Guilt in Innocece

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  The easiest person to control was a conscious subject who was in pain. The victim was unable to focus on much beyond agony. And Hembadoon had always said that knees were the best place to injure someone you didn't want to kill, as it caused the greatest amount of pain with the least likelihood of dying.

  The trick was to slowly move through the victim's mind and find the higher nerve functions. All you really needed to have control of were the arms and legs. Aiku had also instructed her never to bother with controlling the victim's voice, unless it was absolutely necessary (say, for purposes of deceiving someone), as it was a great deal of trouble to match speaking patterns, and if the victim could talk, they usually wasted energy on doing so rather than on fighting back.

  On this particular occasion, Folami had the added distraction of the drill behind her eyes going back on full. She hadn't given herself adequate time to recover from holding the air in at the airlock and fighting through Alagbara's feedback, so holding onto Apara was going to be difficult.

  Folami's first question for Aiku had been why she couldn't just manipulate a subject telekinetically. The teacher had replied that it was possible, but it took considerably more effort to so precisely manipulate a person's body to move smoothly. Doing that to a body meant that that body moved awkwardly. He even had Folami try it with a volunteer subject, who moved in a herky-jerky fashion, falling over several times.

  But when she had controlled that same volunteer's nervous sytem—controlling, as Aiku had put it, from the inside rather than the outside—he had walked naturally and gracefully.

  Without looking at Hembadoon, she reached out to hand him one of her weapons. "Take this."

  Hembadoon took the Ayoka, now holding one in each hand.

  Apara, predictably, was wasting energy talking. Her voice was halting, and through clenched teeth, as she still felt every bit of the pain of her shattered knee. "You're never—never gonna get—get away with this, you stupid—stupid buruku."

  Folami ignored her. "Hembadoon, I need you to cover me while we go to the security office."

  "No problem."

  "And you'd better get in touch with Ebun. It's in-system."

  "Way ahead of you—first thing I did when I got that thing off my head was to call her back."

  Another trick Aiku had taught her was to coordinate your own movements with that of the victim. It saved the difficulty of splitting your focus. It wasn't always practical to do so, but now it worked out nicely. Folami fell into step behind Apara, the cavalry master's enforced steps matching those of Folami as they left the room and moved into the corridor. Hembadoon took up the rear position, guarding Folami's back.

  It took all of Folami's concentration to maintain her hold on Apara, so she was unable to keep a psionic eye out on the rest of the base. She had to count on Hembadoon to protect her in case a Nide or someone from security came by.

  While no one did intercept them, there were two cavalry in the office itself. Folami only found this out when Apara demonstrated the disadvantage of leaving the victim control of her vocal cords.

  "Cavalrymen, fire, now!"

  Folami barely registered the two before they fired their Ayokas.

  But the rounds stopped in midair and then fell to the floor, harmless.

  Hembadoon smiled. "Orisha robes come with a force field."

  Then he fired both of his Ayokas at the two shocked guards, who stumbled backwards from the impact, which also damaged their armor.

  "Looks like yours doesn't. I'd talk to the manufacturer."

  The cavalrymen fired again, still to no effect.

  Hembadoon then fired again, and kept firing his Ayokas on automatic until the armor of both guards was shredded.

  Folami wanted to feel remorse at the deaths of these two. They were just cavalry following orders and doing their duty.

  But just the fact that they served under Tobi kept Folami from feeling any sympathy.

  And that just made her more determined to destroy Ojiji.

  "You filthy buruku," Apara said breathlessly and drowsily. The pain was starting to take its toll, and if the cavalry master was to remain conscious long enough to do what Folami needed her to do, she needed to move quickly.

  She had Apara walk to the computer console (stepping over the corpses as she did so) and press her left hand to the scanner that would identify her biometrics.

  Once the computer screen showed a status message acknowledging that this was indeed Cavalry Master Apara, Folami had her type in the instructions to activate the destruction sequence.

  "L'owuro to Cavalry Master Apara. We've docked with Olokun. The war chief's requesting a status report."

  "Mogbe," Apara said. Without the ability to move her hands, she couldn't activate an intercom—either on the console or on her suit of armor—to reply.

  Folami shared her sentiment for different reasons. Once L'owuro realized that Apara couldn't report in, Tobi would know that she was compromised.

  "How close is Ebun?" she asked Hembadoon.

  "It'll be docked with the emergency airlock in seven minutes."

  Nodding, Folami had Apara set the destruction sequence for fifteen minutes.

  "That's that," Folami said. "Let's get to—"

  Apara interrupted. "You're never—gonna get—get off this rock—alive."

  Before Folami could say anything, Hembadoon said, "Yes, well, neither are you," prior to firing both Ayokas at her unprotected head.

  Once again, Folami wanted to feel remorse at another death that she was responsible for, even if indirectly. Once again, she couldn't.

  She looked at Hembadoon, who looked back at her with great sadness. "I'm sorry, Folami, but there was no way we could—"

  Holding up a hand, she said, "No, you're right, Hembadoon. It's— Never mind. Let's get to the airlock."

  Leaving three more corpses in her wake, Folami and Hembadoon ran toward the airlock.

  When they got to where she'd left Oranmiyan and the bodies of Abeje and the cavalry, she found only the latter. Oranmiyan had gone and taken Abeje's body with him.

  Options flew by in her mind, but she was forced to reject all but one: leave them behind. Ebun could only fit two. She couldn't read Oranmiyan, so finding him psionically was impossible, and without her armor, she couldn't seek him out that way.

  Of course, Hembadoon's suit worked just fine, but then they came back to the lack of room in Ebun—not to mention a rapidly dwindling time frame before Olokun Station blew up.

  I'm sorry, Abeje. I wanted to at least give you a proper burial. You deserved that much.

  I'm sorry, Oranmiyan. I wanted to help you.

  Putting her regrets aside, she kept running alongside Hembadoon toward the airlock.

  FIFTEEN

  L'owuro

  Adejola stood near the L'owuro airlock, trying to figure out the best way to approach War Chief Tobi.

  He'd rehearsed and rejected any number of openings to the conversation, knowing that the wrong thing was likely to get him killed.

  Like most of L'owuro's officer corps, Adejola knew about Ojiji. Adejola had been in favor of Tobi's attempted coup simply because he was incredibly disappointed with the coup's intended target. Adejola had hope that Tobi's regime would truly be a change for the better.

  Given what he'd been seeing for the past day, he was no longer quite so sure of that. He'd asked Folami out on a date because he genuinely liked her, and he figured she'd be recruited for Ojiji soon enough, so they'd get to see a great deal of each other. But then Tobi told her that she'd need "convincing," and that he'd be putting her in the brig "for her own good."

  So when Folami came to his cabin, Adejola had been surprised. And also concerned.

  It had taken every ounce of will power Adejola had to not finish what he and Folami started. Had Tobi not told him of his plans, he would have, but knowing that Folami was supposed to be anaesthetized in her own cabin forced him to contact Tobi.

  He was too good an officer to
do otherwise.

  But a good officer also questioned orders if they were sufficiently outrageous, and what he'd seen since they left Oshun indicated that Tobi was going to kill Folami and Oranmiyan both.

  While Tobi had recruited Adejola when he requested that the pilot transfer to L'owuro, it was Oranmiyan who had convinced him that Ojiji was a worthwhile endeavor, that it would free the Ori-Inu from their servitude to Isembi and allow them their freedom.

  Reality was proving rather different.

  Tobi, dressed in his full armor, but without his helmet, came stomping down the corridor toward the airlock with Cavalry Master Morayo and three other cavalry in tow.

  "Excuse me, War Chief Tobi?"

  "I don't have time to talk to you, Cavalryman."

  "Er, it's Cavalry Chief, sir, and—"

  Tobi glared at him. "It's going to be 'Cavalryman' if you don't shut up and get out of my way, Adejola, am I understood?"

  "Sir, it's important. I don't think you should give up on Folami so easily."

  Tobi then did the most frightening thing Adejola had ever seen the war chief do in all his time serving under him: he laughed.

  Swallowing, Adejola said, "Sir, I'm sorry, but I'm not joking."

  The laugh stopped, the glare coming back full force. "Neither am I, Cavalry Chief. Folami has proven intractable. She is dedicated to destroying Ojiji, and has done nothing since learning of the project save try to eliminate it. And we've all seen how good she is at accomplishing what she sets out to do. Therefore she has to die. Now I'm sorry if this interferes with your sex life, but so be it."

  Even as Adejola realized that this was a lost cause, even as he thought to himself that it was all over, he heard himself speak without thinking: "Let me talk to her."

  Tobi blinked, and Adejola took some small comfort in the fact that he shocked the war chief—not an easy task. "Excuse me, Cavalry Chief?"

  "Let me talk to her. I think I can get through to her."

  This prompted yet another laugh from Tobi, which was louder, sharper, and nastier than the first. "So let me see if I understand you, Cavalry Chief. You think that you can get through to the Ori-Inu. You think that you have won the trust of a young woman who came to your cabin in the hopes of an amorous encounter, during which you set her up to be captured by a project that she has dedicated herself to destroying. You truly think this?"

  It sounded better in Adejola's head, though he did not say that aloud. "It's—it's not likely, I admit, sir, but— Well, sir, what do you have to lose? You yourself have said several times that Folami would be an asset to the program."

  Tobi put a hand to his chin.

  "All right, Cavalry Chief—let's give it a shot."

  Now it was Adejola's turn to be surprised. "Really, sir?"

  Unholstering his Bayo and pointing it at Adejola's head, Tobi said, "No, not really."

  The last thing Adejola heard was the pistol's report before it blew his brains out.

  Tobi shook his head as he looked down at the near-headless corpse of Cavalry Chief Adejola. What an imbecile.

  That was the last thought he gave to Adejola.

  Activating the airlock, he walked through it once it was fully pressurized and entered Olokun Station, Morayo and the other three cavalry trailing behind him.

  However, as soon as he did so, he saw several red lights blinking in sequence. That meant that the destruction sequence—which Apara wasn't supposed to even start until L'owuro was fully loaded—had already commenced.

  Turning around, he said, "Cavalry Master Morayo, interface with the Olokun computer—status report."

  Were he wearing his helmet, he could do likewise, but the helmet interfered with his ability to use his psionics. Normally that wasn't an issue, but against Folami, he was going to need every edge he could get. She had a higher rating than he did—Tobi wasn't sure what his own level was, as such things hadn't been formalized until after he'd gone off the grid as a psi, but Tobi's lack of telekinesis meant he had to be at a number lower than Folami's ten—but Tobi had far more experience.

  His experience had always allowed him to win. That, and using the right tools for the job. Currently, one of those tools was his armor, which was pumping Shango-oti directly into his blood stream. Hell, maybe he'd be a tenth-level like that stupid little buruku soon enough.

  Anxiously, Morayo said, "Sir, the destruction sequence is active and set for twelve minutes, fifty seconds, and counting!"

  "Mogbe." Tobi reached out with his mind, but could not find Apara. Folami must have killed her after getting her to start the sequence.

  "Sir," Morayo added, "I'm only getting live readings in two locations—the stasis chamber and two unidentifieds moving through a rear corridor."

  Reaching out with his mind, he read both Folami and Agent Hembadoon as the unidentifieds. "Cavalry Master, you have twelve minutes to evac everyone from the stasis chamber and get L'owuro away. Move!"

  "Yes, sir!"

  Even as Morayo led the other three cavalry toward the stasis chamber to rescue the remaining cavalry and the Nide—there were only six of the actives in suspended animation, which was less than Tobi had been hoping for—the war chief moved after Folami and Hembadoon.

  While he could sense where Folami was, he couldn't read her thoughts—not even surface ones. She's good. But so am I.

  He ran through the rocky corridors of Olokun Station. No way was Folami getting off this rock alive.

  Just as he turned a corner to where he knew she was, the wall next to him shattered, sending shards of rock careening toward him. Tobi threw up his arms to protect his face, the armor getting the rest of it.

  He projected his thoughts this time. Nice try, Ori-Inu, but it won't work.

  The armor's autorepair kicked in as he rounded the corner and saw the most pathetic sight he'd ever expected to see.

  Apparently, Folami hadn't had the opportunity to retrieve her red-and-black body armor. She stood alongside Hembadoon, facing Tobi in nothing but the hospital gown that Modupe's medtechs had put her in and a big leather coat.

  He also saw the fatigue etched in Folami's face, the dried blood on her upper lip. She'd been straining herself. That would make Tobi's task easier.

  Smiling, he said, "This is going to be more fun than I thought."

  First, though, he had to get rid of the sidekick. With a quick thought, he mindblasted Hembadoon, using pure brute telepathic force to shut his mind down.

  Except all Hembadoon did was wince and then fire with the Ayoka he was holding.

  Forgot, he's an Orisha. Of course they have protection against psionic attack.

  Tobi's armor continued to protect him, but he was regretting the decision to leave his helmet behind.

  He fired his own Bayo at Hembadoon, but the Orisha's force field protected him.

  Then Tobi heard Folami's thoughts, but they were directed at Hembadoon.

  Hembadoon, we've only got ten minutes. You get to Ebun, I'll take care of Tobi.

  Folami hadn't intended for Tobi to "overhear" that, but over the years, the war chief had learned the trick of tuning in to particular psionic signatures. He'd tuned into Folami's back when she first reported to L'owuro, and the Shango-oti had enhanced him enough that he could pick up her thoughts even when she was trying to keep them private.

  Immediately, Tobi realized why they were back this way. Hembadoon's ship was at the nearby emergency airlock. The war chief used his suit's override to lock that airlock down so that only he could open it.

  Letting Hembadoon go—Tobi decided that he wanted the Orisha to feel the frustration of being unable to get to his ship—he faced Folami. "That was a mistake, Ori-Inu. Two on one, you might have had a chance."

  Folami stared at him with her obsidian eyes, which were bloodshot from all the psionic efforts she'd expended. "I don't need any help to kill you, War Chief."

  "Better people than you have tried, Ori-Inu, and I'm still here."

  What happened next happened
quickly. Both Folami and Tobi tried to mindblast each other. It was a crude attack, but they were running out of time before Olokun would be destroyed.

  The pair of them went back and forth. Folami's sheer psionic power made up for her fatigue, but Tobi could tell that she wasn't hitting him with her best shots, as his own defenses were good enough to prevent her from doing more than giving him a mild headache. He'd suffered worse from hangovers.

  Folami's own defenses were good as well, and Tobi found he couldn't penetrate them.

  So it's time for a more subtle attack.

  One of Ojiji's recruits was a young woman with an amazing capacity for getting into computer records she wasn't supposed to. Tobi had found her in a Hegemony prison on Orunmila. Further proof, Tobi felt, that Isembi was an idiot. A leader with a brain in his head would have hired the woman on the spot to improve the security of the Hegemony's computer systems. Instead, Tobi arranged for her release and had her continue her work hacking Hegemony records until she died of a brain aneurysm a month earlier.

  Thanks to her, though, Tobi knew everything about Folami.

  So he used his training and the cover of their brute-force attacks on each other to worm his way into her mind...

  Cavalry Master Morayo was the first one through the airlock door. She and the three cavalry with her had escorted the remains of the cavalry assigned to Olokun, the station staff, and the half-dozen stasis capsules containing the Nide to L'owuro in just enough time to get them on board before Olokun was destroyed.

  Her armor's HUD told her that War Chief Tobi was still engaged with the Ori-Inu and the Orisha. That, frankly, suited Morayo just fine. She had gone along with the whole Ojiji program because the alternative was that that psychopath Tobi would have her killed. Besides, she had no great love for Oba Isembi.