“Traitor! You are the slime of the Earth!” The one who shot Daniel screeched and spat at Miranda’s face. Miranda vaguely recognized her from training sessions. The woman had been a child three years behind Miranda in training. Time hadn't treated the formerly beautiful girl well, and the red diamond tattoo on her forehead was even larger and less becoming than most.
“I know what you are but what am I?” Miranda said then delivered a raspberry.
The angry Djheen wiped the spittle from her face, “Is this what you learn on the outside? Let me show you something I have learned.” The woman rammed her fist into Miranda’s jaw.
Miranda tasted blood and noticed people in gray uniforms swarming the prison building behind her, and gathering to watch Miranda’s capture. “I already knew that one.”
“Maybe I should show you some more.” The Djheen hissed. Raising her fist, the woman froze and cocked her head before completing her swing. With a nod she returned focus to Miranda, “That can wait, you have an appointment.”
The six Djheens and four more from the building surrounded Miranda. The one retained her grip on Miranda’s hair, and all ten of them concentrated teleported her to a shielded room in a dark compound.
The room was furnished with two chairs, one well upholstered, the other bare, save for restraining straps. The upholstered chair was occupied and swiveled away from Miranda, she could feel that its occupant was Dichen. The Djheens dragged Miranda to the other chair and started to strap her down.
“That won’t be necessary,” Dichen’s voice came over the high back of the chair.
“But, sir, she is dangerous.” One of the lesser Djheens objected. Her objection was answered with silence and the withdrawal to the far corner of her Djheen sisters. Her eyes turned down and she fled to join them.
“Welcome back Miranda,” Dichen said swiveling to face Miranda and rising, “I certainly hope you have enjoyed your little game of hide and seek. It's over now, and it's long past time for you to come home.”
Miranda resettled herself on the chair. “I’d tell you to >bite me’ but given your affiliations I’m afraid you’d take it all wrong,” Miranda answered.
“I’m not into that kind of thing, and besides you already have a fiancé.” Dichen approached and wiped blood from the corner of her mouth. Miranda squirmed away from him but couldn't quite avoid the gesture. “In fact all can be forgiven quite easily. All you have to do is one little thing and you can freely rejoin the fold.” Dichen snapped his fingers, and three men entered each bearing a hooded prisoner. “All you have to do is kill these three men.”
Miranda sat stunned at the suggestion, and stupefied to think that Dichen actually thought she would leap at the chance. Dichen took her silence as open contemplation. “They were captured during the revolt on the same world where you were taken.” Dichen waved his wrist and the hoods were removed.
The prisoners were, un-Diego, Reverend Meeker and Kindy. They were all drugged almost to the point of complete sedation. Miranda could barely feel the slightest struggle behind Kindy’s glazed eyes. Miranda shook her head and began to struggle against the restraints, “No.”
“It’s just three lives to save yourself from so much pain. Here’s a bargain, you kill those two,” Dichen indicated Kindy and Reverend Meeker.”
“I’m thinking of a finger,” Miranda answered.
“I'll make you a deal, you kill...” Dichen raised a finger and pointed it at Kindy, “...that one and we'll pretend none of this ever happened.”
“Not gonna happen!” Miranda felt the restraints give a little against her struggles.
“That was my final offer, this is your final chance!” Dichen sounded almost desperate.
“No, no, no. That is my one, only and final answer!”
Dichen’s chin fell and he let his pointing finger fall. Kindy’s throat was slit by his guard. Frozen, stunned in disbelief Miranda gaped at the sight of Kindy’s blood spurting from the wound. He stumbled to his knees, and she renewed her struggles against the restraints. She could feel his life leaving him with every heartbeat, but ironically his mental voice got stronger, more lucid.
When Miranda felt Kindy’s pale, weak, final thought, “Not your fault...” It was enough to drive her into a rage. She snapped the restraints as though they were no more substantial than toilet paper and dove for Kindy’s murderer.
“You, you, you!” She shrieked fighting to turn the knife on him. It felt like the struggle went on for hours before the other two men and all ten Djheens leapt to restrain her. Really it was a matter of seconds, even so they weren't fast enough to stop her from driving the knife through the man’s skull into his brain.
Miranda turned quickly armed with the knife to face her attackers. She slashed viciously and fought wildly, but the fight was without hope. There were too many of them, and she fought from a position slippery with Kindy’s blood. They stayed well away from the knife, but finally one of the Djheens managed to jab Miranda with a stun capsule. Miranda had just long enough to realize she had been poked before she fell, and just long enough to hear Dichen’s parting shot before she passed out.
“See, it’s not so hard to kill now is it?”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Chapter 12
Why Didn't Ya Say That!
------------------------------------
Angela strode purposely through the corridor. Her pop-pad was full of hundreds of pages of reports, requisitions, and forms. She tapped through them as quickly as she could. All of the business necessary to keep a small city in operation flashed by at a page a minute, while she made her way to another meeting. She barely noticed the shadow of a person stepping in front of her as an obstacle in her path. She started to step around, but looked up when the person stayed firmly in her path.
Her eyes lifted into contact with her aunt's eyes. “Hey, Aunt Penelope, what can I do for you?”
Penelope's tired lined eyes flickered from Angela's face to her pop-pad. Her face showed conflict over having interrupted Angela. “Tina has told me all about a man named Benjamin Kindel. I would like your take on him.”
Angela shoved her running internal tally of supply and demands to the back of her brain. “Benjamin Kindel? Oh yeah, Ben, he's one of Daniel's intakes. He's a nice guy, and has a lot of potential for a human.”
“Watch it, I was human remember! Besides, that wasn't what I was asking. Tina seems to spend a lot of time with him. I want to know if he'll treat her properly, and if he is the type to take advantage of her.”
“Romantically?”
“Well she is my only-", Penelope stopped, and she slumped visibly.
Penelope's near slip of the tongue stung Angela too. “We are still looking for her. Every factor goes out with instructions to report back to me on any likely girls.”
“Out there, Miranda would be a grown woman by now, probably an old woman. The best I can hope anymore is that,” Penelope gulped back a sob, “maybe you can find me a grandchild or two.” She batted away tears welling up from her eyes.
Angela tucked her pop-pad into a pocket and wrapped her arms around Penelope, “Hey, Neely, it isn't that bad. Maybe she ended up in one of the dimensions that move slower than we do. For all you know someone could bring her home tomorrow, and you'd be stuck diapering a toddler again.”
Penelope scoffed out a laugh, “No, I'd let Tina do that!”
“I don't think Gene would be happy about you dragging off his right hand to diaper a kid. You'll just have to remember how to-", Angela's pop-pad began vibrating and chirping in her pocket, “I have to take this.” Angela yanked out the pad and tapped the activate button. Tina's face greeted her. “Cousin speak of the devil, your mom and I were just talking about you. What's up?”
Tina answered with a brief bout of stunned silence, followed by a monotone, “You better come to the emergency bay.”
Angela's eyebrows bunched together and her lip came out in a pout, “Who's hurt?”
“Daniel.”
Angela dropped the pad and staggered into the wall. She slid to the floor, with the wall supporting her butt on the way down. Penelope bent down and retrieved the pad, “Thanks honey. I'll get her there.” Then Penelope bent to help Angela up, “We'd better head to the emergency bay.”
Penelope navigated the hallways and saw to it that Angela made it all the way to the emergency bay. Angela would have been grateful, but she barely possessed the energy for self-locomotion. By the time they made it on foot to the emergency-bay Angela was certain of the worst. It didn't help that the room was empty when she arrived.
Again Penelope played role of the supportive helper. She left Angela standing in the doorway long enough to locate Tina and discover that Daniel had been moved to one of the observation rooms. “Angela, he's in observation room three.” Penelope pointed Angela down the hallway and hung back to get more information from her daughter.
Angela's insides were churned into butter by the time she arrived at the room where Daniel lay wounded. Taking three breaths to support a false calm she slapped the pad to open the door. Despite her attempt to prepare herself, Angela found her insides melting when she saw her pairmate propped up in the bed with his shoulder bandaged.
Angela's emotions flared when Daniel cracked a weak smile at Ben who sat at his side. For the brief span of that smile Angela could almost have sworn the wrong man lay in the hospital bed, because Ben's drawn expression looked far more tortured than Daniel's.
Daniel turned to face the doorway and his face lit up despite the obvious pain, “Angie honey, you look positively ghastly!”
Angela rushed to Daniel's side, “Daniel, I heard there had been trouble.” Ben's presence inhibited the passionate embrace Angela longed to give Daniel. Instead she barely let her fingers graze his hand. It was just as well, an embrace of the sort she was inclined towards would probably hurt more than it comforted.
Daniel looked sharply at Ben then turned back to Angela. “It was just a mob of dark assassins.”
“Dark assassins! I don't like it when you take unnecessary risks like that!” Angela howled, she prodded Daniel's shoulder, to accentuate his understanding of her worry.
A grimace of pain passed across Daniel's face. “ Maybe with him watching my back...” Daniel gestured vaguely at Ben
Angela turned her full scrutiny on Ben, fully ready and willing to pop his head like a zit if he had really risked the life of her husband. “Is that true? I send you out into the field as his partner and you don't even watch his back!” Angela glared at Ben, barely veiling her dangerous intent.
Ben shook his head aggressively from side to side, “I was paying attention to the girl kicking butt.”
“And he wasn't too aware of anything else, like the bad guy reinforcements that were getting ready to kick our butts.”
Ben shrugged, “I'll give him that, but if he had listened to Miranda, instead of arguing with her, then we all would have been out of there long before the bad guys woke up. “
Angela's eyes became suddenly intense, “Miranda?”
Daniel too showed a sudden interest, “That was her name? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I made her tell me before I shot her. It's not like I'd forget a name under those kinds of circumstances.”
Angela sighed, “But it doesn't stop you from forgetting to pass on the information.” Angela sighed a far deeper sigh.
“Was it important?”
Daniel shrugged with his good shoulder and looked at his wife, “It just might be.”
“Might be? You know that the chances are two to one in favor of it being her.” Angela growled at Daniel, “Didn't anybody give him the lecture to keep his eyes out for her?”
“No, who are you talking about? Miranda?” Ben asked.
“Yeah, Angie evidently thinks there's a good chance that she could be Tina's sister,” Daniel answered.
“What the hell am I doing allowing this human out in the field!” Angela growled at nobody in particular. She was far from being a continuing part of the conversation now, “I am desperate, I'll admit! But what in the hell was I thinking. He doesn't even bother to pass on important information...” Angela kept blowing her stack, missing entirely Ben's reaction to her random explosion. She didn't notice his face reddening or his eyes beginning to narrow.
“What the hell are you doing allowing me in the field? You didn't allow me anywhere! You practically picked me up by the scruff of the neck and shoved me out the door! I didn't ask to go! I didn't say I was ready to go. You said go. I went. Now you scream about allowing me to go! To hell with you! I don't want to be a part of any of this! Not, this place, not you, and not your little tin army!” Ben rose from his chair and stormed out the door.
Daniel stared at Angela silently for a full minute after Ben stormed out. Then he began with a low voice which quickly rose to a commanding shout, “Angela D'llen Daniel's! I am your husband and I demand you shut up! What do you think you are doing? That man has been to hell and back! He's even got the memories of a demon to prove it. He's been plunged into an entirely different reality from the one he'd been raised and conditioned as a child to deal with! Despite all of that he did you the favor of attempting to do the job you placed before him on that last world! And all the thanks you give him is losing your temper! I won’t have it! Go and apologize!”
Angela froze to her core. Daniel hadn't raised his voice to her in decades. He hadn't taken the tone of her master in nearly half a century, but when he did it brought to her the full memory of their meeting in the shop where he'd purchased her. She trembled at that memory. He was right; she had been beastly.
“I'll give him, and me some time to cool off, then I'll do as you say.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ben stormed out of the room with anger, not entirely his own, rumbling in his gut for expression. Ben shrugged out of the factor-pack, still slung over his shoulder, and flung it at the closed observation room door. That having eased his ire somewhat he slipped out of the jacket and proceeded to fling it too. Then for the final insult he ripped Bea’s remote from his shirt and flung it at the wall with force enough to produce a satisfying squelching sound as the internal components shattered and rubbed against one another in a rush to meet the wall.
With his anger cooled enough that he wouldn't inflict bodily harm on the first person whom he saw, Ben stalked off down the corridor. He planted each foot hard as if he hoped to crack the stone beneath it by sheer force of his will. Each jarring step helped him regain some semblance of self control. By the time he had reached the elevator he was almost capable of forming a concrete plan of action. “Hey elevator! Take me to the nearest transport booth!”
The elevator jerked to obey. Seconds later the doors opened to a garage and Ben stepped out. He didn't see a transport booth nearby but he did remember they existed on every other the cityscape block. Ben strode up and out of the garage. On the street, people made points of crossing the street to avoid him. Ben noticed. “Damn telepaths! Stay out of my brain, and I'll get the hell out of this place as quick as I can!” He bellowed. The echo of his voice reflected back down from the ceiling and silenced everyone, not that they made any real noise in the first place.
Ben’s frustration had cooled enough that he finally had the decency to feel ashamed of his outburst. “I’m sorry.” His apology refocused his anger back on Angela, all of this was her fault.
Ben resumed his walk to the transport booth in a less openly hostile manner. Shame at allowing Daniel to get hurt returned, cooled Ben’s anger. Ben played back Gene’s words, “Good thing you got him back so quickly, if you’d taken much longer it could have been really serious. You were lucky, if it had been purple it would have been much worse. I guess they weren't expecting briaunti.” Ben hadn't allowed himself to hear Gene’s approval of his quick action. All he had heard, could hear was an inner voice berating himself for allowing it to happen, and Gene’s words o
f dire circumstance narrowly avoided.
Self absorbed in accusatory pity, Ben walked right past the first transport booth he came to with unseeing eyes. His thoughts shifted to the moment Daniel was wounded. He remembered clearly Miranda’s thrashing limbs dealing out respectable blows on the dark assassins. What had she called them, Djheens? Daniel had been struggling with one too. Then there was Daniel’s scream and the flash of blue light. Ben, didn't see the actual impact. He didn't know whether it had been like a bullet or a phaser, all he had really seen was Miranda.
Ben’s thoughts changed focus. Miranda, what about her, how had the fight turned out after they left? Surely she would have... Have what? Activated her emergency escape shoelace? He’d abandoned her to fight five Djheens by herself, after she’d saved his life, again. By now she had probably been captured and killed or worse.
Ben knew the dark could and did do much worse than kill people. He recalled Erica's kidnapping and the stories and faces of the dark refugees. Embellishing them with the stuff of his own worst nightmares, Ben envisioned the hideous torture they would inflict on poor Miranda. She would suffer. Ben would probably never see her again and he had never gotten the chance to really talk to her, to thank her, to tell her...
Ben avoided letting himself continue that thought to its conclusion by slipping into self blame. Ben beat himself up over Miranda’s assumed capture and Daniel’s wound as if they were personal failures on his part. Yes there were mistakes, but they weren't all his. He wouldn't let himself see that his choices had been limited by things beyond anyone’s control.
Ben lifted his gaze from his feet. He was steps away from a transport booth, and blocks away from where he started, or further. Back home on Earth he had never cost someone their life, here he had nearly managed to get two people dead in the span of minutes. The best solution was to just go home.
Eyes Love & Water Page 20
