Chapter Eighteen
One week. One week Tsarl Drathir had been cooped up in this compound while he ran his audit. He’d only been away from the Ministry this long a handful of times over the past decade. He almost felt like a field agent again, though in thirty years of service across dozens of worlds and hundreds of starships, he had never been anywhere and felt so…exposed.
Despite the protection of his psionic disruptor, it was impossible to shake the feeling that his thoughts were not his own. One of the Drones could have been listening in as it casually passed by outside, or perhaps the Spider trainees were practicing plucking out a Tarreen’s intimate secrets as humorous fodder for their classmates. How could he know for certain? He was one of the most powerful men in the galaxy, and yet here, alone in the Widow’s private citadel, he could have been nothing more than an experimental rodent sealed inside an invisible cage.
Drathir hissed softly between his fangs. He’d been an anxious mess for the past two days, ever since he’d watched his former aide casually decimate an entire enemy base on Telonius. In that one moment his mission had gone from a quick inspection to a potential battle for survival, and as much as it annoyed him to admit it, he was woefully out of practice at being a field operative. His nerves were getting the better of him like he was a raw recruit, and it was more than a little embarrassing. He’d nearly sprinted to his shuttle and retreated back to the Ministry a half a dozen times already. After all, he’d surely assembled enough evidence to spur the Minister’s Conclave to action, so what else did he need?
But no, he’d always convinced himself to stay just a bit longer. With the cure to the Pandrophage potentially in Mire hands, he couldn’t afford to leave just yet. He needed to see this through until Coveri was recaptured. Otherwise the Widow and the Spider Program would be the least of the Convectorate’s worries…
The door console beeped softly, and Drathir retracted his claws and forced himself to relax. His psionic disruptor was working just fine, but that didn’t mean the humans here wouldn’t be able to read his body language. And under the circumstances, he wasn’t about to let them believe they were in control.
“Enter.”
The door slid open, and Ralon Sisk peeked his head inside. “Your Excellency. The Widow said you wished to speak with me when I returned.”
“Yes, come in,” the minister said. Once again it was hard to believe this was the same man who’d been standing quietly in the corner of Drathir’s office for the past three months. Everyone at the Ministry had known Sisk was a Spider, but none of them had understood how powerful he truly was. “Please, have a seat.”
Sisk glanced to the couch but didn’t move. “Is there something you need?”
“I wanted to personally congratulate you on the success of your mission. We can only hope the Mire will take heed of your warnings and acquiesce.”
“I doubt that. They are nothing if not resilient.”
“So you don’t believe we’ll see Coveri again?” Drathir asked.
“We will, once Vale escapes and brings him back to us. It is only a matter of time.”
“You have a great deal of faith in your fellow Spiders, then. Despite the fact that Coveri was once one of them.”
“Vale is not Coveri,” Sisk replied matter-of-factly. “She will return with him.”
“I hope you’re right. You know the two of them better than anyone else, I imagine.”
“Yes.”
Drathir grunted softly. Sisk had never been one for small talk during his stint at the Ministry, either. It was understandable; verbosity wasn’t exactly a useful skill for a professional killer.
“While you’re here, I wanted to ask you a few questions about your background,” Drathir said.
“You already reviewed everything in my file before I was assigned as your liaison.”
“I’m speaking of things that weren’t included in the official records. There’s no mention at all of where the Spiders found you originally.”
“I don’t know,” Sisk said. “The Drones wipe the memories of all Flies in preparation for training. Our pasts are not relevant to our future.”
“Quite the slogan, I must say,” Drathir murmured. “But in all this time, you’ve never wondered about your parents? In my experience, humans tend to place considerable importance on familial attachments.”
Sisk shrugged. “If they cooperated with the Spider who originally found me, then they were rewarded lavishly. If they didn’t, then they were fools who were executed. Dwelling on their fate serves no purpose.”
“I see. Did Coveri and Vale feel the same way?”
“All Spiders do.”
“Ah,” Drathir murmured. “I wondered if perhaps Coveri had learned something of his past that ultimately triggered his defection.”
Sisk’s feet shuffled slightly. It wasn’t much as far as visual cues went, but it was probably the closest thing to a real reaction Drathir had seen in months of working with the man every day.
“Coveri was a fool,” Sisk said. “After Mirador, he started to believe that the Mire was the true future of humanity. He thought that all of us were merely pawns of the Tarreen.”
“And you don’t agree?”
“No.”
“But it is true, is it not?” Drathir pressed. “You and the other humans serve at the whim of the Hierarchy, and your sole purpose is to fan out across the galaxy and capture the paragons of your race for indoctrination as agents of the Convectorate. You have become the tools of the species that conquered your empire…and you expect me to believe this doesn’t make you or the others the least bit bitter?”
Sisk’s entire body seemed to tense, and for a brief, terrifying moment, Drathir wondered if he’d made a fatal mistake. The man in front of him might have been a fleshy sack less than half the weight of a Tarreen, but size and muscle meant nothing compared to raw psionic might…
“Are you questioning my loyalty, Minister?”
“I’m trying to understand it,” Drathir said, licking his fangs and trying desperately to ignore the growing tightness in his chest. “I can’t comprehend why anyone in your position would willingly serve a government that actively antagonizes his people. With your psionic powers and physical training, you could leave this place and live like a sector prefect—any of you could, at any time. And yet here you are.”
A faint, almost imperceptible smile drew across the Spider’s lips. “Worried that you can’t control us, Minister?”
Yes. “Not at all. As I said, I merely wish to understand your motivations—yours and the rest of the operatives here.”
“I serve the Widow,” Sisk said, “and through her I serve the Convectorate. Without a strong government, the galaxy would be consumed by a never-ending war.”
“The Dominion was a strong government,” Drathir pointed out. “One where humans like yourself lived as gods amongst supplicants. You don’t wish a return to that day and age?”
Sisk shrugged. “Does it matter? The Pandrophage destroyed the Sarafan, and they are not coming back.”
“The Mire is working to change that even now. You aren’t even the slightest bit tempted to see what would happen if they succeed?”
“No. The Hierarchy has proven its wisdom, and where they lead, I shall follow.” He tilted his head to the side. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
Not in the slightest. “I do. I was merely curious. And you seem to think that Agent Vale shares your patriotism.”
“She will not join the Mire, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Sisk said. “Coveri attempted to convert her once and failed.”
“I see that here,” Drathir noted, nodding down to his datapad. “The Ministry never knew that another of your people was involved in the incident, but according to Vale’s own report, Coveri had been actively trying to convince her to leave with him for the better part of a year…and yet she never once mentioned his odd behavior to anyone.”
“A mistake she freely admit
s. She has resolved herself to bringing him to justice, and I have no doubt that she will eventually succeed.”
“But you can see why some in the Ministry would be concerned about her involvement. If one of my operatives had withheld information about a potential defector, I would have shot him myself. Yet the Widow seemingly ignored this grievous transgression, and now Vale is our sole asset in a critical intelligence operation involving the same man she once let loose!”
“Her involvement is coincidence,” Sisk said. “Her mission on Briton Chalo had nothing to do with Coveri, if you remember.”
“Yes, how convenient,” Drathir muttered. “Unfortunately, circumstance does little to assuage my doubts about her loyalty or the handling of this operation.”
“Then perhaps you should express your concerns to the Widow. I’m unsure what you expect from me.”
The minister leaned back in his chair and folded his claws in front of him. “I merely wished to understand you better. The Widow considered the three of you to be her top agents. Unlike the other Spider initiates, none of you received any memory imprints, skill implant packages, or anything else to accelerate your training. You were taught here, by hand, for almost ten years. Do you know why?”
“The Widow believed we would be exceptional agents, and so she granted us exceptional training,” Sisk replied evenly. “That is all I know.”
“I see,” Drathir whispered. There was obviously more to it, of course, but it was possible that the Widow had never told Sisk or the others anything about her specific plans for them. And even if she had, it was clear that Sisk had no interest in speaking about it.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Minister?”
“No, you may leave.”
“As you wish, Your Excellency,” Sisk said with a truncated bow. “Good day.”
He turned and walked outside, and the moment the door shut behind him Drathir let out a long, exasperated hiss. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to get out of Sisk, exactly, but if anything that little chat had made him feel worse rather than better. He refused to believe that mere patriotism was the reason the Widow or her Spiders continued to serve. In his experience, few men of any species would trade a life of power and prestige for one of service. Even indoctrination could only go so far.
Perhaps that was all that had happened to Coveri—perhaps he’d realized that he could live a life as a god away from the Nidus, especially if the Mire had a base beyond the reach of the other Spiders’ psychic webs. If so, it meant that Vale might also succumb to that temptation, especially given the flexible allegiances of her past…
Ten minutes and a thousand dark suspicions later, the holopad at the center of the desk beeped. Drathir reached over and flicked it on.
“What is it?”
“I have a report for you, Your Excellency,” Visek said. “Is this a good time?”
“Good enough,” the minister murmured, dragging his thoughts back into the present. “Go ahead.”
“My team pulled up every file we could find on Krucius Foln, including a number of old holo-recordings from the restricted archives of the Science Ministry.”
Drathir smiled despite himself. If Science Minister Curaad knew that one of his colleagues was snooping around in his restricted archives, he would be livid. The ministers were as territorial as broodlings most of the time, with each believing their little domain was the most important. It was an attitude endemic to the Asraad caste as a whole, and it only grew more pronounced the higher up in the chain one climbed. In this case it also meant that Curaad’s files would have been well protected, which once again spoke to the skill of Visek and his supplicants.
“Go on,” Drathir prompted.
“The short version is that calling Foln a human supremacist would be gravely understating the matter. He wasn’t just a racial or cultural purist—he believed that all other species were inferior on a genetic level.”
“Charming. I wonder what data he was selectively ignoring to reach that conclusion.”
“Many of his observations were backed up by science, at least in terms of the traits he cared about,” Visek went on. “Human DNA has always proven the most receptive to psychogenetic modification, and of course they are the only known species capable of true telepathy or telekinesis. But in any event, the most interesting part was how much Foln seemed to despise his government. His later symposia from just before the war were particularly visceral—he verbally assaulted many in the Sarafan leadership and claimed they were too willing to concede to alien demands.”
“It sounds like he would fit in well with most of the prefects,” Drathir replied dryly. “Did you find anything in particular about the Damadus Project?”
“Nothing we didn’t already know, unfortunately. The project was the last attempt by the Sarafan to cure the Pandrophage before the Dominion was completely broken, but no one ever heard from the ship after it launched. If we hadn’t just found it, I admit I would be skeptical as to whether it ever actually existed.”
“A part of me still is. Anything else?”
“One thing, sir. We did discover that Foln had a mate, and she also became a noted psychogeneticist.”
Drathir rapped his claws on the table. “Is that so?”
“Yes, sir. Her name was Sarena Naradov, a human from some obscure province on Praxius with no direct ties to the rest of the Sarafan leadership. Interestingly enough, she started her career working for the DID—the Dominion Intelligence Directorate—and she was assigned to monitor the Foln family under suspicion of treason. Apparently during her investigation she fell in love with him, and the two became a force for political change as they sought to return the Dominion to its roots.”
“Do we know what happened to her? Was she involved with the Damadus Project?”
“We couldn’t find any direct ties to that project, but she was working on something else. She started a research initiative in 12 DE, almost ten years before our invasion. Her ultimate goal, if you can believe it, was immortality for the Sarafan.”
Drathir’s eyes narrowed at the screen. “I trust that means more than finally tracking down the Tears of Elaris or some other mythological nonsense.”
“Yes, sir. Naradov was working on developing a psionic technique that would allow the Sarafan to transfer their consciousness inside another living being, literally shunting out the other person’s mind and completely taking over their body. She believed this would allow the eldest of the Sarafan to essentially live forever, dumping their old bodies for new ones from time to time. It’s not an entirely dissimilar concept to some of the cybernetic research Science Minister Curaad has been chasing for the last decade.”
A fresh knot twisted in Drathir’s stomach. He’d heard the myths of the human religions before, especially those that worshipped the Seraph as a divine being. They believed that the Sarafan had eventually found a way to ascend beyond their physical bodies and hop between biological shells. He’d always assumed something like that was impossible, but now, having witnessed the power of the Spiders in person…
“How far did the project get?” he asked hoarsely.
“The records cease before the invasion, and I wouldn’t be surprised if everything afterwards was destroyed. All we know for certain is that Naradov was testing the process on cloned humans, the idea being that they could endlessly grow new host shells for themselves once age or injury had ravaged their other form.”
The knot in Drathir’s stomach tightened, and he glanced over to his terminal and keyed in a quick query. As expected, the results came back negative.
“Immortal psychics capable of leapfrogging through time,” he whispered. “Imagine the benefits. They could avoid the ravages of age, the dangers of injury…even the lasting effects of a disease.”
“Such as the Pandrophage,” Visek murmured. “If one body became infected, they could presumably switch to another before their power loss became complete.”
“Precisely. And I think
we both know what that means.”
Visek ran his tongue across his fangs. “Some of the Sarafan might still be alive.”
“Worse than that,” Drathir told him. “I just checked the database—there’s no record of anyone else ever holding the Widow’s post here, and the Spider Program was initiated almost eighty years ago.”
“You think the Widow might be Foln’s wife?”
“You just said that this Naradov was a former intelligence operative who had no love for the Dominion or the rest of the Sarafan,” Drathir said. “And now she lives like a goddess in her own little realm, seeking out the best and brightest of her people and training them into lethal assassins.”
“You’re suggesting she might be trying to rebuild the Sarafan?”
“Why not? At first I was worried that she might secretly be supporting the Mire, but perhaps I wasn’t giving her enough credit. We know that Soren Foln is every bit the supremacist his grandfather was, but he doesn’t have the resources to fight us directly. The Widow, on the other hand, could bring us down from within without ever firing a shot.”
Visek’s tail thrashed in thought behind him. “That still doesn’t explain why she would have harmed so many of her own people over the years. The Spiders have killed thousands of humans, and not just the uncooperative parents of Flies. They wiped out nearly two thousand civilians at Mirador five years ago. That doesn’t sound like much of an alliance.”
“She could simply be culling the weak among their ranks,” Drathir suggested, “or perhaps she’s not allied with the Mire at all and cares only for her own resources. I don’t know, but either way we’re onto something, Gral, and I fear that even the Hierarchy might not know the truth.”
“You should warn them immediately, sir, along with the Conclave.”
“I will, but it may take them too long to respond. How long until our fleet is ready?”
“Admiral Mothaal’s task force could be at the Nidus in roughly fifty hours, sir,” Visek told him. “But I recommend you leave before then, just in case.”
“No,” Drathir said, taking in a deep breath. “The more I can learn before this comes to a head, the better. Besides, the Mire may still have a hold on the cure, and I need to be here in case anything else happens. Just make sure they’re not late.”
Visek nodded. “Don’t worry, sir. Whatever web the Widow has spun, we will unravel it. And this time perhaps the Hierarchy will recognize the human threat and exterminate them once and for all.”
“We can only hope,” Drathir told him. He reached out and closed the connection, then sank deeper into his chair.
When this was all over, the Conclave would have no choice but to recognize his heroism. It had taken thirty years for him to accrue enough prestige to ascend into their ranks, but perhaps this time he’d vault himself directly into the Hierarchy within a mere six months. He couldn’t imagine what grand feat any of the Hierarchs could have possibly achieved to warrant their position compared to this.
Grunting softly to himself, Drathir picked up his datapad and got back to work.
The Spider and the Fly Page 33
