by C. Gockel
“Is that so?” Tristic canted her head. Those deep brown eyes moved from her to peer at Maynard.
Somewhere in the shadows was a nervous twitch of fabric. Maynard cleared his throat. “Defensor, allow me to explain—”
“You are dismissed, Lieutenant.” As she spoke, Tristic continued to watch Erelah. “You and I shall speak later. Bear no doubt on that.”
There was the curt echo of Maynard’s brisk footfalls in retreat.
Then Erelah was alone with her.
The beast drew closer, studying. The now too-familiar stench of water jasmine and decay assaulted Erelah’s nostrils. With a gloved hand, she prodded Erelah’s chin, pulling her gaze up to meet her own. When she tried to turn away, the fingers dug in, stopping her.
What would happen, I wonder if I touched that scaly white skin? What half-lit horrors will I glimpse?
Erelah shivered.
“Physical contact with a subject triggered the Sight in you. Remarkable. Better than I had hoped,” Tristic congratulated herself. “I wonder if emotional distress or pain are triggers…”
When their gazes met, she felt an incredible wave of heat emanate from Tristic. It was the sensation of passing a hot stove in a cold room. With it came the familiar prickling sensation that had enveloped her in the medsuite with Maynard, but far stronger. It pressed against her temples and pounded down her neck. An oily, alien presence invaded her thoughts. She wanted to twist away, but her body was riveted to the spot. Tristic was doing this somehow.
“What did you see, child, when you touched the lieutenant? You know of his sordid past. But what else?” she snarled. “Tell me.”
Although she intended to say nothing, Erelah heard herself speak in gasps: “Images and feelings. I was Maynard for a moment. I know what he knows. About you. Your plans.”
“Pray…continue.” Dark amusement in her gaze.
Another wave of pressure churned inside her skull. Her own body betrayed her once more. She listened to her voice like that of a stranger. “They do not know what you do here. The Council of First. They don’t know what you do in Ravstar, don’t want to know. Once in a while, you crawl into the light and offer them a new weapon to prove your usefulness. They praise you like a pet. You have learned secret things about them for leverage. But there is a limit to your reach. It has gotten you this far, but you want more.”
“Well done.” Tristic granted her a black smile, staggered slightly. Then seemed to collect herself.
Erelah gasped. The pressure in her skull dissolved. She found she could move once more.
“This entire time you thought you were protecting your brother,” Tristic said. “Yet now you understand. Don’t you? It was a means to control you. To disclose your secret nature as Human to First would mean your Kindred would be declared renegade. And you would become useless to me.”
“Useless as what?” she sobbed.
“Oh. Come now. Do not pretend.”
She knew the answer: Host.
“No.”
Tristic grinned. “You are the vessel into which I shall be reborn, Veradin. I shall slip this ruined body and assume yours. And in turn, your body shall bear new life. The origin of a new dynasty.”
Her finger caressed the line of Erelah’s cheek. “At last, you are ready.”
The two guards ushered her through a twisting maze of corridors that grew quieter and less populated. Even the rumble of the Questic’s engines seemed softer underfoot. Erelah found herself in a room that looked nothing like a medsuite. The buzz of the pharms in her system was ebbing. Now details were easier to make out as she peered about the space. The lighting was soft, not clinical. The walls were adorned with precious relics and artifacts of long-conquered worlds. This, she realized, was the dark queen’s den. This space belonged to Tristic. She froze, shoulders drawing up to her ears. As the haze of the drugs abated, an icy panic seeped into her.
“Let’s make you comfortable,” one of the guards sneered his hand on her elbow.
This one’s name was Caveo. Erelah recognized him from the scar-pocked skin along his jaw. He often accompanied Maynard in his self-important strutting through the ship.
Caveo grabbed her restraints and secured them to the bulkhead a few feet above the floor. The odd angle forced her to kneel to alleviate the pressure on her wrists and arms.
“What a shame…” Caveo tsked down at her. He licked his lips. “Sweet little thing. All gone to waste.”
“That grotesque half-Sceeloid bitch,” his partner added. She had never bothered to learn his name. “Not one to share, is she?”
“Not that I’d want what’s left.”
They laughed.
Erelah kept her eyes on the floor beneath their boots. A thick rug woven with threads of fire-silk covered the space. She stared mutely at the glint of the reddish threads as she withdrew inside . From there she watched the world in detached silence, although panic gnawed a path up her throat.
“Tell me, pretty.” Caveo yanked brutishly at the tangled mess of her plaited hair. “Do you like that? Is she all Sceeloid where it counts, that bloody ugly witch?”
She did not move, did not speak. Eyes forward, Erelah peered through the genetic misstep of a sub-officer.
The Sight, Tristic called it.
Old Sissa had told stories about the Sight. It was the gift the Fates used to see into the hearts of men and know their worth. It was how the Fates judged right and wrong. How they knew the thoughts of misbehaved young boys and girls, who set out on adventures in the wilderness beyond the manor without permission.
When she was an older student, her tutor had told Erelah the story of Miri, the Fate who had her Sight stolen by Sceelo, the dragon, when he consumed her body. The demon had wanted the Sight for himself to make him a more powerful enemy of men. Brother Elid, her teacher, had explained that the theologians considered the story an ancient allegory for the Sceeloid’s ability to dominate the wills of lesser species, something later called sight-jacking.
Lesser species.
Her mind creaked through scenarios like a neglected machine, rusted from disuse. If there was anything that made a hierarchy of species believable, it was the existence of men like Caveo or Maynard. The grotesqueries she had seen in the squalid folds of Maynard’s diseased brain made her shrink from the idea of using this Sight.
Could I control another, like Tristic? Like a Sceeloid? Could I sight-jack as well?
And just maybe…maybe.
Caveo reached down, his hand moving to touch her face. Erelah steeled herself.
“All secure, Sergeant?” Maynard’s needling voice interrupted.
The two men went rigid with attention.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why do you remain? Leave!”
The guards scrambled from the compartment.
Maynard moved closer. He bent at the waist, hands on his knees as he peered down at her. How many times had this been a dark fantasy for him? And with how many unlucky others had he made it a reality?
“I used to consider your naïveté charming, can you imagine that? The peasant Kindred heiress come to the high polish of Ravstar’s domain.” Maynard gave a curt laugh.
“What’s going to happen?” She swallowed against a tongue like paper.
He affected a lovelorn sigh. “Dearest. I come to say my farewell. And to grant a parting gift to you. Well…two actually.”
“Going somewhere?
“You are. Permanently.” He reached out to touch her, then withdrew. “You will be ready to receive Tristic. And Erelah Veradin…well, the part that’s you at least, shall cease to be. This lovely face, this beautiful shell will be filled with such great purpose.”
Maynard knelt. “A shame that matters must now involve your brother. But that has always been the plan. He is no longer useful in assuring your compliance.”
Fear spiked her heart. “Jon has done nothing. Leave him alone.”
“You are stupid, indeed, little peasant,” he scoff
ed. “After all, he is the last living being that knows you, the former you and your inconvenient secret. An untidy loose end.”
“You’re lying.”
He leaned closer, gloating. The parody of a lover moving in to steal a kiss. “I sent the warrant myself, Veradin.”
“Bastard,” she hissed.
“Your outlook will be far different when we meet again, Lady Erelah.”
He fished an object from the inner pocket of his jacket. The light caught the glint of the glass cylinder. It was a jector.
“And now the second gift that I promised, my love.” He hefted the device, no doubt relishing the terror it evoked in her. “This is an incredible moment. I wish that you could fully appreciate it as I do.”
“No more drugs. No more.” She squirmed back, straining as far as the restraints would allow.
“You’ll like this one,” he shushed. “Tristic need not know. It is my gift to you. It will make you not care.”
Maynard tilted the jector. The amber-colored contents shifted slowly inside the glass vial. “This will allow—”
Now. Please work. Even if I cannot touch him. Please work for me.
She dug into the icy little thought farm that Tristic was growing in her head, picturing its twisted black sinews writhing in the delicate white flesh beneath her skull. The remembered odd heat and pressure filled her head. She pushed out at Maynard, full force.
The expression on the man’s face blossomed into a wide-eyed panic. He swallowed several times but seemed unable to move away or break her stare. Then he wheezed out one word: “How?”
Erelah pushed harder. Tiny capillaries throbbed in her vision, keeping time with her pulse. The weight of it was exhausting as she forced the command into his head.
“Let me go.”
A small trickle of blood slipped out of Maynard’s nostril and onto his lip. He coughed, sputtering flecks of blood. Then slowly, his hands moved to the metal shackles that bound her wrists. They tumbled to the carpet with a muted clink.
Maynard was bolted in place, eyes forward as he uttered a string of choking nonsense words. His hands contracted into claws. Tendons stood out in his neck.
She rose, watching him. His dark little eyes rolled around in their sockets like trapped creatures. A new pain started in the back of her head. He was fighting back. Her hold on him was lagging.
Erelah summoned her strength for one final push. She visualized crushing his skull beneath two massive red hands, pulverizing bone and brain.
Maynard uttered an anguished cry. He collapsed to the gaudy carpet face first. Erelah felt a sharp tug. The thing in her head crawled back into its black den. Pain flooded into the void it left. It was nearly enough to drown out rational thought. She doubled over, clasping her head.
Erelah kicked him solidly in his exposed ribcage. He offered a wounded grunt but did not stir. His breath came in uneven gulps.
“Bastard.”
When she flipped him over, his face was a bloody smear. His nose had broken when he landed faced first.
Good.
Erelah snatched the identkey from around his neck. All of his access should be hard coded to it and high enough to enter any level on the Questic . But she only needed it to enter one place. The flight deck.
“Here’s my gift, love!” She grabbed the jector and plunged it into the side of Maynard’s neck.
Her adrenaline surge was fading. The pain in her head was maddening. Dots swam before her eyes and the room tilted around her. Erelah wanted nothing more than to find her own dark den and sleep beneath the pain, wait it out. There was no time. Tristic was no doubt on her way there.
There was one place left to go. She had glimpsed its silvery lines and deadly frame in the wretched landscape of Maynard’s thoughts.
Jocosta .
The deck seemed to twist and lurch beneath Erelah’s feet. The pain swelled and pulsed into the soft tissue of her brain. But the thing residing there had gone back to sleep.
She forced her strides to be purposeful and steady and fought the urge to run. So far no alarm had been raised. Miri knew how long it would take before they found the lieutenant.
The flight hangar was near if she could trust the glimpse from Maynard’s mind. If not the Jocosta , then any stryker would do. She could pilot. The memories were rusty, but she knew the basics.
A wave of vertigo forced her against the wall, and she reached out. Her hand encountered yielding fabric. With a surprised grunt, she looked up into the startled expression of a Fleet tech. The young woman had the customary frail frame with pale skin. Her hair was shaven so closely it was impossible to tell what color it might be. Her eyes were such a dark brown, they appeared black.
“Ma’am?” The tech recovered. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. Fine.”
Erelah straightened, pulling away before the tech could touch her again. She took a quivering stride past the tech, forcing herself to ignore the roil of vertigo.
“May I be of assistance, ma’am?” she called after Erelah.
Was she suspicious? Erelah wore a plain gray flight suit with no insignia, like any other consultant.
“As you were.” She tried to sound irritated.
But the tech pursued. “I’ve seen you…with Lieutenant Maynard.”
Erelah moved faster, taking in the corridor designation. One more tier to the flight hangar. Or was it two?
“You’re mistaken.”
“No. I know you. You made the Jocosta .”
Erelah stopped and wheeled around. Surprised, the tech stepped back. “Where is it now?”
“Ma’am?”
“The Jocosta . Tell me where she is now .”
Suspicion darkened the tech’s expression.
“Tell me.”
Erelah grasped the girl’s forearm. The same dark wave of heat built along her neck and extended to her fingertips. Too late, she realized: She had kicked the monster awake again.
The tech whimpered, sinking to her knees. Blood trickled from her nose.
“Here. Right here.” Her quaking hand extended to the left.
Erelah saw the hangar doors there. She had hurt someone needlessly. Abruptly she released the tech’s arm. The girl became a sobbing heap on the deck.
“I’m sorry,” Erelah breathed. She held out a hand, hovering, afraid to touch the girl again.
Suddenly, the klaxon’s angry buzz split the air.
Chapter Fourteen
For days, it seemed, Sela drifted in and out of sleep. Occasionally Veradin would wake her with an order to eat or drink. A Regime medic, armed with decent pharms and a proper medbay, would have had her back to baseline within a day. Even without such resources, her body would be far quicker to heal than a natural born Eugenes. But to Sela, it still felt like the mending process was taking far too long. She did not relish the thought that, in her injured state, she was more of a liability than an asset.
This had been her longest stretch of wakefulness. In a semi-daze, she wandered the antique Cassandra. Her initial tour with Valen had been hurried, and only to check the worthiness of the vessel for the captain’s escape. Now Sela took in the details, her mental catalog of concerns growing.
Each compartment held clues of scenes from overlapping ages. Sela likened it to engaging a holovid story near the end, after all the action had already occurred. The EVA suit racks stood empty. One lone helm with a cracked visor rolled on the floor of the chamber, like the unhatched egg of some mythical space-faring creature. The common passage was marred with burn marks from plasma and compression weapon exchanges. Crudely etched graffiti in Regimental was covered by layers of Common and Zenti clan marks.
The smugglers that had owned the vessel before were not surprising in their tastes: the amount of non-reg pharms was rivaled only by the number of interspecies skin vids. Smuggling was either an incredibly lonely occupation, or it attracted individuals with raging libidos.
Whatever the smuggler’s current whereabouts
, Sela would have loved to ask him where the damned weapons were hidden. There must be some; it did not make sense to abandon a vessel if the worst of your cargo was a stash of cut-down Hypetox and a few skin vids.
She could find no additional consumables either, other than insta-cal and packets of stale protein wafers in the galley’s lockers. Their rations would be depleted in a few days. As a breeder, Sela’s metabolism was designed to run on minimal rations in emergency circumstances. She could manage. Veradin could not boast the same. Water was not a problem if they were careful and not fussed about hygiene. The state of the filtration system would need to be addressed sooner or later, but it continued to hold.
An off-key twittering lured her from the galley, where she had spent considerable time staring at the remaining protein rations. Like an automaton, she made her way to the command loft, a curved space whose recessed grav bench was shared by pilot and navigator. It was the Regime’s idea of efficiency in design, not comfort. Veradin was asleep on the grav couch with his legs stretched beneath the forward consoles. The navsys and con spread a dull green glow over his form.
The destination alert rose from the navsys in an unsteady song but failed to rouse him, so she prodded his shoulder with her knee. As he sat up, raking his hair, Sela moved to the display and frowned.
Had he mentioned plotting a destination? She recalled a foggy dream in which Veradin told her the name of a frozen blue world. Was that two…three days ago? She made a silent vow to never take another pharm and called up the nav-logs. The Cass had apparently used only one minor flex point. That had been a gamble. He had definitely not mentioned using a conduit. But she was too tired to feel annoyed.
“There is only a stellar nav beacon,” Sela said, scanning the readings. The steady harmonic signature of this world fell into a pattern in the background noise. There were no orbiting coms arrays. It meant this new destination was not developed. That was a relief.
“I would not expect much more,” Jon answered as he sat upright next to her on the bench “The current residents have no need.”
