Mourner

by Irene Radford

  Pamela wondered how Sissy had known where to find the equipment planted by trained operatives while all present had their attention on the confrontation. Did the HPs know how to turn on the equipment? Pammy refused to believe the rumors of Sissy’s prescient visions. It was enough that Jake, Harmony, and the rest of the station did.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Ianus shook with fear. His mind froze on the single thought: rage possessed Mag to the point of slamming holes in the bulkheads and throwing open the blast doors. He stomped up the stairs that wound around the lift. The lift was too slow and robbed him of control. Just as the upstart humans aboard the station had robbed him of control.

  Ianus would pay for the audacity of the lesser beings. His life was forfeit. He would die slowly and most painfully.

  Without respect or dignity.

  The pressure in his mind built and built. He could do nothing but obey before his brain exploded.

  Generations of conditioning forced him to throw back the bed covers that gave him precious warmth when he was always cold. The more powerful mind inside his own demanded he rip all the various needles and probes and sensors from his body.

  Blindly, mindlessly, Ianus stepped away from the life support systems the bed gave him. Blood dripped from his arms where he’d yanked needles free. Every muscle in his body trembling from weakness, or fear, he stepped toward the exit.

  He barely registered pain when he stubbed his toes against a portable table full of vials and equipment. The various containers shook and tipped, spilling samples and bags of life-giving fluids.

  An alarm sounded, a soft beeping at just the wrong frequency. Ignore it. He slapped his hands over his ears and kept walking.

  Strong hands grabbed his shoulders. Shake them off. He tried.

  His feet kept stepping, right left, right left, even though he made no more progress toward the exit.

  A sharp sting to his left cheek and then his right.

  His neck snapped with the forceful blow.

  “Wake up, you idiot!” Doc Halliday yelled.

  Ianus’ eyes focused on her pinched face. Still the demands inside his mind urged him forward.

  “Oh, glowing healer, if I stay, he will kill me.”

  “If you don’t get back into that bed right now, you will kill yourself before you reach the damned Dragon.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t care about the selfish, egomaniacal lizards. They are not the center of the universe. They are annoying pimples on the backside of this station.”

  Ianus’s tears of laughter stung his eyes at the image that sprang from her mind. He passed it on to the nest. Mag as the butt of a joke! His butt a joke!

  But then Mag’s titanium clamps yanked his mind back to his need to obey.

  “They’re coming out,” Ianus whimpered.

  “What?” Doc Halliday looked around in alarm as klaxons sounded loudly all around them.

  “Mag has breached the blast door to the hub.”

  “Saints preserve us.” Doc Halliday made ritual gesture touching her head, her chest, and then each shoulder. “Get those damn filters working overtime! Damnit, can’t someone close those doors by remote control before we all die of mercury poisoning?”

  “I think they bought it,” Martha whispered to Sissy, holding the hologram projector in her palm. She checked over her shoulder to the center of activity four clusters along the platform. She had to squint to focus on the arrangement of bodies. “It looks like the Dragon is backing away and the Security people are hauling the white thing toward the platform.” She knew that motion detectors on a certain section of deck would signal the next tram in sequence to stop there.

  What about Jake and Pammy?” Sissy whispered back.

  “I can’t tell. We’re too far away.” Martha clicked the projector button to make the Harmony glyph fade.

  “I need to talk to Lord Lukan, and tell him I’ve just committed us to war with D’Or.” Sissy turned to flee, hands reaching to remove the heavy headdress.

  Martha grabbed it and tucked it beneath her arm so that none of the significant beads dragged or broke. Sissy had an amazing disregard for the cost of those beads. Like she wanted to destroy the heavy veiling.

  “Would it be better to have Laudae Penelope and Mr. Guilliam break the news?”

  Sissy froze. The nulgrav continued her movement forward but her feet stopped moving. “Did you read my mind?”

  Martha blushed. She had. This time. Though she’d used Ianus’ lessons to blank her contact with Sissy when she crept into Jake’s suite last night. “I followed the logic. That’s my job, to assist you in protocol and procedure. Mr. Guilliam and Laudae Penelope have access to more secure lines of communication. If you don’t want people listening in on Harmony,” they both knew Pammy and Jake or Ambassador Telvino could eavesdrop on calls at this end, “then you should talk to them first.”

  “It also gives me an opportunity to check to see if Mr. Guilliam is moving toward ordination. I want him as the new HP. Harmony needs him.”

  “And Laudae Penelope as HPs. Logic, not telepathy.”

  “Yes.” Sissy breathed heavily.

  Martha reached for an inhaler in her coveralls pocket.

  “No, I’m fine.” Sissy held up a hand to stay Martha’s action. “I’m . . . just nervous.”

  “Very nervous? As in only Jake can make you feel better nervous?” Martha didn’t have to tap into Sissy’s mind to know that.

  “Yes. I need to talk to Jake. I guess I’ll find him in his office when he’s done here.”

  The deck vibrated half a breath before the sound of metal slamming against metal shook them both. Martha dropped the holo projector as she reached for a bulkhead to brace herself. It bounced and turned itself on, bouncing the prerecorded image of Harmony from wall to wall back along hub until it stopped opposite the Dragon cluster of lifts.

  The big red and gold Dragon stood framed by the portal of blast doors, forearms raised, claws extended, tail swishing and thumping. Behind him a bevy of jewel-toned reptiles crowded against him.

  The air circulation system brought a breeze of dank, sulfurous air to her. Martha crinkled her nose against it.

  Then the horror sank in. The mercury-laden atmosphere was loose on the station and would spread within minutes.

  “Martha, you said that once you’ve been inside a person’s mind, you can find them again even over distance,” Sissy said. She cast about her for ideas, weapons. Something, anything that she could use to keep that monstrous Dragon from wiping out the security detail with one swipe of his paw.

  “That’s what Ianus said I could do. I’ve tried to keep my reading limited.” Martha bit her lip and heaved a sigh. “I don’t like being inside someone else’s mind.”

  “I know, sweetie, I know. You need to contact Ianus. Have him relay to Pammy what, if anything, will stop the Dragons. You don’t want to see Jake splattered all over the bulkhead.”

  Before the words had traveled from brain to lips, she heard shouting at the confrontation site. Bodies moved back and forth, weapons remained aimed but not firing.

  Damn, she needed to get closer. She needed to know what was happening. She needed to get Jake out of there. But Jake would always have to be in the thick of things, at the front of danger.

  Don’t you dare step one centimeter closer!

  The words had Jake’s undertones, but Martha’s voice.

  Sissy looked to her acolyte for an explanation.

  “That’s what he said. And he wants me to take you to safety, behind locked blast doors and . . . and ready to flee aboard Star Runner,” Martha said, shrugging her shoulders.

  “Not without him. And not without Laud Gregor’s body.” Sissy firmed her shoulders. “You said you think the Maril have the body?”

  “That’s what Sam thought just before touching the hatch electrocuted him. He relived stepping out of the maintenance hatch into the mid-grav level of the Dragon wing. The b
ody was just lying there. So he picked it up and took it by lift up to the hub where a phalanx of Maril warriors were milling around. They took it from him and he fled in fear. He was going to surrender, figuring facing Jake was safer than reporting failure to Pammy. Why would someone kill him when he was going to surrender?”

  “To keep him from talking. And keep the body hidden a while longer.”

  Which led to only one conclusion. Pammy was behind Sam’s death. Had Martha known this?

  “I’m sorry I didn’t catch the thoughts of whoever did it.” Martha hung her head like she was responsible for the murderer’s actions. “I think it may have been that forensics tech, but her mind was a jumble of memories of a . . . Russian Jewish grandmother that made no sense.”

  Dozens of feet pounded on the stairs at a nearby cluster. More armed security personnel spilled onto the platform. Three trams, closer together than anyone thought safe, sped down the rails toward Jake. One of them traveled the wrong way on the opposite rail. All of the cars boasted a glyph of Harmony. Two of them still glistened with wet paint.

  A contingent of Maril with black feathered heads soared above the trams, arms spread. They too wore the glyph of Harmony hastily drawn on the underside of their wing flaps.

  Mary appeared at the top of the lift, surround by the younger girls. She held her right thumb up—one of Jake’s gestures of triumph.

  “Okay, girls, let’s go find Laud Gregor and lock him into Star Runner while the Maril are occupied,” Sissy said.

  Martha set the projector down, aimed so that the glyph shone bright, right over Jake’s head.

  Jake grabbed the arm of his nearest bodyguard and aimed the man’s weapon upward. Two quick pulses and everyone, lizard, bird, and human, stilled. The constant jabber of alien voices and telepathic translations as well as the mechanical ones ceased. Ceased so abruptly his ears rang.

  Thank whatever gods looked down upon them that he’d had the foresight to filter out the mercury from the lair. The hatch and blast doors remained wide open. How much poison was left in their atmosphere? Enough to endanger the station’s air?

  Mag, the big red, was the first to respond, flicking his tongue and thumping his tail until the deck vibrated.

  “He says that your toy weapons cannot stop him,” Janae said.

  Everyone heard her in the enclosed space.

  Jake had once thought his station huge. Right now it seemed claustrophobic.

  Mag dislikes whining and buzzy noises. Those should be reserved for himself. A mental giggle followed.

  That was Ianus inside Jake’s head.

  Doc Halliday also says that the atmosphere monitors are not sending alarms. The mercury is not measurable, only trace amounts, and therefore not dangerous. Normal filtration will eliminate it quickly.

  Big relief there.

  Mag, Jad, Bok and Hes, the four Dragons at the front of the pack, kept looking over the top of Jake’s head. Warily? Suspiciously anyway. The other eight Banker Dragons held back. A passel of smaller lizards of different configurations and colors scattered across the end of the platform, spilling over to the opposite side.

  Jake sensed their movement while the Dragons commanded all the attention in the center of the space. They were the most deadly.

  Were they really, though? Most imposing. And strong, certainly.

  Did the smaller minions have poisoned bites or stinging tails? None of them wore enough clothing to hide weapons.

  The symbol they fear hangs above you, flickering as if flying. It protects you, Ianus said. Mag will not cross the line of protection. Nor will the other Bankers.

  What about the little guys? Jake fired back.

  Mag considers them more annoying than useful.

  Hes enjoys their sneakiness, Janae added. They do indeed carry poisons in them. Not all species fall to the same poisons. Each color of the minions (is that the right word?) carries a different poison.

  In other words, Jake had to wing it. Grab the upper hand and hold on tight.

  Are Sissy and her girls safe? he asked Ianus.

  Affirmation came on a sigh of relief.

  “Lady Harmony and her avatar protect me and this station. Any threat will be met by deadly force,” Jake said loudly, trusting various minds and devices to convey his message. He suspected the Dragons understood human speech even if they couldn’t imitate it.

  Couldn’t or wouldn’t?

  A mental shrug in his mind from Ianus and Janae. Timæus edged closer to the Maril, catching the eye of the newly-arrived commander. Sleek black head feathers with a hint of a blue crest gave him rank.

  “My station, my rules. I order all humans infesting this place to take next ships out and take the abomination of Harmony with them,” Janae translated as Mag moved forward two steps with slow deliberation. He kept his gaze fixed on Jake’s, avoiding looking up at the projected glyph.

  Jake grabbed the nearest weapon and aimed it directly at Mag’s head. Pointedly he dialed up the energy to max. A normal alien’s brains would boil before they exploded in a red hot fountain. He had no idea if a Dragon skull would protect this beast or not.

  Eighteen Maril and twenty station weapons trained on the entourage.

  “You cannot hurt us,” Mag sneered.

  Jake didn’t need the translation to understand the contemptuous body language.

  Without blinking or shifting his body, Jake shot a line of minions creeping almost parallel to him across the tracks. Three smaller lizards, a white, a pale blue, and a bilious yellow one crumpled to the deck.

  Damn! That blast should have taken down ten or more.

  Still, the remainder of the minions faded back in the direction they’d come.

  “I’ve got your telepaths under my protection. I can wipe out your minions with the firepower I have here. Are you truly ready to dirty your claws fighting us? Are you truly ready to take on the CSS, the Maril, and Harmony in a war that will cost you all your treasure, annihilate your people, and negate every mortgage you think you hold?”

  Mag blinked. The inflation of his scales and crest drooped. A little. Still enough puff to tell them all that he considered the odds. Or plotted a new strategy.

  “My office. One of our hours. Send a representative willing to negotiate. Same for the Maril and Lady Harmony.” Jake politely fixed the trigger lock in place and handed the weapon back to its owner. Then he turned his back on Mag and stalked off with Pammy flanking his left shoulder and the two telepaths behind his right.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Mara, have you found Sissy?” Jake asked into his link. With his other hand he hauled Janae toward the Medbay. Timæus followed where Janae went. Three other telepaths—the bridge crew of the Diamond—tagged along.

  “Nothing yet. Laudae Sissy and all six of her acolytes are off the grid,” Mara replied. Her voice sounded flat, like she was lying.

  “Is your loyalty to me or to her?” Jake snarled.

  “No comment.”

  Mara had been among the first refugees to seek asylum at The First Contact Café; one of the first to adopt the station gray uniform and have her caste mark removed. He thought her loyalty was firmly placed on him and the station. But old habits die hard. And Sissy attracted the love and adoration of all sorts of misfits.

  “Find her. Make sure she’s safe. That’s all I want at the moment. To know she’s safe and will show up for the negotiations with the Dragons and the Maril.”

  “She’s safe.” Mara emphasized the second word. Not a lie.

  The cold knot inside Jake’s heart warmed a bit. A very tiny bit.

  “Okay. Find someone from security to watch over her. One of our people, not Pammy’s.”

  “Hard to tell the difference some days,” she replied.

  Jake wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear that.

  Then he reached the big X of yellow caution tape and the all-seeing eye of the sensor. He held up his link. The sulky red light took its own sweet time in switching to blinking gree
n.

  Jake ushered his entourage into Ianus’ isolation room. He didn’t bother with clean suits. No one had since the complete transfusion with synthetic blood. The synthetics tended to flush alien viruses and bacteria before they settled in the body. Not as good as a working immune system, but better than damaged blood flowing through a compromised body.

  Ianus lay dozing in the bed. The back was propped up to help him breathe. His frail and pale form twisted, seeking flat out of long habit.

  Jake had to pause and swallow repeatedly around the sadness lumping in his throat. Did he have the right to put the boy through more pain and questioned loyalties?

  “Maybe we should go. Come back when he’s awake,” Janae said, tugging on Jake’s sleeve, urging him back the way they’d come.

  Anger boiled upward from Jake’s gut. Again. The lump in his throat hardened and grew spikes.

  “We do this now. I need answers, and none of you will talk to me. He does. But he never tells me everything I want to know. I’m hoping having all of you here to consult will pry some secrets into the open.”

  He studied the screens above Ianus’ head, picking out heart rate—too rapid—respiration—too shallow—temperature—too high. The graph showing REM, rapid eye movements indicating sleep, held steady.

  “Ianus, I know you are awake,” he said quietly.

  The heart rate increased.

  “You have to tell me what the Dragons are up to.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ianus croaked. He sounded like he’d been crawling through the desert and desperately needed water.

  Jake handed him the flat-bottomed bulb with a straw. When he’d drunk deeply and handed the plastic container back, Jake snagged a rolling stool with his foot and brought it close to the bed.

  “When Mag found Laud Gregor’s body, he wanted to eat it. Thought it was a special treat and a peace offering,” Jake said.

  All the telepaths nodded as they arrayed themselves around the bed.

  “Ten minutes ago Mag sent the message that he cannot meet me for negotiations in a half hour because he and the other Dragons need time to perform death rituals on the three minions I killed during the standoff with the Maril. What kind of death ritual?”