Defender

by Janet Edwards

  I wasn’t reading Megan’s mind – I was afraid of what I might see there – but her frown seemed to mean she was considering my suggestion.

  “I knew Buzz when I was on Teen Level,” I added. “I find her easy to talk to, and the fact she’s a borderline telepath is very helpful, but there are times when you can support me in a way that she can’t. Today was one of those times.”

  I paused. “I’d hate to lose your support, Megan. I’d hate to lose you.”

  There was a minute of silence before Megan spoke, her voice uncertain as if she was still thinking this through. “That arrangement might be possible, but for medical reasons I’d have to delegate rather more work to team members.”

  “Medical reasons?” I repeated anxiously. “You’re ill?”

  “I’m going to have a baby,” said Megan.

  I was totally bewildered. I’d read Adika’s mind several times in the last few days. I was certain that his relationship with Megan hadn’t progressed to the physical stage where a baby was possible.

  “My husband, Dean, and I always wanted children,” said Megan. “We’d just decided it was the right time to try for our first baby, when Dean was killed. I’d left Keith’s unit, and was in a temporary position trying to work out what I should do with my life, when the last Lottery discovered you were a telepath.”

  I’d seen all this in Megan’s mind before, the details so closely intertwined with intimate memories and emotional pain that I’d hurried past them. Now she spoke about them in a voice that showed she’d finally passed through her grief to find a new way forward.

  “I was offered the post of your Senior Administrator, which appeared to solve the problem of my future,” Megan continued. “I’d lost Dean, we wouldn’t be raising our children together the way we’d planned, and I couldn’t imagine rebuilding my life with anyone else. I thought I could make a fresh start as your Senior Administrator, and live a new life coldly focused on my career and serving the Hive.”

  She pulled a face. “It was ridiculous of me to think I could simply blot out emotion from my life. I found myself doing the opposite, smothering you rather than supporting you, as I tried to turn you into my substitute child. Then there was the complicating factor of Adika. He looks very like Dean, and I kept seeing similarities between their characters too.”

  I made a sympathetic noise. Megan would be bound to see similarities between her late husband and Adika. Lottery had selected them both as having the right physical and mental characteristics for the Strike team.

  “Every time I looked at Adika, it was like seeing Dean again,” said Megan. “I couldn’t help giving into that sometimes, letting myself get lost in the fantasy that I was with Dean again, and then something would remind me of the truth and I’d feel horribly guilty.”

  She paused. “I’ve been making Adika unhappy. I’ve been making myself unhappy too. After I resigned my post as Senior Administrator, I started thinking about my future again. Suddenly everything was much clearer, and I knew what I truly wanted.”

  She was smiling now. “I’ve lost Dean, but I can still have his baby. It won’t be exactly the way we planned, there’ll be a gap in my life and that of the baby where Dean should have been, but I’ll do my best to give the child all the love and guidance it needs. I put in the request to Fertility Support yesterday, and they replied within the hour. I have to wait for my request to go through the standard approval processing, but they say that’s just a formality in my case. Dean was a Strike team member who died performing his duties, so the Hive will automatically provide unlimited medical support for his recognized partner to have his child.”

  Megan was looking at me, waiting for me to say something. I was still stunned by this but I managed to scrape some words together. “I hadn’t realized this was possible. It’s wonderful news, Megan, really wonderful. I’m sure the unit can work round whatever arrangements you need.”

  “It would be perfect if I could have my baby and keep my position here.” Megan laughed joyfully. “I set up the phased opening plan for our unit nursery months ago. I never thought it would be needed for my own baby.”

  “We’ll have our own unit nursery?”

  “Yes. When there’s an emergency alert, there’s no time for parents to take babies to an external nursery.”

  I had a surreal image of my Strike team arriving at lift 2, and throwing babies to waiting nursery workers. Did that mean the unit would have its own school as well? I opened my mouth to ask the question, but Megan was eagerly talking again.

  “There’s no problem if multiple fertilization attempts are needed, because the doctors have plenty of Dean’s tissue samples in storage, but I’d still prefer to opt for double embryo implantation to maximize my chance of first attempt success.”

  I tried to make sense of that, failed, and took a look at the top levels of Megan’s mind. She was excited. She was happy. She was imprinted with medical expertise, so all that excitement and happiness was being expressed in highly technical words that I didn’t understand.

  “If I opt for double embryo implantation,” Megan continued, “that means there’s a high probability of a twin pregnancy where I might need extra rest, but I could recruit a second deputy team leader to help me.”

  Double embryo implantation meant Megan might have not one baby but twins. I blinked. “I’ll explain everything to Lucas once he’s properly recovered, and I’m sure he’ll agree with me that you should recruit any additional staff you need to help you. Would you like me to tell Adika as well?”

  “No. I’ve disrupted Adika’s life and made him unhappy. I should talk to him myself and explain exactly …”

  Megan was interrupted by a chime from her dataview. She took it out, tapped it to make it unfurl, and frowned at the screen. “I’ve got an update from the Fire Casualty Centre.”

  “Rothan?” I asked anxiously.

  “Rothan’s condition is still critical. The Security Unit leader has died.” Megan stood up. “That news will distress and frighten Emili. I should call her myself rather than let her hear the information from a stranger.”

  I nodded. “Go ahead.”

  Megan hurried out of the room, and I leant back in my chair feeling sick. The Security Unit leader had helped Rothan organize the escape into the crawl way. She’d calmed her terrified people, and waited patiently on a chair with her lungs burning from the smoke and the floor smouldering under her, insisting on being the last one that Rothan lifted to safety before pulling himself up and putting the ceiling plate back.

  I pictured myself in that woman’s place, and didn’t believe I could show the same determined courage. I would never be in a situation like that though, because no one would let the precious telepath sacrifice herself to save others. That thought didn’t make me feel any better.

  I poured out a glass of water, drank it, then stretched out on the spare bed and lay there watching Lucas, reassuring myself that he was safe.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Lucas woke up the next morning, he was physically much better, lungs almost recovered from the smoke inhalation, and with only a few minor burns on his hands. His mental state was a very different matter. The first thing he asked was whether everyone had made it out alive.

  Lucas was an expert in body language, so he’d know if I lied to him. “There are five dead and one missing.”

  Lucas winced. “Rothan?”

  “Six more people, including Rothan, are in a critical condition waiting for another Hive to create a genetically tailored treatment for them.”

  “Five dead.” Lucas lay on the bed, glaring up at the ceiling as if it was a personal enemy. “With one person missing, and another six in a critical condition, the death count will probably get even higher.”

  He wasn’t talking in his speed speech. He was using every single word, hammering the facts home in an accusing voice that wasn’t aimed at me but at himself. “Almost all Strike team members will end up with a death count on their rec
ord. They don’t worry about it, because that death count is the number of targets they had to kill to save innocent people’s lives.”

  He grimaced. “Every Tactical Commander ends up with a death count too. Not on their official record, but in their head. They do worry about it, because that death count is the number of innocent people killed by their wrong decisions.”

  He was lost in distress and I didn’t know how to help him. “Lucas, you shouldn’t be talking this much. Megan said you mustn’t strain your throat and lungs.”

  “I expected to have a death count eventually, I’m only human after all, but I didn’t expect it to be five in a single day.”

  “What happened wasn’t your fault, and if you don’t shut up I’ll get Megan to sedate you again.”

  He studied my face, and decided I meant it. “If you don’t want me to talk, you’ll have to read the words in my head.”

  I groaned and dipped into his mind. The normally glittering thought levels were dark and turbulent. Lucas was tortured by guilt, wanting to punish himself for being alive when others were dead. I daren’t plunge into that emotional maelstrom, so I focused on his pre-vocalized words.

  “You think this wasn’t my fault? You think that fire was accidental?” Lucas’s thoughts asked aggressively.

  “Of course the fire wasn’t accidental,” I said. “We’ve only had the preliminary report from the fire experts analyzing the scene, but they’ve confirmed a highly inflammable liquid accelerant was used to make the fire spread so fast. The fact the fire wasn’t accidental doesn’t make it your fault though.”

  “That fire was started deliberately,” thought Lucas, “and it was started because I marched into that unit to talk to people about Fran. I thought I’d stir up the guilty thoughts of the target or targets, you’d identify them, we’d send the Strike team in to arrest them, and the case could be closed and forgotten.”

  His face twisted in pain. “I made a dreadful mistake that’s killed five people.”

  “That’s not true, Lucas!” I shouted the words at him, trying to break through the fog of guilt and make him listen to me.

  “Yes, it is.” His thoughts were full of bitter self-accusation. “I was so smugly sure of my own brilliance, so blindly confident, that I didn’t think through all the scenarios. I was aware that we could have multiple targets, and they might not all work in that Security Unit. I should have considered the possibility that a target inside the unit might call a target outside and tell them about my planned visit.”

  “You think that’s what happened?”

  “I can’t trust my own logic any longer, but it seems the most likely explanation. Once a target outside the unit heard about my visit, they’d realize there was a risk that the one inside would be caught. If a telepath saw even a single stray thought about accomplices, they’d have a Strike team chasing them next.”

  I frowned. “So the target or targets outside the unit decided to safeguard themselves by starting that fire?”

  “Yes. They poured a circle of accelerant all the way around the unit, and started a blaze that would kill their accomplice, the interfering Tactical Commander, and everyone else unfortunate enough to be inside.”

  “Even if that’s what happened, the deaths weren’t your fault, Lucas. You weren’t the one who started the fire.”

  “I should have known this would happen,” said Lucas aloud. “My mistake. My responsibility. What are the names of the people I killed?”

  “I don’t know. The incident coordinator is still trying to work that out.”

  “Why is that taking so long? Everyone needed identity cards to get in or out of the Security Unit. The incident coordinator just has to scan those cards to get their names.”

  I sighed. “It was hot enough in the crawl way to trigger the anti-tampering protection on the identity cards and scramble their information. The priority during the rescue was to treat people, not to find out who they were. The more serious cases went to the Navy Zone Fire Casualty Centre for intense specialist treatment, while the rest ended up scattered across twenty different medical facilities and hospitals. The incident coordinator has a list of all fifty-one people who entered the Security Unit before the fire, but is still working out where each of them is being treated.”

  “You mean where those I didn’t kill are being treated.”

  “You didn’t kill them. You and Rothan saved almost all their lives. The accelerant made the fire spread so fast, that the man who waited for rescue by the reinforced wall died before the fire containment teams could reach him. Everyone in that unit would have died the same way if you hadn’t led them into the crawl way.”

  “Oh yes,” said Lucas, in a harsh voice. “I led them into the crawl way. Saving myself first, while Rothan stayed to help the others and was the last to escape.”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous,” I snapped at him. “One of you had to lead the way so I could tell the Strike team exactly where to start digging. One had to stay and help the others. Lottery selected Rothan for the Strike team because of his physical strength and fitness. He could lift all those people up into the crawl way. You couldn’t. You might have managed a few of them, but not all fifty people. Rothan knew that, you knew that, everyone knew that. It’s a fact, Lucas. Admit it.”

  “Yes, it’s a fact. That’s why I didn’t argue at the time, but it didn’t make me feel any better then and it doesn’t make me feel any better now.”

  I groaned. “You can’t keep lying there and blaming yourself like this. You need to focus on deciding our next move.”

  “I’m not deciding anything,” said Lucas. “Not now and not ever again. I’ve proved myself totally incompetent so I’m putting Emili in charge.”

  He was intent on self-destruction. I reminded myself he was still a sick man, and counted to ten to avoid yelling at him. “You can’t put Emili in charge. She’s at the Fire Casualty Centre where Rothan’s being treated. It would be cruel to drag her back here when she doesn’t know if he’ll live or die.”

  Lucas shrugged. “Then the case will have to wait until she gets back.”

  “The case can’t wait. First our targets killed Fran. Then they tried to murder fifty-one people. What will they do next?”

  Lucas just shrugged again.

  I’d been sitting in a chair at his bedside. Now I stood up. “You said we should hand this case to another Telepath Unit. I talked you into keeping it, which was a big mistake. I’ll contact the other units and ask their Tactical Commanders if one of them can take it.”

  “You can’t give this case to another unit. Neither Keith nor Mira could handle something on this scale, and Morton’s unit is unavailable while he has some medical treatment for his health issues.”

  “Sapphire then.”

  “Sapphire won’t touch a case that involves fire. She’s terrified of it.”

  “What?” I was startled. I’d thought Sapphire was the flawless telepath with no weaknesses at all.

  “Haven’t you noticed we do more than the normal number of runs involving firebugs?”

  “Yes. No.” I shook my head. “I’ve no idea what would be a normal number of runs involving firebugs, and stop talking aloud!”

  Lucas went back to just thinking the words. “We get our own firebug check runs, and a lot of the ones that should be going to Sapphire as well. Most of her Beta Strike team were caught in last year’s vast fire in Burgundy Zone. Now she won’t touch anything involving arson, not even the simplest check run for a child playing with fire.”

  I moistened my lips. “What happened to Sapphire’s Beta team?”

  “Everyone on Chase team duties was trapped, encircled by flames. Sapphire managed to guide all but two of them out. She was still linked to the minds of the last two, still trying to find them a route to safety, when the flames reached them.”

  I winced. I’d been with the unconscious Rothan and Lucas as their minds were slowly fading, but being in the minds of people you cared about when th
ey were fully conscious and burning alive in agony … “No, we can’t hand this to Sapphire, and that means you can’t give up this case, Lucas.”

  There were no words in his head in response to that, just pure, amorphous denial.

  “Lucas, you’re blaming yourself for the deaths in yesterday’s fire, but you said yourself that every Tactical Commander ends up with a death count sooner or later. You have to learn to cope with it.”

  “Maybe I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can,” I said fiercely. “Lottery imprinted you as a Telepath Unit Tactical Commander. That means you have the qualities in you to cope with this. Lottery doesn’t make mistakes.”

  “Lottery doesn’t make mistakes, but there are random factors. Subsequent experiences change people. Remember what happened with Fran.”

  “Fran is irrelevant. That was a totally different situation.”

  “Kareem then.”

  “What do you mean?” I checked the images in Lucas’s mind, saw the stray thought chains attached to them, and pieced together my own answer. “Twenty-five years ago, Kareem was a Tactical Commander. He was in charge of an emergency run that ended badly.”

  “He was in charge of an emergency run that ended catastrophically. Now he’s only able to criticize other people’s theories. He can’t trust himself to form his own. I didn’t understand his reaction before, but now I do.”

  I frowned. “So Kareem dropped down to just being a member of a Tactical team. For the last twenty-five years, he’s …”

  I broke off. It was twenty-five years too late to change things for Kareem. What mattered here and now wasn’t Kareem’s past, but Lucas’s future. “You aren’t taking that option, Lucas. You’re a brilliant Tactical Commander. You’re human, so you’ll sometimes make mistakes, and no one else will blame you for them nearly as much as you blame yourself. You’re beating yourself over the head with your guilt, but I’m not convinced you made a mistake this time.”