Guardians of Paradise (Hidden Empire)

by Jaine Fenn

  What if she went in deeper? The area of Taro’s psyche where they had shared the dream was comparatively shallow - subconscious, but not primal. She had entered the depths of his soul, both back in the Heart of the City on Vellern and more recently, when they made love. Could she do so again? Could she hide herself there?

  But if the Court interrogator was strong enough to follow that link, she would get access not just to Nual’s mind, but to Taro’s too, and she couldn’t risk that deepest of betrayals. And now she knew the visitor was arriving ahead of schedule, she dared not attempt any further contact with Taro, in case the Court representative found her in a trance. She could not even risk a final goodbye.

  She had already lost her lover and her freedom. A mental reset would be the best she could hope for once the Sidhe had what they wanted from her, leaving her reprogrammed and restrained, little more than a mute. Given the risk of after-effects from her brush with darkness, not to mention the crimes she had committed against her people, they were far more likely to kill her once they had no more use for her. Taking her own life would give her more control. It would make the inevitable end less painful - and it was the only way to guarantee the safety of those she cared for.

  She sat back against the wall, breathing hard.

  Slowly, deliberately, she shut off her body’s reactions to the realisation of what she was about to do.

  Even so, when she put her palm on her solar plexus she could feel the banging of her heart. She turned her wrist, so the heel of her right hand was pressed against her left breast. She would only get one chance; she needed to make sure that when the blade emerged from her forearm, it would pierce her heart cleanly, killing her at once.

  The sweat on her palms threatened to make her hand slip on her bare skin. She wiped her hand on the bed. Somewhere deep inside a small voice was screaming, demanding to know how she could even consider this insane act.

  She placed her hand back in what she hoped was the correct position and closed her eyes. She let herself think of Taro: a snapshot of his face, laughing. It was only right that the last image in her mind should be of him.

  Then she flexed her hand.

  Someone with a more finely honed sense of paranoia might’ve been convinced that the sensor blip was a pursuing ship. Jarek had to allow for that possibility, but unless and until it tried to close in on him he’d do his best not to fret about it.

  He still wished he’d spotted the ship before he’d trashed his blackmail file. He’d been in two minds about deleting it, but once he left the local comnet he wouldn’t be transmitting the regular signal that stopped the data going public; if he didn’t get rid of it now, he’d be leaving a ticking time-bomb behind him. He’d been tempted: let the ngai dealing with the Sidhe pay the price for that collaboration . . . But if he allowed the dirt on Ruanuku to go public, he’d be risking planet-wide corporate chaos in order to punish a few execs. More importantly, he’d be tipping his hand to the Sidhe.

  He found himself watching the other ship almost obsessively. When it changed course and headed back to Kama Nui he sat back in his couch and let out a long, slow breath.

  With his own ship safely underway and no immediate threats to enliven the dull journey out to the beacon, what he should really do now was wake up Taro. The boy’d been dreaming earlier, but the last time Jarek checked he was deeply asleep. If he left him, he was only putting off the inevitable. Taro wasn’t going to be open to reason, regardless of when Jarek woke him, but as it was currently the middle of the night, hopefully he’d be dazed enough that he wouldn’t try to disembowel Jarek when he found out they’d left Nual behind. He might as well get it over with.

  He still found a good ten minutes of not-entirely-necessary duties on the bridge, but finally he sighed and headed for the ladder. He’d just stepped off the bottom rung when his com chirped. The message was from the Stonetown data-agents who had been sent their final payment and had, as far as he knew, done what he’d asked and destroyed the packet. He’d never expected to hear from them again.

  And they, he suddenly remembered, only had the number of the locally bought com he’d used in his dealings with Ruanuku-ngai , which was useless now he was outside the local comnet. This message had been sent direct to his ship.

  He tapped the screen. A single line of capitalised text appeared:

  LOOK FOR HER ON THE DARK SIDE OF RANGUI-ITI

  Rangui-iti: Kama Nui’s smallest moon. As for who they meant by ‘her’ . . . it had to be Nual.

  Who the hell would send him such a message?

  Someone who claimed to know where she was and who had his ship ID. Could it be the Sidhe? He sat down at the base of the ladder, simultaneously hot and cold.

  But if they were onto him surely they’d have made their move back in Stonetown, most likely drawn him out of his ship with the promise of a lead, then quietly nabbed him . . . unless they hadn’t traced him until after he’d taken off. In which case they’d either blow him out of the sky or trail him until they could lure him somewhere quiet and carry on where they left off reaming his brain. Somewhere like the dark side of a moon . . .

  He wasn’t going to be caught out again, not like at Serenein. But this wasn’t their style. If they weren’t just going to trash him outright, they’d want to encounter him face-to-face, not out in space, when he was safely ensconced on his ship and immune to their powers.

  But if the Sidhe hadn’t sent the message, then who had?

  He checked the full message-tag on the file and was unsurprised to find nothing beyond the agency’s ID. Whoever sent this had the power to bypass normal procedures. And that left only one possibility.

  But why would Marua Ruanuku give him this information?

  Whoever the message came from, he needed to decide what to do about it quickly. He scooted back up the bridge ladder and called up data on the relative positions of Kama Nui’s three moons. If he was going to act on the tip-off he needed to cut his speed and turn around. His hand hovered over the controls.

  If he didn’t follow up this lead, he’d always wonder what had happened to Nual. And Taro would never forgive him.

  And if he did do this, then there was a strong possibility he’d end up encountering them again, and the nightmares that haunted his sleep would take over his waking world once more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Nual felt the wave of tension go through her, an unconscious reaction to the command she was giving.

  A command her body was refusing to obey. Her blade remained sheathed inside her arm.

  She moved her hand away from her breast and tried again, in case the implants would not work when they might harm their owner.

  Still nothing.

  So the impulses that activated her implanted weapons were being blocked. Some sort of nullifying field? She shook her head, trying to clear it. It was getting very stuffy in here. She needed to lie down to consider this further.

  She was unconscious for no more than a couple of minutes - the sweat that filmed her body had only just begun to dry and chill - but she came to feeling relaxed and lethargic. After a while she managed to think clearly enough to work out that she had been sedated. Something must have been pumped into the room when those watching realised what she was trying to do. She stayed where she was until her head cleared. Then she pointed her toes, a motion that should have caused her to float off the bed. Nothing happened.

  None of her implants were working. And any attempt to harm herself resulted in sedation. Her less physical weapons would be no use either; though she could kill humans with a thought her unconscious defences would block any attempts to stop her own heart.

  Her choices had not just narrowed: they had disappeared. Even the option of taking her own life was no longer available to her. Her vision blurred with sudden tears. She blinked them back and sat up. She would not give her captors the satisfaction of knowing how close to breaking she was.

  She pulled her legs up to her chin and hugged her knees,
concentrating on the immediate physical reality of her body, the small, hopeless bundle of misery she had been reduced to. Forcing herself to remain outwardly calm, she sat motionless on the bed and fought the rising tide of despair.

  Taro’s attempt to hold onto his dream after Nual disappeared quickly descended into absurdity. Mo came into the bar, chatting up Kise, who was juggling coco-nuts with a manic grin on her face. The room was suddenly full, only it wasn’t the Corpse any more, it was one of those open-sided Kama Nui bars, bustling and loud. Taro looked up, trying to focus, to somehow get back to Nual. His gaze was returned by the jewel-like eyes of hundreds of tiny lizards sitting in the rafters. He looked down again as a local girl, dressed in a shimmer-cloak that kept swinging open to reveal naked brown flesh, sashayed up to him. He wanted to refuse her, to keep trying to contact Nual. Instead he heard himself agreeing to go outside with her.

  Even as they fell together onto the soft, yielding sand and lust drove everything else from his mind, he cursed himself for his inability to control his own dreams.

  His mental frustration only increased after the inevitable yet unsatisfying conclusion of his imaginary grind with the dream-girl as his sleeping imagination took him on through more weird situations and strange half-memories. He was enduring a normal night of dreams, watching them unfold from a distance, unable to act.

  Eventually he slept too deeply to dream.

  He felt himself twitch, and someone spoke, telling him not to panic. He wasn’t panicking, he was—Where was he? He opened his eyes. He was in the spare cabin on Jarek’s ship. His body felt heavy, his mind slow. Jarek was sitting on the bed next to him. Though Taro had dimmed the lights before he slept, they were on full now. Something else had changed too, though he couldn’t quite work out what it was.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jarek. ‘It’s still early, but you didn’t look like you were dreaming any more, so I thought it was safe to wake you.’

  ‘Aye . . . she’s gone.’ Suddenly he realised what had changed. The cabin was filled with a gentle hum, felt as much as heard. He struggled to sit up. ‘Wait, are we—? Where are we?’

  ‘Just over two hours out from Kama Nui; the actual co-ordinates wouldn’t mean much t—’

  ‘No! You said we could wait longer, in case you found any more leads!’

  ‘Actually,’ said Jarek, ‘one might have found us.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Taro was wide awake now, though his head ached and his guts felt loose.

  Jarek told him about the message he’d received, and after a moment Taro said, ‘So that’s where we’re going? Rangui-iti?’

  ‘I’ve stopped accelerating, but I haven’t programmed the course change yet. For a start we don’t have any way of knowing for sure the message refers to Nual—

  ‘Yes, we do! She said the ship she’s on ain’t moving; that fits with it being parked up on this moon, don’t it? That’s where she is, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘You may be right. I wonder what they’re doing there.’

  Taro struggled to remember the other details of the shared dream. ‘She said . . . she said the ship she’s on is waiting for the consorts.’

  ‘Aha! And they haven’t arrived. Thank God for that.’ Jarek ran a hand through his hair, looking relieved.

  ‘I guess your friends at Serenein held the Sidhe off.’

  ‘Yes - at least for now. Did she tell you anything else?’

  ‘She . . .’ Crap. If he told Jarek about the visitor from the Sidhe Court it might scare him off.

  ‘She what, Taro?’

  ‘She . . .’ Lying had always been easy in the past, the safest option. But not to his friends, not now. ‘She ain’t given anything away so far, but she - she thinks there’s a more powerful Sidhe on her way, someone from the Court. She’s due to arrive in the next day. We gotta get Nual out before she gets there.’

  ‘In principle I agree, but I’m not sure what we can do.’

  ‘We have to go to Rangui-iti, to see what’s there!’

  ‘You make it sound so simple. This might be a trap.’

  ‘If they know we’re here we’re fucked anyway. Jarek, we gotta look!’

  ‘You’re right. I just wanted you to insist we followed up the tip-off so I could say I told you so when it goes wrong!’ He grinned wryly.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t leave her behind.’ Taro tried to smile back.

  ‘Your faith is heartening. But if anything takes off from that moon, or if I spot any other ships heading our way, then we bug out.’ He stood up. ‘Okay, I need to get back to the bridge. I’ve got some course changes to programme.’

  ‘Before you go . . . Nual reckons she might be able to make contact with me again later. Only she can’t do it when I’m awake. I need to be sort-of half-asleep.’ He grinned. ‘A bit stoned would be perfect.’

  Jarek raised an eyebrow, then nodded. ‘If that’s what you reckon you need to do, I can sort something.’

  Taro decided against telling Jarek that Nual had told them not to come after her. That wasn’t lying - after all, he hadn’t actually asked.

  Leaving aside the more obvious impossible wishes, like her freedom, or a last kiss with Taro, the thing Nual wanted more than anything else was a way to tell the time.

  After a while the hopelessness had settled into numb acceptance and now she just wanted it over with. Unconsciousness was still an option, for it would pass the time and temporarily impede her interrogation, but she wanted to be awake to look her enemy in the eye.

  When the door finally opened, she was beginning to doze off. She jerked upright to see a Sidhe she had never met before.

  Except . . .

  Except this was not a Sidhe - in appearance, yes, but every unseen signal was screaming that the figure standing in the doorway was something else: a wrongness, an abomination. Despite the terrible dissonance between sight and sense, Nual recognised what she was seeing. She knew this all too well.

  A member of the Court might violate her mind. This thing could violate her soul.

  It used the possessed Sidhe’s body to step into the room, and spoke: ‘Sister, come to us, join us . . .’

  She tried a brief mental stab, knowing the act futile even before the attack was deflected.

  It looked offended.

  Fighting back would be futile; no amount of Sidhe talent would prevail against this adversary; on the contrary: the more powerful the mind, the more this thing, this creature would desire it. She would resist, but in the end, she would fail, as her sisters had failed, one by one, seven years ago. She had to get away, to hide her soul while she still could.

  Her limp body fell back on the bed while her panicking consciousness fled, seeking for refuge in the only place left.

  Taro was seeing the funny side. Who’d have thought that their master plan relied on him being stoned? He was a little hazy on exactly what the actual plan was, but that was probably because he was stoned.

  He’d fired up a mindlessly pretty game and now he lounged on the couch, occasionally waving his hands to encourage the visuals along. He had an idea he’d been here for some time. Not that the stuff he’d taken was wearing off. In fact, he was just getting to the bit where everything was funny. He started to giggle, and it felt good, so he did it some more—

  And stopped as something slammed into his mind: a pure wave of mental energy; and riding it like someone riding a wave - Nual. His eyes rolled up and he was in his head, with her, sober and alert.

  He began to express love, relief, a desire to help. She was distracted, and terrified.

  He asked why. He could sense her barely checked terror.

 

  Taro was instantly scared, though fear was an oddly distant sensation without a body.

 

  Of course he would. As their joint awareness intensified into an unbearable brightness he just had time for one thought of his own -
Ah yes, this feeling - before he was - they were - beyond thought.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  They were in luck: Rangui-iti was currently on the beaconwards side of Kama Nui, so Jarek wouldn’t have to go back past the homeworld in order to reach its moon. He still decided on a wide-angle turnaround; slower than a straight brake-and-turn manoeuvre but if he widened the arc enough he could come at Rangui-iti from sunwards, hiding their approach from anything on the moon’s dark side.

  Though Jarek could’ve trusted the comp to plot their course, he used enough manual input to stop himself thinking too closely about what they were doing. Even with the bulk of the moon acting as cover, he took care on the final approach, braking slow and steady, deploying the ship’s minimal countermeasures and cutting active sensors. Grav-sensors were passive and relatively long-range - watchers rather than bouncers, as his old partner used to say - but they weren’t picking up anything odd as he closed on the barren chunk of rock. Neither did the high-level passive EM-SWEEP he initiated when he got a little closer. He might be drawing a blank because the ship really was on the dark side of the moon, or because it was on the light side but powered down and using the sun’s glare to mask its signature, or because there was no ship.