“Jolar,” the officer called, his hand raised in greeting.
“Tasan!” Jolar smiled, his sense rippling with surprise and warm familiarity as the dark-eyed man with the wavy dark hair drew closer. “What are you doing here?”
Arissa’s stomach clenched as the FleetSecs in the area swung their determined focus to her, then they were shifting, spreading out . . .
What are they—?
“Jolar,” she cried, touching his shoulder.
Jolar’s glance took in the FleetSecs’ change in position.
“Tasan, what are you doing here?” Jolar asked sharply.
“Jolar, I need you to step aside.” Tasan’s face was grim. “We’re taking the Seer into custody.”
Thirty-five
Jolar stepped in front of Arissa, his blaster instantly in his hand.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jolar demanded.
The crowd around them, urged back by the FleetSecs turned startled, frightened eyes to her even as they were hurried away. The spaceport attendant hurried away, all the civilians around them too, fled the confrontation.
SerSecs were moving people farther back, clearing this section of the spaceport terminal. FleetSec personnel quickly formed a perimeter around them a good dozen paces back, their rifles at the ready.
“You aren’t taking her anywhere,” Jolar warned Tasan.
He backed her up so that the spaceport attendant’s desk was behind her.
The Fleet Personnel fanned out around them. They started to move in and Tasan held up a hand to halt them.
Tasan, his weapon still holstered, took a few steps forward. “I’m under direct orders from Admiral Henlon to take this woman into custody.”
“Henlon?” Jolar exclaimed. “The Council has ordered her, ordered both of us, back to Tellar. She’s under the Council’s protection. Last time I checked even Admiral Henlon reports to them.”
“I spoke to the Admiral less than an hour ago,” Tasan said. “It was the Tellaran Council that ordered her arrest. They’ve determined that she poses a clear danger to the population.”
“They did what?” Jolar snarled. “Those lying godsdamned—! Arissa isn’t a danger to anyone! A few hours ago she saved the whole Realm from destroying itself. And saved every one of those Councilors’ miserable fracking lives!”
“I know you’re upset—”
“As I recall, my tutoring got you a passing grade in armed negotiations class, Tasan,” Jolar snapped. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t try that ‘empathize with the gunman’ crap on me.”
“All right then.” Tasan straightened. “You’re a Commander in the Tellaran Fleet and so am I. It’s not my place to decide which orders to follow. And it’s not yours either. You are hereby ordered by Admiral Henlon to hand her over to our custody immediately. Step aside, Jolar.”
“I don’t care what the orders are,” Jolar spat. “You aren’t taking her. Dacel promised her—”
“Dacel is dead, Jolar. The Tellaran Council has ordered her arrest.”
Tasan glanced at Arissa and she shrank back under the waves of revulsion.
“When I heard—What was Dacel thinking to put you in this kind of danger? Honestly I can’t believe you even went along with this.”
“Tell your officers to stand down, Tasan. I’m not going to let you take her!”
“I can’t believe this is you talking.” Tasan shook his head. “How long have we known each other?” He held his hands out, palms up. “Jolar, I’m your friend. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“That’s why Henlon sent you, isn’t it?” Jolar asked bitterly. “He sent a friend so I’d trust you, so you could talk sense into me.”
“I wanted to come. I want to help you. The Admiral sent me because he hopes—I hope—you’ll listen to me. You’re ill, Jolar.”
Jolar shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Tasan.”
“You look like hell.”
“I’m fine.”
“Having headaches?”
Jolar didn’t answer and Arissa glanced at his face to see that his jaw twitched.
“Jolar,” Tasan said, taking a half step closer. “I give my word as your friend that she won’t be hurt. Our orders are to take her into custody and take her back to Tellar unharmed. I’m to turn her over to the authorities on Tellar.”
“So they can execute her? So they can figure out some way to make her a scapegoat for all this? No!”
“She’s a Seer. She’s hurting you; she probably has been for weeks.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Jolar snapped. “And you need to tell your people to get back right now. I’ll open fire if I have to.”
“Look at what the hell you’re doing!” Tasan burst out. “I’ve been your friend for eleven years and you’re pointing a blaster at me! You devoted your life to serving the Realm and now you’re disobeying a direct order, threatening to open fire on fellow Fleet personnel. Does that seem like you, Jolar? Does that sound like something you would do?”
Arissa’s throat closed when Jolar didn’t answer, when she felt him wavering.
“Jolar?” she whispered.
“I’m fine,” Jolar said, but there was the slightest hesitation in his voice.
“Jolar, I don’t want to give them the order to stun you. I don’t want to arrest you too but I will unless you stand aside!”
“I can’t!”
“She’s a Seer. You know what her kind is capable of!” Tasan said urgently. “Tell me—do you hear her inside your head?”
“Jolar?” she asked tremulously when he didn’t answer. “Is that true?”
“I can already see the answer in your face, Jolar,” Tasan said. “Be honest with me, with yourself. Do you hear her?”
“Yes,” Jolar said hoarsely. “But it’s not—”
Arissa’s eyes widened in horror. Gods, why didn’t he tell me?
“We need to get away from her now.” Tasan stepped forward, his hands outstretched. “You know I wouldn’t lie to you. Please, Jolar, I’m begging you, if you ever believed me to be your friend, step aside!”
Jolar glanced back at her, his face white and tense. He wet his lips.
Her mouth parted as she felt him weighing in, the questioning in his mind.
“Think it over, Jolar, really think about things you’ve done since you’ve been with her,” Tasan urged. “Doesn’t it all seem out of character for you? Isn’t possible that I could be telling you the truth? Damn it! Don’t you understand? Manipulating you is what she intended all along!”
“No!” She shook her head, her heart felt like it was being torn from her chest at his indecision. “Jolar, I love you! I would never try to hurt you!”
“What are you going to do?” Tasan demanded. “Kill one of your best friends? Open fire on fellow officers? I don’t want to order them to take you down but I will. If you don’t step aside right now, you’re going to be facing charges. You’re throwing your career—maybe your life—away here!”
Jolar twisted his head away from her.
Tears stung her eyes. “Jolar?”
“She’s hurting you!” Tasan hissed. “Put down the blaster and let me help you!”
“Jolar, please!” she begged, her voice breaking with tears. Arissa could feel his mind’s turmoil, his indecision, how his body trembled. “Don’t do this! Gods, please!”
Suddenly Jolar’s voice rung in her mind, as clearly as if he had spoken—
He’s right. Tasan’s right.
Then Jolar stepped aside and let them take her.
Thirty-six
Arissa’s arms ached. She was bound, hand and foot, by tarasteel restraints at all times and they were heavy.
She had been imprisoned two days in the Tano-Sertar Fleet base brig now. She was kept isolated and she had not even seen another prisoner in her time there. Her cell was monitored constantly by two guards who watched her at all times; she was not even allowed to use the ‘fresher in privacy. Her phy
sical exam had been done under guard. To bring her meals they opened the door, turned her to the wall with a blaster rifle to her head while a third guard brought her tray. She wasn’t allowed to turn around again until they had all cleared her cell and the plexisteel door was closed and sealed again.
She wondered if Jasa and Rekan were there somewhere too. She doubted that they were restrained even when they slept like she was.
Considered too dangerous to be moved by commercial or private cruiser she was to be taken to Tellar on a Fleet troop carrier in a few hours.
According to her very, very nervous advocate.
She wondered why they gave her an advocate at all. Probably someone on the Council—or someone responsible for their public image—thought they should at least appear to be providing her with the rights guaranteed to republic citizens, despite the fact that she was not one.
“Of course,” the advocate said, not meeting her eyes. “With the telepath screen completed and the results so plain there’s really no way to refute the evidence.”
Pudgy and wearing an ill-fitting and painfully unflattering beige suit, he sat on the opposite side of the long table. He wouldn’t even come close enough to shake her hand when he’d come in.
“What will happen to me once I get to Tellar?”
He flinched every time she spoke to him. The armed guards in the room—four of them at present, all with blaster rifles at the ready and armed with stun pikes as well—were almost as bad. They treated her as she were a pulse cannon rigged to explode.
They swapped the guards out often too. She hadn’t yet seen any one of them more than once and clearly they were trying to limit exposure to her so no others could be injured as Jolar had. A few of the guards who came and went regarded her with lustful thoughts, though with her hands restrained and the Fleet brig coveralls she wore, how they could do so was beyond her.
There was one aspect of all the practice she and Jolar had done for which she was deeply grateful. She could now pull her awareness back—far back into herself—‘til she couldn’t feel the FleetSec around her at all.
“Well.” Her advocate cleared his throat. He’d done a lot of that since they’d shown him in. “Well, I imagine that they will question you.”
“In other words, you have no idea.”
He started. His too little eyes and shaking jowls made him look like a frightened snouse. “I—I—”
“I didn’t read your mind,” Arissa said tiredly. “It’s obvious that you don’t know.”
She lifted both hands—since with them bound she could not lift one without also lifting the other—to push her hair away from her face. How they thought she could make use of a hair tie to affect an escape she didn’t know but they refused to give her one.
“Will you be representing me?”
He reared back. “My practice is restricted to Sertar.”
“So, no.”
He blinked his snouse eyes at her.
“Will I have an advocate when I get to Tellar?”
“I really—I really could not say.”
“Is there anything you can tell me? Other than they have all the evidence they need to execute me and I’m being transported to Tellar soon?”
“Well, uh . . .” He shifted in his chair and lifted his datapad. “I can review the laws and precedence that are relevant to your case—”
“You mean the Anti-Seer laws that make me a criminal and the cases that set the precedence for my coming execution?” Arissa asked. “No, thank you.”
The door to the room in which they were meeting unsealed and Commander Tasan Rutell came in.
“That’s fifteen minutes,” he said shortly.
The Advocate’s relief was palatable. “Well, we have actually reached the limits of the legal assistance I can offer Mistress Kassar.” He stood quickly his datapad in hand. “If I can be of assistance in the future, Commander Rutell, please contact me.”
For the next Seer they take into custody? How many Seers did he expect to offer his non-existent legal help to?
In all this she could at least hope Kemma was still safe. She was so desperately glad that she had never shared Kemma’s secret with Jolar.
Her eyes stung.
Jolar. . .
The FleetSec had seized her as soon as he stepped aside at the terminal. They cuffed her as she begged him not to let them take her. She sobbed his name as they dragged her out.
Jolar never even looked at her.
“Godsdamn, you put on a good show, Seer.” Tasan folded his arms. “Pretty little thing, so fragile looking. You’d probably get to me too if I hadn’t seen for myself how badly you fracked Jolar up.”
Her head came up. “What do you mean?”
Tasan’s lip curled. “As if you didn’t know what you did. He’s a mess. Headaches, confusion, dizziness, nausea. He’s still at the medcenter. He can barely keep it together to hold a five minute conversation.”
“Commander Rutell, please—” Tears blurred her vision. “Please, is Jolar going to be all right? What do the doctors—”
“Save it.” Tasan nodded to the two guards by the door. “Get her back to her cell.”
They loaded her into an armored shuttle a few hours later.
She’d sat in her cell her hand over her mouth as she cried. One of the guards, moved by her tears back in her cell had offered her something to blow her nose. Tasan had relieved him of duty immediately and replaced him with another.
Arissa now wiped her face with her sleeve.
I shouldn’t have let him talk me into it. I knew it was dangerous.
How badly was he hurt?
Jolar, I’m so, so sorry.
Commander Rutell wouldn’t tell her any more about him. He made a practice of ignoring her questions.
Maybe if I hurt Jolar it’s better this way. Maybe I was hurting him all along even though I didn’t mean to.
Maybe he never really loved me at all . . .
The new guards ignored her tears completely. It had taken twenty minutes for them to determine that either she needed to be carried to the shuttle or the restraints on her ankles would have to be taken off. In the end they decided that she should walk and have her ankles cuffed for the shuttle ride but the guards were increased and now numbered a half-dozen armed FleetSec.
She drew into herself as much as possible. Their hate and fear literally made her sick to her stomach. She didn’t even look at them if she could avoid it.
The shuttle landed. After a moment the door opened and the guards piled out. Two kept blasters on her while another handed off his weapon and got back inside to remove her ankle restraints. Under strict orders not to touch her, he retreated with the cuffs in hand.
Commander Rutell came to the door. “On your feet.”
Awkward with her still restrained hands, Arissa stood.
Tasan took a step back. “Out of the shuttle.”
She dragged herself forward and holding onto the side of the shuttle doorway managed to get down onto the spaceport runway. There was a very large boxy transport already there.
That’s why they’re using a troop carrier, because it can go from planetside to space and back again. If they used a shuttle to get me up to a larger ship that would be three transfers instead of one.
The six guards fanned out around them, their weapons constantly trained on her as they moved toward the transport.
Once inside Tasan stopped to press the onboard comm. “This is Commander Rutell. Power up, we’re going to secure the prisoner and then you can lift off.”
Tasan nodded to the guards. “Let’s go.”
Tasan led the way to the onboard brig. It seemed a small ship to have a brig but maybe they used this to transport Fleet prisoners too. Tasan nodded at the cell.
“Inside. Sit on the cot.”
Arissa sat as she was directed.
“Get the cuffs back on her.”
“Please, do I have to be restrained all the time?” Arissa cried. “It hurts.�
�
The guard kneeling to put on the ankle cuffs hesitated and the other guards too sought Tasan’s gaze.
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I’m not interested in your comfort. Get the damned cuffs on her now.”
The guard kneeling at her feet winced and placed the cuffs around her ankles. They instantly resealed again to fit her.
“Secure the door. Then I’m rotating the four of you out,” Tasan muttered as he strode from the cell. “Apparently she’s getting to you too.”
This cell was smaller than the one on the base had been. The room was no more than a few paces across. Outfitted with sink and ‘fresher and a plexisteel wall and door as well as cameras, she would be watched constantly.
The Queen’s Light had made the journey from Tellar to Sertar in five days. Likely she had even less than that for the return.
She closed her eyes. She didn’t even know if she could look forward to a trial. They certainly didn’t have to bother with one.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there before she felt the engine hum under her feet. Apparently the Queen’s Light, as a commercial cruiser, was far better insulated against the movement vibrations than a troop transport.
She swallowed as she felt the ship lift off. Somehow it seemed as final as the first clump of dirt hitting a casket.
From the corner of her eye she saw new FleetSec guards outside the plexisteel wall. After a moment the door unsealed and one of them came into her cell, his rifle blaster in hand.
The FleetSec slung his blaster over his shoulder then knelt in front of her to reach for her ankle bindings.
She frowned. “Did Commander Rutell say the restraints could come off now?”
The guard tilted his head up to look at her from under his tan FleetSec cap.
“Jolar,” she breathed.
Thirty-seven
Jolar grinned and caught her chin to press a hot kiss to her mouth.
“How—” She was too stunned to do more than blink at him, her mouth still tingled from his kiss. “What are you doing here?”
The Seer Page 30
