The Telepath Chronicles (The Future Chronicles Book 2)

by Elle Casey

  I looked around me. All of his men were on the floor, either dead from my attack or incapacitated by the nothingness. “It’s over, Mikian. Let them go and you might live.”

  “No, I don’t think you understand. If you don’t leave right now, I will kill her,” he said.

  “No you won’t. Because then there will be nothing to stop me from unleashing my full power on you and everyone in this building,” I said.

  His grip on the gun weakened and sweat poured down his face. “Maybe so. But she’ll still be dead.”

  I continued to walk toward him. “No, she won’t. You care more about your life than hers, so you won’t kill her.” I wanted to reach out with my power, but he could easily kill her before I’d built up enough energy to neutralize him.

  In a flash he swung his arm up to fire at me, but my daughter tipped back her chair and fell into him. His shot went wide, and I was on him before he could recover.

  “My brother will be most disappointed if I kill you before he arrives,” I said.

  Agent Mikian’s eyes went wide. “You’re working with him? How could you?”

  “Because, as evil as he is, he did not go after my family.” I bound his arms and then freed my wife and daughter. Once they were free, I tied him to the chair he’d had my daughter in. “I’ll let him know you’re waiting for him.”

  I led my family out of the building and up the service elevator. When we came out into the lobby, Samuel was waiting for us. The guards were all dead.

  “I see you got them,” he said.

  “Yes, and your friend is waiting for you below,” I said.

  “Then we part ways?” he asked.

  “For now.” I wasn’t sure if I was a hero or a monster, but my family was safe.

  I could deal with Samuel another day.

  A Word from Vincent Trigili

  A long time ago, when I was a small child, I had a hard time sitting still. This was in the days before ADHD became the diagnosis of choice for active boys. This was also long before the Internet would become the world’s most powerful time sink. TV was growing in popularity, but the pickings for a child during the day and evening were still slim. There was only one medium of entertainment that I could really dive into: reading.

  I started with all of the normal suspects—Encyclopedia Brown, the Hardy Boys, and so on—but it was not long before I was looking for more adult books. I quickly learned to love Tom Clancy, Orson Scott Card, Larry Niven, and many others. I devoured every book I could get my hands on. It did not matter if it was mystery, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, or anything else. There was no genre that was safe from my insatiable appetite for stories. I soon read every book of interest in my school library, and branched out to book clubs, public libraries, and anyone within reach that might possibly own a book. At the speed I was reading, a book as long as A Mote In God’s Eye barely took a weekend. At one time I owned all of TSR’s The Forgotten Realms books. Yes, all of them. They lined the top bookcase, and I actively hunted the new releases down to keep my collection complete. I was not on any mailing list and there was no website on which to check for new releases. Instead I had to search the shelves at the bookstores and hound the clerks.

  It was this love of books that got me started on writing. When I could not sleep at night, I would tell myself stories. A million times over I saved the Earth from alien invasion or natural catastrophe, and yet every night I had to do it all again.

  I started writing my stories down as I got older, but I did not keep those early stories, which is probably a good thing. Eventually, in high school, I started writing a serious story that I kept working on for years. I wrote it longhand on paper and did all my editing and rewriting the hard way. Over time I moved it onto the computer, which greatly simplified the effort. Finally, I shared the story with someone back in 2008. They encouraged me to publish it, which I finally did in 2010 as the book The Enemy of an Enemy. Thus the Lost Tales of Power series was born.

  “The Null” is a stand-alone short story I wrote specifically for The Telepath Chronicles. I find it helps keep my series fresh if I break off from time to time and tell a different story in a different world. While the Lost Tales of Power series is a space opera, “The Null” is more of a troubled superhero tale.

  You can find out more about me and the Lost Tales of Power series by visiting our website or my author page on Amazon.

  Green Gifts

  by Endi Webb

  Martin glanced up. Nothing, he thought. There’s nothing here, and nobody talking to me. Not that he particularly minded the idea of some company. But normally he did prefer to know who he was talking to.

  That was the thing about this post. It was so damn far. Far from home, far from family; hell, it was a three-day drive in the crawltrail just to reach Rionegro to stock up on supplies at the local market (which was really just a shed attached to the bar). “Town” was probably stretching things. From what he’d seen, the bar came first, and a few diehards had decided to just settle on down right next door rather than hike or drive or fly or whatever it was they did to cross the miles of densely wooded terrain out here in the Belenite wilds.

  The wind outside the observation deck whistled sharply as it picked up speed, blowing clouds of teal dust across the glass and coating the tower in a chalky white residue, evidence of the ongoing pollination efforts underway in the woods below. Martin shook his head, trying to focus on the data recorder lying crosswise on his lap.

  Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen… He counted under his breath. He held an advanced degree in xenobiology from one of the most prestigious universities in this sector of the Empire, and here he was, surveying the same five kilometers day in and day out. It was, in his opinion, a job that could just as easily have been done by old Nico, who was, as far as Martin could tell, a permanent fixture on the third stool from the left at the Rionegro bar. Except old Nico is blind, Martin thought, Not that it actually matters much in this shithole of a—

  TAKE TO ME!

  Martin startled at the shout, which reverberated against his superior temporal gyrus with a fierce insistence. He fumbled with the data recorder, looking for something, anything, to indicate that it had registered the silvery voice that had cut through his conscious thoughts and left him with a dull ache above his left ear. If it weren’t for the physical evidence of his own bodily pain, Martin might assume that he was hallucinating the whole thing; out here alone with his repetitive, mind-numbing task, perhaps he was slowly dripping down the drain of boredom, or insanity.

  Unless he was hallucinating the pain too. Some sort of psychosomatic response to the unending lines of flora and fauna that he knew he ought to be more excited about, given his training and the fact that they were utterly unique in the known Empire, actual native species on a terraformed duplicate that ought to contain only the original pattern, that of Old Earth. It was mind-boggling, career-making, and he was absolutely forbidden to publish anything, any hint of anything, by those secretive, isolationist bastards lining the senate halls back in Nuevoaire, with their ornamental knives and their ridiculous gaucho pants straining against their bureaucratic corpulence—

  TAKE TO ME!

  Searing pain shot through his skull. He turned, half-bent in agony, his hands feeling for the ancient leather chair as his vision blurred against the cutting edge of the insistent command.

  It was going to be a long evening. Just him and his particularly unpleasant psychosomatic symptom. What the hell did it even mean, anyway? “Take to me.” Stupid subconscious. Couldn’t even hallucinate properly out here.

  TAKE TO—

  Martin slumped, welcoming the dark relief of unconsciousness before the voice could finish its inane command.

  * * *

  The afternoon Belenite sun beat down against the brown earth. Carla scuffed her feet against the gravel, slowing her swing so she could jump off. She waved frenetically at her mother, who was on the vidcom again, talking with Carla’s grandma, which meant that she would
be really busy for a long time. Carla had seen it before.

  She sighed. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her grandma, or her mother, but every once in a while it would be nice if her mom would actually play with her when they came to the park. She had tried talking to the small cluster of kids over by the climbing wall, but her had words come out all muddled, her tongue tripping and stumbling, and the kids had stared at her blankly before returning to their game. Something about running a store and selling food. Something you had to talk to do. She knew she sounded dumb. She always sounded dumb. Which sucked, because she wasn’t. She read everything she could find, even those archaic Earth classics everyone else complained about. She liked the sound of their fancy words in her head. Gave her something fun to think about when the only thing coming out of her mouth was a stuttering gasp.

  Her dad had told her to stop trying so hard, to just relax. Just breathe, sweetie. That’s right. In-two-three-four and hold-two-three-four and out-two-three-four. Good. See?

  Alone and silent, Carla settled herself against the trunk of a large tree. It was so big she couldn’t even put her arms around it. She wondered how long it had stood here, growing bigger and bigger. Maybe it was really old. Like, maybe it was original old.

  Carla knew from her teachers at school that life here on Belen was, relatively speaking, somewhat new. It didn’t seem new, not with big ancient trees growing in the parks, but Belen itself had only been settled 276 years ago. It was one of the first. One of the original planets the humans on Old Earth had found, ready and waiting to receive the colonists who spilled out across the universe, relieving Earth of a litany of torturous problems: overpopulation, overpollution, overterraformation, over-everything, it sounded like.

  So, old for Belen was still new for the universe. But that was really hard to think about. Especially when one hadn’t been traveling out in the Empire like some of the other kids at school. Those really snobby ones who rubbed it in that they had been “out there” and “seen things.” When you had only ever been on Belen, a giant tree possibly planted by the original colonists seemed really old, and possibly special.

  Carla closed her eyes. The knobbly roots rising from the ground pressed against her back and legs. She could hear her mom, still chattering away on the vidcom with Grandma. Something about a recipe for chicken and dumplings that was supposed to be “really authentic,” according to the conversation.

  hide

  Carla stiffened. She opened her eyes and looked around. No one was there. She glanced up, trying to see if one of the kids had decided to climb the tree to tease her by whispering down from above, but the branches were empty.

  hide

  There it was again. A soft voice, plinking like summer rain against a corrugated tin roof, with a gentle, corrosive bite. Who was telling her to hide? And why?

  Carla rubbed her head. She could feel a headache coming on, and she hated headaches. She always got them after her visit to the medcenter, where she worked with her speech therapist. Lots of exercises involving placing her tongue here, then there, against her teeth and then down again, and swallowing with the tip pressed just so, so that she didn’t accidentally spit or slur her words. She envied the easy speech of her peers. For Carla, crafting a sentence took careful planning, practice even, to get the words out clearly, and in the right order. It was like a dance. A really tiny, annoying dance she had to do that only took place in her mouth.

  hide

  She knew what she was hearing. Hearing, listening—these were things Carla excelled at. She did them all the time. Forget her treacherous tongue; she could always trust her ears.

  So she got up, hitched up her shorts, and walked off into the woods at the edge of the park.

  * * *

  Arthritis stiffened Papito’s fingers. It always acted up when he sat outside in the garden, probably something to do with the rich humidity that descended upon Belen as winter receded. Better to sit out in the garden, fingers, wrists, and knees complaining, than to be stuck back inside in the common room. The place stank. Too many old people, not enough windows. Okay, there were windows. But that new head nurse, the one from the Imperial Medical Research Facility that had opened in Nuevoaire several years back, she had really taken that Imperial bullshit to heart. He wasn’t sure what said Imperial bullshit was, exactly, but it seemed to have something to do with keeping the windows closed at the care homes. Because she refused to let them open Papito’s window.

  So he left. Every day he left his room, his vidcom, and his tScreen—which, according to them, should have provided him with all necessary familial connections and conversations, as well as any needed mental stimulation, through a variety of games and age-appropriate (ha!) activities—and went out.

  He liked it out in the garden. It wasn’t crowded. That pretty much summed it up. After his retirement from the Belenite Air Guard, it had taken him only one month with his feet planted firmly on the ground to realize that the only reason he’d been able to make it as far as he had in his life was that he’d spent the majority of his time away: away from his wife, his kids, their kids. Turns out he was a singularly solitary old bastard, one whom everyone preferred in relatively small doses, ideally once or twice a month. The feeling was mutual.

  So he’d left again, under the pretense of financial strain from a miserly military pension. Which was partially true: they really took the whole “money is the root of all evil” thing to heart here on Belen, at least ideologically. Or maybe it was the one about “freeing oneself from desire” in order to find peace. Or “the law of consecration.” Hell, the damn state priests were always coming up with some way or another to make sure that everyone—somos unidos!—shared everything. Unless you were in the senate. He’d spent his share of time in uniform, shined up and stiff, staring at the backs of various senators and public officials as they spoke, or awarded, or commemorated. Those senate asses were hard to miss.

  He’d left retirement to pilot an ancient ship: pre-gravitics, no railguns to defend against the pirates, the kind of thing no one else flew, in part because they valued—well, their lives. It wasn’t much, just hauling cargo off-world to the port, and the pay was shit, but Papito loved it. He loved being up, above, and looking down through the thinning atmosphere to the rich, verdant planet below. From space, Belen glistened against the cold, blank blackness, her seas dark and her lands dense.

  Papito knew that part of what moved him about his home world was her singularity. She was unique. In all the known universe, only Belen had truly welcomed the colonists from Earth. At all the other planets, the colonists had found exactly what the exploratory reports had said they would find: planets in the Goldilocks zone with established land masses and a beginner’s chemistry set of the basic building blocks for life. Those planets were sufficient: the colonists would do the necessary work of planting, cultivating, breeding, and seeding, skipping evolutionary eons as they spread out across space.

  But Belen, she had been a surprise. The preliminary reports had indicated a habitable planet, elementally compatible with late-twenty-first-century-Earth life forms. But the truth… no one had guessed at the truth: Belen was alive.

  She had surprised everyone with her lush life, her fully formed native life, her honestly extraterrestrial life. Sure, it was mostly plants and a startling amount of insects, nothing like the mammalian strain that had overrun and overwrung Old Earth. But it was sacred.

  Papito didn’t give a lot of credit to anyone, priests least of all (well, okay, maybe priests more than senators), but even he had to admit that they were right about one thing: their Belen, she was a gift from the universe, a beautiful grace given to a chosen people, a people wandering and far from home, and it was their duty to protect her against the prying eyes of the increasingly greedy and spectacularly manipulative Empire. That was why he had joined the Air Guard to begin with, to protect her. That was why he had flown a rickety death-trap back and forth, hauling trade off-world to the distant port—so Belen’
s skies would never see the shadow of an Imperial ship, or a November clan pirate, or, hell, a Corsican pleasure cruise for all he knew.

  He rubbed his hands, still stiff, beneath his nose. Damn thing was running. Must be his allergies acting up. That would explain his watering eyes too. Getting old, really actually uselessly old, was a bitch. His body was betraying him, and his family agreed that really, for the sanity of all involved, it was best for everyone if he lived away, so their visits could continue in the monthly rhythm they’d held his entire life. So he lived here, in a box, with nurses to administer the meds, a small patch of turf, a bench out back that faced the climbing vines, and beyond that, a small civic park. And that was his garden where he sat each day, looking out, and up.

  He glanced down at his space-dried hands, wrinkles overreaching each knuckle and joint. His eye caught a glimpse of a black-tipped leaf peeking out from beneath his sensible cardigan. He shoved the sleeve back awkwardly, exposing a length of leathered forearm. He traced the tattooed vine that began just above his wrist and ran the length of his entire arm before circling his left breast and then branching into the tendrils that encircled his neck. The vine sagged now, stretched thin and fine, but the ink stayed true.

  It would. It was from her. The gift Belen gave to every single one of her five million inhabitants. When they reached the age of accountability—when they could understand the sacred life she had welcomed them with—they were brought to the civic temple, where the priests began their tattoo above the left breast. It was a promise to protect her, a promise to keep her secrets, and it bound them together—all of them, even solitary bastards like himself and the fat-assed senators.