had sharpened something in her mind, but she could see it in him then. Gabriel wanted to kill Zhandar. He wanted him dead because Trinity had dared to intimate that she thought the Zhore a better man than Gabriel himself would ever be.

  Seeing that, knowing that Gabriel intended to do, she realized she had no options left to her.

  Except one.

  This time she couldn’t make her thoughts a mist. That was fine for settling into someone else’s mind without their knowing what she was doing, but the current situation called for something a little less subtle. It was time to bring in the sledgehammer.

  Her thoughts crashed into his, breaking on them the way a battering ram might have splintered a castle’s wooden door, once upon a time. He cried out and took a step backward, but he hadn’t dropped the pistol. It wasn’t trained on Zhandar anymore, but pointed directly at Trinity’s chest.

  “Bitch,” he gasped. “What the — ”

  She wouldn’t let him complete the sentence. Once again she flung the full force of her mind against his. This time he staggered, looking like someone who had just received a blow from an invisible fist, then fell to his knees. The gun slipped from his fingers.

  That seemed to be all the encouragement Zhandar needed. While Trinity stood there, not quite believing the evidence of her own eyes, he rushed past her in a billow of black robes, then bent and retrieved the pulse pistol. With it pointed at Gabriel, who was breathing raggedly and blinking, as if not sure what exactly had just happened, Zhandar moved over to stand next to Trinity.

  “Are you unharmed?” he asked her.

  “I — I think so.”

  “What did you do?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure. That is, I just thought at him, used my mind to get in.” She didn’t know if she wanted to explain anything other than that. Zhandar was not an easily ruffled person, but she still hesitated to explain that she’d more or less used her psi talents as a weapon.

  “And if we’d known how effective that was, we might not have been in such a hurry to rescue the damsel in distress,” came a man’s voice with a singsong West African accent.

  Trinity turned and saw a tall black man, followed by a group of fairly hard-looking cases, come into the hangar area. “Sorry,” she replied. “This time, the damsel decided maybe it was time for her to rescue herself.”

  He laughed, then waved at two of his commandos. “Get that one wrapped up. Put him in with the others.”

  The two soldiers hurried forward and each grasped Gabriel by an arm, hauling him to his feet before dragging him off toward what looked like a small control room some ten or so meters away.

  “The ‘others’?” Trinity asked. Her head was swimming a bit — both at what she had just done to Gabriel, and because she was wondering how in the universe Zhandar had ended up here with a group of men who wouldn’t have looked out of place as extras on Blake Chu’s beloved Scarlet Dawn.

  “The guards and the technicians stationed down here in the hangar bay,” the leader of the mercenaries — or whoever they were — replied. “Got ’em stuck in a supply closet. We’ll put a time lock on it so they can get out after we’re safely away.” He turned toward Zhandar, grinning. “Never thought I’d see the day when one of you Zhore would be pointing a gun at someone.”

  A lift of his shoulders, broad under the flowing robes. The hood swiveled in Gabriel’s direction, seeming to watch intently as the man was gathered up by a couple of the commandos and hustled off toward the hangar’s control room. Once they were out of sight, Zhandar surrendered the gun to the commandos’ leader. “I would prefer to not have to touch one of those again.”r />
  “Well, we’ll see you safely back to Zhoraan, and then likely you won’t.” The commander’s dark gaze was keen — perhaps a little too keen — as it traveled from Zhandar to Trinity and back again. She didn’t even have to poke into his thoughts to know what he was thinking. All he said, however, was, “And I’m assuming that’s where you’d like to go, too?”

  “Yes,” she replied, and went and wrapped her arm around Zhandar’s waist. He stiffened for just a second — from shock at the public display of affection, nothing more — and then curved his arm around her as well. She leaned against him, feeling the strength of his body, the unseen embrace of his love and affection. “I can’t think of anyplace else I’d rather be.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The transfer back to the commandos’ ship took place without incident. No doubt the actual crew of the supply vessel would be dining out for weeks on their story of being hijacked out in the middle of nowhere. Or perhaps not. They could be facing their own particular set of repercussions, although Zhandar couldn’t see how even the most unjust government wouldn’t understand that a crew of four subcontractors wasn’t really equipped to prevail against a hardened team of more than a dozen mercenaries. Even so, he wished the best for them. Perhaps it might be time to ply their trade in a sector not quite so dominated by the Consortium.

  Barely a half-hour into their return flight, Trinity leaned up against his shoulder and fell asleep, the last bit of worry smoothing itself from her face as she allowed herself to slip into slumber. Looking down at her, Zhandar thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful, or so precious. And yet he’d almost thrown her and her love away, simply because he’d been unable to look past his anger to understand why she’d done the things she had.

  If any of the men who shared the passenger compartment with them were made uncomfortable by his obvious intimacy with Trinity, none of them showed it. And although he couldn’t read minds the way she could, he couldn’t sense anything except satisfaction with a mission well done. Maybe one or two seemed just the slightest bit annoyed, but their irritation appeared to stem from the object of their rescue mission not staying put where she was supposed to.