Chain of Secrets

by Jaleta Clegg

  The door was opened by a frightened police officer. He watched Kuran nervously over the top of Leon's head.

  "Escort him back through the gates," Kuran said.

  The damage was done, he thought bleakly as he noted his officers milling uncertainly in the corridor as Leon strutted out. They had all heard everything. They had watched Kuran being neatly maneuvered into a corner by the irritating little man. They were afraid of treason, though they had little love for the Empire it still scared them to be accused of plotting. Kuran hadn't shown much strength either.

  Leon's other threats were very real, and just as damaging, perhaps more dangerous to Tivor. Without outside shipping, Tivor was nothing. They had no manufacturing base to support their technology. Most of it came from outside. Kuran shoved to his feet. Leon had pushed him into a corner and then dangled the carrot. One woman. He still had a hard time believing it. He glared at the police still standing outside the room, watching him nervously.

  "Find her," he snapped, flipping her photo across the table. "And not one word of this will ever be spoken. Understood?"

  They moved quickly, scattering to any task that would keep them out of his way. He didn't trust them. Someone would hear by nightfall. There would be awkward questions. Unless he gave them something more drastic to worry about. It was time to start events into motion. Perhaps sooner than he planned, but Kuran was not one to waste opportunities.

  He signaled his trusted aide to accompany him back to the government building. The man was given instructions on the way there, whispered quietly in the back seat. The man walked into the rain when the groundcar stopped outside the sprawling complex that housed the government of Tivor.

  Kuran allowed himself a tight smile. This could work to his advantage. The woman was already gone, killed by Jhon. He briefly regretted being so hasty. But he could twist this his way. Throw the blame on the mountain villages. It would give him an excuse to finally wipe them out. He let himself relax. It would be simple, a way to solve two problems at once and still come out looking like the innocent party. Leon wasn't half as clever as he believed.

  Or so Kuran convinced himself.

  Chapter 23

  I drifted, floating in a dark sea. I was vaguely aware that pain waited for me somewhere. But there was always pain. I was content to float in the darkness, wrapped and muffled, safely beyond the reach of conscious thought.

  It didn't last. It never did. I was aware of sound first, a slight shushing of air and nothing else. I frowned. Where was I? I seemed to have forgotten. I smelled metal, faint, covered by other scents, the sharp bite of antiseptics and medicine, pine and earth and unwashed body. Me, I realized. When had I last bathed? Or changed my clothes? I couldn't remember. Jasyn was going to be upset with me again. I was sleeping in my clothes. And my boots, I wriggled my toes to make sure.

  And then my eyes flew open. Jasyn wasn't here. This wasn't my ship. I stared at the bottom of a bunk above my head. Bunk? I flailed around, trying to sit up. Straps held me down. I panicked, clawing at the restraints.

  I felt a sharp prick in my shoulder. The world went fuzzy and soft again. I relaxed as the floating darkness crept back. I blinked sleepy eyes and turned my head.

  I was in a ship, true, but it was different from any I'd ever been in before. It was as large as my whole ship but it was only one room. Several rows of seats lined the middle of the space. There were bunks, three or four deep on the opposite wall. I couldn't see more without craning my neck. My head was too heavy to make the effort. I rolled it back to look at the wall beside me.

  A medunit beeped, an old model, set into the wall next to me. Lights blinked over its surface. One yellow one pulsed in a slow rhythm. My heartbeat, I realized. My eyes slid closed. I couldn't fight it. I drifted back into sleep.

  It wasn't warm and dark and soft this time. It was hazy and full of disjointed images. Wolves, large hairy things with big teeth, only they were intelligent, wise and all knowing, protected me.

  No, I thought, squirming in my dream, they had hunted me. They had eaten Jhon. And why had he tried to kill me? My thoughts twisted away from that.

  Was Tunisia safe? My grandmother. It was a strange feeling, warm and connected. I knew who I was, I knew who my family was. And it still didn't change who I was. I wanted to stay with her sometime when I wasn't running or fighting for my life. I wanted to spend a summer with her, tending her garden, gathering herbs in the forest. But I wanted to know I could leave when I wanted. It was her life, not mine. Maybe someday I'd get the chance.

  And what of my other family, the one I'd collected? Jasyn and Clark would be worried about me. I wondered what Lowell had told them to explain my absence for so long. It was supposed to have been two weeks, no more. That was over a year ago. Where were they now? What were they doing? Jasyn would have had her baby months ago. I missed her more than I ever thought I would.

  And then there was Tayvis. I felt the pain again, sharp and aching. He was gone, dead and buried on Trythia. Except what had my vision of him said? Trust yourself. No, not that. Was there a chance he was still alive, stranded on Trythia? I had to go back, find out for myself. If there was the slightest chance he was still alive, I had to find him.

  Which meant I had to escape Tivor. I had to survive. I had to find a way back.

  I struggled against the drug, fighting my way through a haze of lassitude that glued me to the bunk. I managed to open my eyes. They wouldn't focus. I couldn't fight the drug. I drifted back asleep.

  I woke some time later. The light in the ship was the same. There was no noise, nothing to indicate how much time had passed. My mouth was dry, my tongue swollen and thick. My head was spinning, just enough to keep me off balance.

  I sat up, before I could think better of doing it. The restraining straps were gone. The medunit next to me was quiet, the lights off. I sat on the edge of the bunk and waited for my head to clear.

  My bruises were fading. The scratches on my arms and hands were mostly healed. The blisters I'd gotten chopping wood were completely gone. I stared at my hands, wondering how long I'd been drugged. Days? Weeks? Hours? I had no way of knowing.

  I stood and had to grab the edge of the bunk above to keep from falling on my face. My legs were weak and I was dizzy. I gritted my teeth and wobbled my way along the bunks.

  There were nine rows of seats, with four or five in each row. I counted a total of twenty six bunks. The controls in the cockpit at the front were simple. The ship had an engine barely big enough to use as a landing brake and nothing more. No hyperdrive, no way to lift once it landed. It was an escape glider, nothing more. Half formed plans of using the ship to fly away died.

  The ship had no communications equipment. A gaping hole showed where the com had been. The scanners were all disabled. I sat in the pilot seat. I idly ran my fingers across the dead controls.

  Were the wolves still outside, waiting? I had no way to tell. Was it still snowing? Where was I going to go?

  I got back up and checked the few storage bins on the ship. I found nothing but dust and a few broken connectors.

  The bathroom was still intact. I used it. The water trickled from the faucet of the sink, brown and foul smelling. I let it run for a few minutes, hoping it would clear. It was still pretty bad when I finally drank a few mouthfuls. I was too thirsty to be picky. The ship was almost out of water.

  I made my way back to the pilots chair. My legs didn't want to hold me. And I was trapped. Again.

  I slammed my hand against the control panel in frustration. The unit beeped. A series of lights flickered on. Someone had kept a log. I hit the play button. The screen in front of me cleared then glowed dull blue.

  What happened next was very strange. The screen showed images, flashes of still pictures mixed with recordings. Voices murmured and swelled, sounding almost like the ocean on Landruss. I felt a prickling along my neck, a tickle in my head. I turned the recording off.

  The ship was too quiet. I turned it back on. An
y noise was better than listening to nothing. The hushed babble of voices resumed.

  I ran my finger along the controls as I watched the flickering images. People I didn't know, who looked like ordinary people, posed and played and lived. The voices murmured. I could almost pick out individual words sometimes.

  My finger slid across an indentation on the board. It was like connecting to a hypnoteacher. My mind was flooded with information. I pulled my finger back. The flow stopped. The messages continued on the screen, a babble of sounds and sights I couldn't understand.

  I curled my hand into a fist, not trusting the ship or the people who had left the message. My curiosity begged for more, for answers that I was sure were in that flow of data. I had to know. I had to find a way out and information was power. I slid my finger back into the spot.

  The information grew from a trickle to a flood. It poured into my mind, faster and faster. I was awash in knowledge not my own. And then it slowed and stopped as abruptly as it had begun. The screen in front of me cleared to a blank blue. The voices murmured into stillness. I sat back in the chair and tasted the knowledge.

  I had learned a lot about the Hrissia'noru from Mart and Lowell. They were a group of people that an emperor had experimented on several hundred years ago. He'd wanted to increase psychic powers and had found willing subjects for his genetic manipulations. When others found out what he had done, he was condemned and executed. No one realized he'd already carried out tests on people. If they had, the Hrissia'noru would have been destroyed before they would ever have come to exist.

  They bought themselves several colony ships and headed out of the Empire. They wanted to build a refuge for themselves and their children. The children showed great talents. The parents, the original test subjects, were afraid of what others would do. So they gathered everything they would need and left.

  Their ships were attacked by pirates. Some fled in escape craft as the colony ships tried to run. They were scattered across several sectors, those who survived. The main ships limped away. They founded Jericho, a place of safety.

  The genetic mutations stabilized over the next several generations. The Hrissia'noru evolved into three groups. The shrua'zhri had silver hair and silver eyes. Most of them were very gifted at telepathy. The inoru'zhri were empaths, those who could manipulate emotions in others. Mart had been inoru'zhri. I had found out, the hard way, that I was notu'zhri. I had no apparent psychic talents, latent or otherwise, on any test they gave me at the Academy. They couldn't touch my mind, no matter how powerful they were.

  But I was not Hrissia'noru. They held themselves aloof from the rest of the Empire. They planted their agents and manipulated events and people in secret. Mostly it was to keep their own existence hidden. Partly it was because they were arrogant and thought they knew better what people needed than the people themselves. They had meddled in my life before.

  Doors were opening in my mind that I'd thought shut forever. I felt again the pain of losing Mart. He'd died saving the rest of us from the horror of Babylon. Jericho was gone, a tumble of ruins on an uninhabited world. The colonists were gone, mind wiped and tortured at Babylon. The Hrissia'noru had gone into hiding, whatever was left of them.

  But here, in this escape ship, was more of the story. This was one of the lost ships. They had settled here, out of necessity. The records contained their stories, those of the original test subjects and their descendants.

  They were as arrogant as the others. They had made contact with the villagers. They had tried to control them, keep the flow of information under control. They hadn't wanted anyone else to find them until they were ready to be found.

  The villagers accepted them, at first. When their children and grandchildren began to develop psychic powers far beyond the norm, the villagers were rightly afraid. The refugees had no qualms about putting those powers to use. They justified it as a way to protect themselves. I felt my stomach turn as I digested the information. They were so convinced they were right.

  The villagers rebelled against their controls. They were chased farther into the mountains, stoned and hunted on sight. They retreated into high valleys and devised protective shields maintained with their powers. They cut off all contact with the Tivorans. And then they waited for the rescue they believed would someday come.

  My grandfather had broken taboo. He would have been cast out, cut off from the shelter of their valley when they found out what he had done with my grandmother. That he had loved her didn't matter. She was not one of them, he had polluted his genes by associating with her.

  I wanted their history out of my head. The voices, so soft and murmuring in the air, were strident and self righteous in my mind. Their attitudes and prejudices sickened me.

  I was one of them, the voices insisted. The ship had responded to me. The records had opened to me.

  I shook my head in mute denial.

  But what else was there for me? Lowell had sent me to find the Hrissia'noru, the lost ones. Everything else had been only a way to get me here, to justify why he sent me. I hated him, despite everything he'd done for me. How could he set me up again?

  Because he had no choice. I rubbed my hands over my eyes, wanting it all to just go away. Lowell was a pawn of the Hrissia'noru as much as I was. I couldn't blame him. And I couldn't hate him either.

  So what could I do? I could try to make my way back to my grandmother. If I survived the trip back down the mountain I could stay with her. She would welcome me. And I would be trapped on Tivor for the rest of my life.

  I could try finding a way back to Milaga, but that was hopeless. I would be arrested and executed long before Lowell could get me safely into the Patrol compound.

  The only other choice I had was to go up the mountain and look for my grandfather's people. And then find some way to twist their arms until they agreed to help me get off planet. Maybe I could turn the tables on the Hrissia'noru. I had no idea what they really wanted or what they had planned. The Hrissia'noru were faceless, unknown.

  I couldn't stay on the ship. I had no food and little water. I put my head in my hands and gave in to the despairing sobs that Mart's memory had awakened. He had died and almost taken me with him.

  I had never felt more alone in my life than I did then, in that deserted ship crashed high on a mountain covered with snow.

  Chapter 24

  The shed was small and cold and smelled of its former inhabitants, goats and chickens. Paltronis wrinkled her nose as she stepped in yet another pile. It was impossible to miss them, it was too dark and they were too numerous.

  "Just sit for a while," Scholar said from the dark corner, the one with the least evidence of former occupants. He sat on a broken bucket. He had his hands tucked inside his sleeves.

  "We can't just sit here," Paltronis objected.

  "What else are we going to do? Fight them all?"

  "There's only about fifty," Paltronis said.

  Scholar shook his head.

  "It's better than sitting here," Paltronis added.

  "And what chance do we have of finding Dace even if we do get out? It's snowing again."

  Paltronis kept pacing.

  The door finally opened. One of the villagers shoved a lantern into the shed. He studied them both before stepping back. Paltronis couldn't tell if he was friendly or not, his face gave nothing away. He motioned them out with a jerk of his head.

  It was snowing outside, tiny cold flakes that settled in the gathering night. The villager walked away from them, towards a larger building. Paltronis toyed with the idea of running, except she could pick out their sentries posted not far away. There were too many and they looked very alert. She followed the villager.

  The inside of the building was warm. Scholar heaved a sigh of relief. Paltronis felt her stomach tighten, despite the warmth and the lack of weapons aimed at her head. All of their belongings were laid out on a long table. Three of the villagers stood behind the table, examining each piece.

  "Don'
t touch that," Scholar shouted as one of them poked a finger at his comp pad. He stepped forward. The burly villager with the lantern grabbed his jacket and hauled him backwards. Scholar stumbled a step, grumbling under his breath. The villager kept a firm grip on his jacket.

  "What is it?" one of the villagers, a woman, asked.

  "Very delicate," Scholar answered. "It's a computer. It's keyed to me personally though. The interface won't recognize you," he added as the woman poked it again.

  "And what of the rest?" the woman asked, waving her hand at the supplies on the table. "Guns? Explosives? What is the Patrol planning on doing here?"

  "We aren't Patrol," Scholar said automatically.

  The look the woman gave him told him it was an incredibly stupid remark. He glanced down at the Patrol emblem on his jacket and shrugged.

  "We were sent on a rescue mission," Paltronis said.

  "I find it almost as hard to believe the Patrol cares about us as I do believing you aren't Patrol." The woman watched Paltronis now.

  "You need rescued?" Paltronis asked. "It appears to me that you're defending yourselves quite well."

  The woman studied her for a long moment. Paltronis studied her back. Her eyes were hard, her skin showed wrinkles from years of exposure and hard living. She could have been as young as thirty though she looked closer to forty five. Her dark hair was pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck.

  "Who are you rescuing then, if it isn't us?"

  "Rescue you from what?" Paltronis asked.

  "From our own government. They're assembling an army at the foot of the mountains. This time they mean to wipe us out of existence. Not that they'll succeed."

  "Why?" Scholar asked, puzzled and curious and completely unaware of the undercurrents of emotion in the room.