Chapter Nineteen
The prison guard had doubled in the twelve hours since Markus’s previous break in, and the Council’s anxiety level was probably rising every minute he didn’t report in. Not that he could blame them. This whole experience had been an eye-opening reminder of how much damage he could do to this city if he’d really wanted to, and now more than ever he understood their fear of Jen—and what she represented. Short of blanketing New Keledon in Kali soldiers, there was almost nothing they could do to stop him.
He’d actually wondered if Revask or one of the others would wise up enough to stick one of Thexyl’s people on guard duty at key checkpoints, but thankfully only a handful of Kali lived in the city and none of them had anything resembling combat training. So instead the Council had been forced to pile on more conventional guards, and with a cursory telepathic scan Markus could pick out a few more Krosians, a Neyris, and another human. To the masses gathering in the Agora, the extra muscle was probably a welcome show of force.
For him, of course, they were no obstacle at all.
He was standing in front of Thexyl’s cell less than a minute after slipping in the front door, and he squatted down next to the security panel and punched in the appropriate access codes. With a barely audible click the old-fashioned metal gate swung open, and the man inside stood up from his cot.
“I trust you’ve come up with an escape plan,” the Kali said quietly. “Regrettably, I lack the ability to whisk the guards with my mind.”
“Your camouflage should do the trick,” Markus told him. “I can suppress everyone’s curiosity enough that they won’t notice you.”
Thexyl tilted his head towards the adjacent cell. “What about Jen? It will take some time to flush the sedatives from her system.”
“I wasn’t planning on doing that until we reach the shuttle. Until then I’ll just have to carry her.”
“And no one will notice?”
Markus shrugged. “You’ve been her partner for how many years? You should know how this works.”
“I assumed lugging a body over your shoulder would be enough to raise suspicion and pierce your illusion.”
“We’ll be fine,” Markus assured him. “I know most of these people, and that makes it considerably easier to manipulate their perceptions.”
He strode over to Jen’s cell and input two codes, one from the warden and one from the on-duty guard that rotated every eight hours. The security wasn’t quite up to the standards of the vaults on the Pon Vara casino liner, but given what the people here had to work with—and how rarely the prison was used—it was generally good enough. Just not against a telepath.
“I’ll carry her,” he said. “Go invisible and stay as close to me as possible.”
“It’s hardly invisibility,” Thexyl replied. “But hopefully it will be sufficient.”
His scales shifted until they took on the precise coloring of the walls and flooring. Markus could still make out a vague, wraith-like shimmer, but only because he knew what to look for. The few surviving Keledonian chameleons would have been green with envy—or red or blue or whatever color it actually turned them.
“Just let me do the talking if needed,” Markus said, reaching down and deactivating the automated IV lines feeding Jen sedatives. With a soft grunt he then hoisted her up onto his shoulder and nodded towards the door. “Let’s go.”
In all likelihood the guards would ignore him as readily on the way out as they had on the way in, but just in case, he stretched out and telekinetically flicked the environmental controls on the far side of the room. The small keypad beeped in response, and the two closest men in the room immediately moved over to investigate. He nudged gently against their minds, convincing them that a seemingly random anomaly in the power matrix was far more interesting than it actually was, then gestured to Thexyl and slipped out of the room. The Kali followed closely, and a few seconds later they were out on the streets and making their way towards the docks.
“One of the guards came to check on Jen hourly,” Thexyl said once they’d made it clear of any pedestrians. “Will that give us enough time?”
“I implanted a suggestion that they’d already checked recently, so we should be fine,” Markus told him. “I have the launch codes for one of the old shuttles that doesn’t see much use anymore. And before you ask, yes, I checked the maintenance logs—it should fly just fine.”
“I see. Where do we go from there?”
“We stay in astral space, at least for a while,” he said. “It’s still the safest place for us to try and link with the data crystal. I just hope Jen’s willing to cooperate.”
“As do I.”
Markus signaled for quiet as they swept through the concourse towards the docks. The guards were spread out across a wide area here, and that made manipulating their minds a bit more complicated than back at the prison. Still, it wasn’t overly difficult; he spent a few extra minutes ensuring that his mental illusion was perfect, and then he and Thexyl dashed off again. As he’d expected, no one tossed them a second glance—or even a first one, in most cases—and soon they reached the docks themselves.
He had always been stricken by how lightly the area was guarded on a daily basis. On most planets, starports were considered the highest priority for extra security, right along with military garrisons and weapons emplacements. The main difference, he’d eventually realized, was that the people here didn’t want to leave, or they at least feared the consequences of returning to Convectorate space enough to stay put. Besides, each of the two dozen ships currently docked here were equipped with some type of rudimentary security system, and outside of Selaris’s friend Thomas, the locals weren’t exactly slicing savants. In the city’s fifty year history, no one had ever actually tried to steal a ship and escape…until today.
Unfortunately for them, however, with the quarantine against the Mire in full swing and the Council less trusting of Foln than ever, the guard patrols had been tripled. Normally that would be just as ineffectual as stacking extra men in front of the prison, but it looked like someone had wizened up and activated a few of the old Laratoss patrol mechs from storage as backup.
“I wonder if any of them appreciate the irony,” Markus whispered as he crouched down behind a wall of crates about two hundred meters from their destination.
“Pardon?” Thexyl asked, sliding up next to him.
“Those mechs are powered by energy cells the Mire stole from a Convectorate weapons depot a few months back. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. They’re old and their AI packages are rudimentary at best. I picked one of the shuttles docked inside an actual bay for just this reason—once we get inside, we’ll have plenty of cover unless we start screaming or something.”
“A distraction might also prove useful. If you can influence the minds of the guards, I can probably slip past them and access the controls for one of the other ships. It should draw them away long enough for us to run a quick-start sequence, at least.”
Markus bit down on his lip as he leaned Jen’s limp body against the crates. “You could, but that’s a hell of a risk. I’m not sure it’s worth it.”
“I don’t see how we’ll have sufficient time otherwise,” Thexyl said. “What was the make of the vessel you wished us to appropriate?”
“A Komm-Macron passenger shuttle, I believe. Third generation.”
“Then the quick start sequence will take at least sixty seconds, perhaps eighty. Those patrol mechs have enough firepower to disable the shuttle before we can lift off.”
“All right, fine,” Markus conceded. “Then I’d suggest doing something with one of the Windrunner fighters over there in the central ring. That will probably buy us almost a whole extra minute.”
“Agreed,” Thexyl said. “I will head that way now.”
“I’ll get the shuttle open and put Jen in the infirmary. And I’ll avoid starting pre-flight until the area clears out.”
“Understood.”
With th
at, the Kali shimmered back into quasi-invisibility and darted off in the opposite direction. Markus took in a deep breath and brushed a hand against Jen’s face.
“What is it with you and picking clever partners, anyway?” he murmured. “Just hang on a bit longer.”
Closing his eyes, Markus stretched out with his mind and clouded the perceptions of the men and women circling the area. Once he was satisfied with the results, he waited for the closest mech to patrol away before hoisting Jen back up sprinting towards the hangar bay.
He made it inside without any trouble, and he maneuvered over to the shuttle’s gray underbelly and activated the security console on the landing ramp. Unsurprisingly, the interface was as archaic as the ship itself; it didn’t even have a basic retina or fingerprint scanner, let alone a DNA-encoded lock. He wasn’t an expert slicer himself by any means, but given a few hours and a functional decryption package, he probably could have broken the 15-digit code.
Not that he needed to. He’d spoken with the ship’s owner right after he’d first settled on this insane plan earlier in the day, and plucking the numbers from the poor Meldonian’s thoughts had been a trivial task. By now the man wouldn’t even remember that the conversation had ever taken place.
It was both exhilarating and a little harrowing to finally be able to flex his mental muscle again, Markus mused. He’d rarely had the opportunity to so freely use his powers since his defection. For the first two years he’d been on the run with the Mire, and accessing his psionic abilities at all had been dangerous. Even here in the relative safety of astral space he’d spent most of his time training Selaris and the other Flies in the basics of control rather than unleashing his full mental might, and he couldn’t deny that a part of him had really missed playing god. There were tens of thousands of sentient beings on this asteroid, and not a single one of them had a chance in hell of stopping him. Given enough time, he might have been able to erase his presence from the memories of everyone in the city…or even implant new ones to convince them of virtually anything he wanted.
In one of his darker moments earlier today, he’d considered doing just that. If he could manipulate enough people into seeing reason, then he could avert this entire crisis. Or perhaps he could simply mind-rub the councilors themselves, altering their memories so that they’d agree with whatever he wanted. He could get Jen out of prison and the two of them could study the data crystals in peace. And he wouldn’t need to stop there: he could do the same thing to Grier and Foln and take control of the Mire right out from under them…
Markus sighed as the security panel accepted the codes and gave him access to the ship’s internal systems. This was undoubtedly how the ancient Sarafan had felt after winning the first war against the Tarreen centuries ago. Humanity had been vaulted into the interstellar spotlight, and the earliest psychics must have immediately realized that no species in the galaxy could hope to stand against their power. The Unification Wars had come shortly thereafter, and eventually the Sarafan Dominion was born.
The aliens here feared that with a cure to the Pandrophage, history would repeat itself…and as hard as it was for Markus to admit it, they might have been right. He had spent the last several years convincing himself that once the Convectorate was defeated, they could create a truly intergalactic society where humans and aliens, psychics and non-psychics, could live in peace. New Keledon was just the first step. But even here in their perfect little closed society, racial tensions were already simmering out of control, and finding the cure wasn’t going to magically whisk that resentment away. In fact, it was almost assuredly going to make everything worse.
Shaking away the thought, Markus keyed for the landing hatch release. It slid open with an obnoxious clank that made him wince, but a quick telepathic scan confirmed that the noise hadn’t broken his spell over the guards. He lowered the ramp and leapt inside, and after a cursory examination to make sure everything was in order, he laid Jen down upon the lone infirmary med-table. He touched her neck and psionically linked with her nervous system, and as far as he could tell she was probably still going to be out for another hour or so without outside intervention. Assuming they didn’t get shot down before they took off, that would work out perfectly.
He slipped back into the wide cockpit and flicked on the power. The consoles hummed softly as they came online, and after a minute of quick diagnostics he realized he’d done everything he could until his accomplice created a distraction. Markus couldn’t detect any ripples of surprise in the minds of the nearby guards, but unfortunately with the inherent Kali resistance to psionics he couldn’t track Thexyl’s progress, either. So instead of fretting about it Markus let out a deep breath, leaned back in the chair, and waited.
Less than two minutes later, he heard the distant shouts of the guards calling for aid, and when he stretched out he could feel all of them flocking towards the central ring. Whatever Thexyl had done, he’d done it well. This whole area was about to be completely empty.
He gave it another thirty seconds for the guards to move farther away before firing up the engine quick-start sequence. The drive was a lot quieter than he’d expected after flying around in beaten-down Mire freighters for the last few years, and for the first time since he’d hatched this crazy idea, Markus started to believe that they were actually going to pull this off.
It was then, in the precise moment when he’d finally started to relax, that he realized he was no longer alone.
His first thought was that Thexyl had returned, but of course that was silly; he never would have been able to sense a Kali approaching. His second thought was that one of the guards had heard something and doubled back, but all it took was a quick telepathic probe to realize that wasn’t the case either. No, it was someone else, someone with enough control over his emotions to get within fifty meters of a Spider without being detected. Frowning, Markus leapt out of the cockpit and darted over to the landing ramp, mentally stretching out as he did so to try and glean as much information as he could about the newcomer.
He needn’t have bothered. Whoever this person was, he was good. His thoughts were so rigid and focused on the task at hand that Markus couldn’t learn anything of value with a surface scan from this distance. No normal passer-by would have been making this much of an effort to control his random thoughts, naturally, which meant that this person knew he was here to stalk a psychic. And that, in turn, meant trouble.
Markus reached the landing ramp and paused. He was tempted to stay inside the ship just to see what his stalker would do, but if the other man decided not to walk into this neat little bottleneck he could always just alert the guards and bring the hammer down the conventional way instead. No, the best option was to meet this mysterious newcomer outside the ship and deal with him as quickly—and hopefully non-violently—as possible.
The hatch clanked again when it snapped open, but this time Markus disabled the automatic landing ramp and hopped down manually instead. Thankfully the hatch was on the opposite side of the ship from the doorway, and he could easily use the landing struts as cover. He entered the code to close the hatch back up, then rolled behind the closest strut and pulled out his pistol. And waited.
Seconds later a dark, hooded figure slipped into the bay and visually scanned the area. His mind finally fluttered with the faintest trace of doubt; he knew that his quarry was dangerous, but he was determined to press on regardless. Markus shook his head in amazement. Who in the city could possibly be crazy enough to willingly try and ambush a Spider?
The figure stepped in closer to the ship, drawing his own weapon and eyeing the hatch controls. Markus waited patiently, stretching out again with his mind to try and make contact. He didn’t want to shoot anyone unless he absolutely had to, but with his powers he could probably resolve this without violence…
An instant later he finally caught a glimpse of the stalker’s face, and he unwittingly sucked in a sharp breath. The figure dropped to a knee and rolled,
pistol in hand—
“Tayla?” Markus gasped.
She froze in place at the sound of his voice, her eyes locking onto his…and then she gradually lowered her weapon. “I knew you’d be out here somewhere.”
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, stepping out from behind the strut.
“Trying to find you, obviously. I knew it was only a matter of time before you tried to sneak Vale out of here.”
Markus let out the breath he’d been holding and holstered his pistol. “It’s the only way. I’m not going to let the Council execute her for defending herself.”
“Of course you aren’t,” Grier muttered. “You have to protect your old girlfriend at all costs, right? She must have been one hell of a fuck for you to throw everything away for her.”
He frowned. Ten seconds ago her emotions had been so tightly controlled that he hadn’t been able to learn anything about her, but now…now it was like her solar dam had collapsed, and it was all he could do not to be burned by the raw, visceral hatred pulsing off her. They’d rarely seen eye-to-eye on anything over the years, and he was well aware that she didn’t particularly care for him, but he’d never felt anything approaching this level of abject loathing from her before. It was like she had suddenly come face-to-face with the Tarreen who’d invented the Pandrophage.
“Vale might be the only person who can help me link with the last crystal,” Markus told her. “It’s a chance I have to take.”
Grier snorted. “You know what the worst part of all this is? You can’t even be honest with yourself, so you make up one bullshit excuse after another.”
“It’s not an excuse. It’s—”
“Shut up!” she snapped, her gun flipping up to point at him again. “It was a mistake to bring her here. It was a mistake to leave her alive at all. Just like it was with you.”
Another pulse of hatred rippled out from her, and for a second Markus thought she might actually fire. “Tayla, what the hell has gotten into you?”
Her jaw clenched. “I finally realized my mistake. I realized I’d been right about you all along.”
Markus shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You were at Mirador, weren’t you? You were there when the Mire was almost destroyed.”
He blinked at the apparent non sequitur. “Yes. I’ve told you that before. It was the day I decided to turn against the Convectorate.”
“Right, just after you and your friends butchered thousands of innocent people.” Grier snorted again and her lip twisted. “It must be nice to have all your crimes washed away just like that.”
“You think I don’t remember what I did?” he asked, a lump forming in his throat. “You think I don’t regret it?”
“I don’t particularly care what you think,” she growled. “What I know is that you and your bitch here were responsible for the massacre of thousands of civilians and their families, and then a year later you show up on Foln’s doorstep, prostrate yourself before him, and suddenly everything is okay.”
Markus forced himself to swallow. “Is that what this is about? Is that why you’ve always been so resentful of me?”
“You make it sound like I’m upset at you for busting a holopad. You murdered those people, Coveri, and there’s nothing you can do to make up for that.”
“I never said there was,” he replied solemnly. “I captured dozens of Flies over the years and dragged them back to the Widow, and there’s nothing I can do to make up for that, either. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.”
“And who decided you deserve that chance? Who decided you get that chance? Foln? The Mire? The Council?” Grier scoffed. “I told Foln he should kill you the moment you showed your face, but he thought you’d be an invaluable tool. He said that with your power, we could rebuild and start fighting again. And so I listened to him.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Markus caught a glimmer of movement from near the hangar entryway. He made sure not to look; given that he couldn’t sense anything, Thexyl must have made his way back. That was good—so long as the Kali remained camouflaged, he’d be in position to help resolve this without hurting her…
“I even started to accept his decision after a while,” Grier went on, oblivious. “I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t deny how much you were helping us. Within a year we’d rebuilt most of our infrastructure, and once we allied with this city, things got even better.”
“And then we found the Damadus,” Markus said.
“No,” she murmured. “Then we found Vale, and I saw that Foln was willing to do it again. He’d forgive another butcher if it meant getting us what we wanted, except that this time she didn’t even regret what she’d done. Vale was still one of the Widow’s drones, and yet he was willing to take a chance with her anyway.”
“She’ll come around eventually, Tayla. I know it might not seem like it, but—”
“It doesn’t matter, don’t you understand?” Grier snarled. “The rest of us are crippled by this disease, and we have to struggle every day just to survive. But you and her? You get turned into weapons to be used against us. Your kind has done more damage to humanity than the Tarreen have in the last century. You fight us, you enslave us, you kill us…”
“Not anymore,” he told her. “I left that behind to try and make a difference.”
“And that’s supposed to make it all better? No. I was right the first time. I don’t care what powers you have or how you want to help us. You’re a murderer, plain and simple, and so is your friend.”
Markus opened his mouth to reply, but then a sudden realization washed over him. “Revask didn’t organize that ambush on the concourse, did he?”
It took a solid ten seconds, but eventually a faint smile broke through her frosty glare. “No. For all his protests and all his whining, he wasn’t actually going to do anything about it. None of them were.”
“So you decided to force the issue,” Markus reasoned. “You found a mob of angry aliens and you pointed them right at Jen. You knew where she was at all times, and you incapacitated Firth and let them loose.” He paused as a bitter surge of bile rose in his throat. “And you knew I’d disable the collar.”
“Even I didn’t think you’d be that stupid,” Grier admitted. “But I knew I’d get what I wanted regardless. They’d kill Vale or she would kill them—either way, the Council would lash out against us and Foln would be forced to take action.”
“Take action? The Council locked you in the city. What are you going to do now?”
“What we should have done a long time ago. This city was built to serve humans, not to harbor parasitic alien dregs. We can turn this place into a true base of operations, a central location where we can launch attacks against the Convectorate with impunity. We can finally start taking back what’s ours.”
Markus shook his head. “I won’t let you do that. You might not always agree with the Council, but these people aren’t our enemies. We’re all victims of the—”
“Shut up!” she hissed, leveling her pistol squarely at his head. “You don’t get to talk about being a victim, not with what you’ve done. And now I’m finally going to make it right.”
“Don’t do this, Tayla,” he pleaded. “We’re on the same side.”
“No,” Grier breathed. “We never were.”
She pulled the trigger, but Markus was ready. He slammed a wave of telekinetic force straight into the barrel, swatting it to the side the instant she fired. The shot splattered harmlessly into the rocky ground, but she didn’t get the hint. She swiveled the weapon up again, and this time he directed his mental thrust straight into her chest. She flew backwards and smacked into the hangar wall, the pistol clattering away in the opposite direction.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he rasped, stepping over her and drawing his own weapon. “But like I said, I’m not going to let you harm these people.”
Her head swiveled upwards, but instead of the
frustrated scowl he’d expected, she was smiling. “You don’t have a choice.”
“Watch out!” Thexyl yelled.
The warning saved Markus’s life. He reflexively ducked back behind the landing strut, and a heartbeat later a pair of pulse blasts sizzled past his head. He pressed himself tightly against his cover, trying to get a bead on the attackers—
Too late. The second volley burned into the strut and blew off a chunk of superheated shrapnel. The metal speared into his left arm, and Markus dropped flat to the ground as he screamed in agony. His conscious brain stalled but his combat instincts took over, and suddenly he was rolling as fast as he could manage towards the other strut. He still couldn’t sense anyone else in the hangar, but as he tumbled away in desperation the truth belatedly hit him.
Mechs. Grier had brought the Mire’s two semi-sentient defender mechs along with her. The heated conversation and engine startup sequence must have drowned out the robots’ surprisingly soft-footed approach, and now what had previously been an inconveniently timed spat with an angry colleague had suddenly turned into a desperate fight for survival.
Markus popped up and pressed himself against the second strut as the mechs tracked him with their weapons. Most of their combat protocols were as out-of-date as the Laratoss mechs guarding the docks, thankfully, but they were still smart enough to slowly fan out across the bay to flank him. With Grier now vaulting back to her feet and joining in, that gave him three points of fire to worry about, and without his combat armor or personal shielding, all it would take was one decent hit to finish him off.
He grimaced, half at the situation and half at the pain lancing through his arm. He caught a glimpse of Thexyl’s shimmering figure moving in closer to Grier, but despite his earlier warning shout she didn’t seem to have located him. Markus mentally counted down the seconds until the Kali was in range, fully aware that he was about to put his life in the hands of an alien who just days ago had been holding him captive…
He rolled hard away again, cleanly into Grier’s line of fire, but to his mild surprise no pulse bursts erupted in his back. She yelped in shock as Thexyl tackled her, and Markus took the opportunity to shift his attention to the mechs. One was easily in range now, its weapon again spinning to track the tumbling target, and he lashed out with another fist of telekinetic force.
Sadly, tossing aside a seventy kilo human female was considerably easier than doing the same to a two hundred kilo defender mech. The robot didn’t go hurling backwards or anything so dramatic, but it did at least stagger long enough for its barrage of shots to arc well wide of their target. Markus took the opportunity to squeeze off two shots of his own before rolling away yet again.
He didn’t destroy it—obsolete or not, the mech’s shielding was still plenty sufficient to absorb a few blasts from a sidearm—but he did buy himself a little more time. He was easily able to stay clear of the second mech’s fire as he dove over to the landing hatch, triggered the ramp release, and then flattened himself against it.
Markus knew he couldn’t keep this up forever. Thexyl seemed to have Grier locked down in a frantic melee just a few meters away, but it almost didn’t matter; neither he nor the Kali possessed a weapon with enough firepower to take down a pair of shielded mechs. And worse, the firefight would have surely attracted the attention of the guards by now even if the pre-flight sequence hadn’t. He needed another option. Quickly.
And as another round of fire traced towards him and splattered against the starboard landing strut for a third time, he realized he might have just found it.
Leaning around the ramp, Markus fired off another pair of wild shots at the mech just to keep its attention, then rolled to the opposite side and blasted the already damaged landing strut. The metal glowed orange as the superheated energy bolts poured into it, and Markus took that as his cue to strike. He lashed out with yet another surge of telekinetic force, this time trying to focus as much on precision as power. He struck the strut at its weakest point, hoping one of the mechs didn’t blast him before he could finish—
And with a horrifying screech of tearing metal, the strut buckled in half and the starboard section of the shuttle crashed to the ground. A para-sentient mech, equipped with Mark X decision-making capabilities, might have had a chance to get out of the way in time. But a semi-sentient version, especially one designed primarily for guard duty, didn’t have a chance in hell. The shuttle crushed the robot into the asteroid, and to Markus’s delighted surprise, its heavy pulse rifle squirted out from beneath the impact and skittered across the rocky ground just a few meters out of his reach.
He reached out and telekinetically sucked the weapon up into his grip, then dove out from behind his cover and fired at the last mech. The first high-powered shot pierced its shields and blew one of its arms off, and the second struck it cleanly in its torso and sent the whole thing crumpling to the ground.
Markus grinned despite the pain still spiking down his arm, then swiveled back to help Thexyl with Grier—
The last thing he saw was a brilliant flash of light exploding in his face.
The Spider and the Fly Page 35
