The Spider and the Fly

by C.E. Stalbaum

  ***

  Jen was lying in an unconscious heap when Markus arrived, bound and secured to the table with enough cables to restrain a frenzied kytosaurus. The suppression collar was still clamped tightly around her neck, but after the attack the Council didn’t exactly trust in its efficacy anymore. Instead they’d simply anesthetized her, and he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if they voted to keep her sedated indefinitely. Or maybe Revask and Tavore would win enough support to simply have her executed instead. Markus wouldn’t take any outcome off the table at this point.

  “Where’s her partner?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “The Kali is secured in the adjacent wing,” the Krosian guard said in a deep baritone voice. This wasn’t his normal post; he was one of the council guardsmen who had been reassigned to watch over the prison. Apparently the fact that three quarters of the normal prison wardens were human had concerned the Council enough to rotate in backup. “The Councilors didn’t want them anywhere near each other.”

  “I’m sure they didn’t,” Markus muttered. “Can I speak with Thexyl?”

  “Not until the Council has come to a decision. In fact, it would probably be best if you left.”

  Markus leaned against the bars and sighed. He’d known full well coming in here that he wouldn’t actually be able to speak with Jen, but he’d at least hoped to have a chance to speak with her partner. If things went as badly as Markus feared, these next few hours of freedom were likely to be his last. Foln wasn’t going to stick his neck out to protect him—the old man had made that abundantly clear during their previous conversation—and that meant the only thing standing between Markus and a prison cell was probably Selaris. She would certainly argue on his behalf, but with her waning influence that wasn’t worth much. He needed to figure something out, and quickly.

  And that meant it was time to start taking some risks.

  “I need to speak with the Kali,” he said, turning to face the guard and reaching out with his mind. “And I don’t want to be bothered while I do.”

  Markus had never been a master of telepathic domination like some of the other Spiders, but he was still proficient enough at it when he needed to be. Besides, Krosian minds were a little different than humans, and in his experience their intensified emotions just made them easier to manipulate. That was definitely the case with this one.

  “Fine, just don’t tell the Councilors,” the guard said as he punched in his access codes on the nearby door. “You probably don’t want to take too long.”

  “I won’t,” Markus assured him, subtly erasing his presence from the other man’s mind. In thirty seconds he wouldn’t remember that this visit or conversation had ever taken place. “Thank you.”

  The Krosian grunted and walked back towards his office. There were only two other guards on duty here at the moment, and Markus had already brushed his presence out of their memories when he’d first come in. As long as Revask or one of the other councilors didn’t show up in the next few minutes, he was probably fine.

  He walked through the door into the other cell block and approached the middle of the three prisons. Thexyl leaned up, his scales rippling a cool, neutral gray.

  “Are you hurt?” Markus asked.

  “Not substantially,” the Kali replied. “Certainly not as much as I could have been.”

  “I’m glad. I guess I deactivated her collar just in time.”

  A small patch of blue danced across the alien’s neck. “I’d wondered what happened. I couldn’t decide if it had been damaged during the fight or Jen had merely found a way to overpower it.”

  “When her escort didn’t answer his holopad I knew there was trouble. I was just hoping she wasn’t the one causing it.”

  “It was a well-coordinated ambush, and we made every effort to avoid violence,” Thexyl said.

  “I believe you. The problem is that the Council might not, and frankly even if they do it almost doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, whoever staged the ambush seems to have accounted for all contingencies. Our choices were either to die or to be transformed into pariahs. Quite clever.”

  “For what it’s worth, I prefer this option,” Markus told him. “We just need to figure out how we’re going to handle it. If some of the councilors get their way, you might never leave this cell…and Jen might never wake up.”

  The blue patch on his neck slowly spread across the rest of his scales. “You don’t expect Foln to protest that decision?”

  “He can protest it all he wants; the problem is that I’m not sure how many people will be willing to listen. I know you haven’t been here long, but there’s been something of a racial war brewing in this city for quite a while now.”

  “Yes, that was actually what I was discussing with Jen before we were accosted,” Thexyl said. “Frankly, I’m surprised you chose to bring us here, given how volatile the situation seemed.”

  “It’s still safer than a base in normal space where the Spiders could track us down,” Markus said. “I never thought it would come to this.”

  “Well, I’m certainly willing to entertain options for escape. I am surprised you’re here, however; I had assumed the Mire would completely sever ties to us the moment we became a liability—especially since you still have access to the Damadus data crystals.”

  Markus felt his cheek twitch. “You believe we’re terrorists then, too, don’t you?”

  “I believe that situations in the real galaxy are often more complicated than the Holosphere leads us to believe,” Thexyl replied mildly. “I am not blind to the fact that the Convectorate has innocent blood on its hands, but the Foln family legacy is hardly one of tolerance. Lord Foln’s grandfather was one of the Sarafan responsible for the destruction of my planet, and he actively worked to ensure that non-humans lived only as subordinates beneath the Dominion.”

  “That was a long time ago, and Soren Foln is not Krucius Foln.”

  “Perhaps not, but are his views really so different? Does he care about the non-humans in this city, or is he more interested in the technology and resources they protect?”

  Reflexively, Markus opened his mouth to defend his leader…but nothing came out. That was exactly what Foln thought of his city from the moment the Mire had entered the alliance, and his opinion had never changed. Markus himself had actually agreed with that evaluation initially—he’d known that New Keledon’s resources, particularly the psionic technology, would be a tremendous asset to their cause. But as the months passed and he spent more time inside these shielded walls, he’d realized how much the people here needed the Mire’s help even more. Selaris and the other psionic adepts needed his expertise and training, and everyone else needed their supplies, from conventional power generators to food synthesizers.

  Foln had balked at giving them anything, but Markus believed it was a worthwhile investment. The aliens here were building blocks for future alliances once the Convectorate finally collapsed. They might not have shared DNA, but they certainly shared the same plight. Everyone here, human or otherwise, was a victim of Convectorate oppression in one way or another, and all of them deserved recompense.

  Naturally, Foln didn’t see it that way. He believed the aliens were poaching off human sacrifice and technology, and he would have been happy if Selaris’s father had never brought them to the asteroid in the first place. For a long time Markus had held out hope that Foln’s attitude would eventually change, just like he’d held out hope that Jen would eventually see the Convectorate for what it really was. Perhaps he’d been a fool on both counts, and now his mistakes were all coming back to haunt him.

  “Forget Foln,” Markus said into the silence. “The Mire is not one man.”

  “No, it is not,” Thexyl agreed. “Nor is the Convectorate one council of corrupt Hierarchs. As I said, the galaxy is complicated.”

  “Yet you still support the Tarreen for some reason. Why would a Kali be so loyal to the Convectorate that he chooses to serve one o
f their Spiders? Non-humans aren’t exactly common around the Nidus.”

  “I am not a patriot, if that’s what you’re asking, but I am loyal to my friend.”

  Markus shook his head. “Why? What did she do for you?”

  “She saved my life by risking her own. I owe her for that.”

  “I see. I’d always heard that Kali had a strong sense of honor, though you probably did save her life earlier if the reports about the battle on the concourse were accurate. She couldn’t have held out so long on her own.”

  His head bobbed to the side, and a streak of meditative black appeared along his cheeks. “You misunderstand. Mine is not a debt that can be settled through combat. Lives can be saved in other ways.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that until she finds her purpose, her potential is wasted.”

  “And you don’t think loyally serving the Convectorate is it, huh?” Markus asked dryly.

  “Like most sentient beings, Jen seeks order and purpose,” Thexyl said. “The Convectorate provides both…to a point. She is not blind to its cracks, however, and I hope that sooner rather than later she realizes it is not something that can be repaired—it must be rebuilt. You taught her this lesson once, and I believe she will eventually remember it.”

  “So you want her to defect? You want her to join us?”

  “Few choices in life are truly binary; there are alternatives between the Convectorate and the Mire. It is only a matter of finding them.”

  Markus glanced back over his shoulder to the door. “Well, I’d be more than willing to search for them, but first we need to get out of here. I might be able to secure us a shuttle, but smuggling the two of you out of here and getting all the way to the docks won’t be easy.”

  “You were a Spider. Are any of the Flies here strong enough to stop you?”

  “No, probably not,” Markus admitted. “But I’d rather not hurt anyone if I don’t have to.”

  The Kali’s scales returned to a neutral gray. “I understand.”

  Markus stepped over to the cell door. “I’ll be back. One way or another, I’ll get the two of you out of here.”

  “Very well,” Thexyl said. “We shall be waiting.”