The spider and the fly, p.31
The Spider and the Fly, page 31
Markus stared at her in silence for a long moment before gently rubbing his hand across her cheek. “It won’t be that simple.”
She slapped him away. “Don’t patronize me. I said I’m not a child anymore—not that anyone seems to believe it. They all think I’m daddy’s crazy little princess, so damaged that she can barely function on her own. Then they stick me on the Council out of pity.”
Selaris turned and stomped to the other side of the room, trying madly to ignore the tears streaking down her face. Breaking down right in front of him certainly wasn’t going to help her argument.
“Your father told me something before he died,” Markus said softly. “He said that he knew that one way or another, reaching out to the Mire would ultimately doom the city.”
She pivoted back around to face him. “What?”
“He knew that it would was the first step in letting the big secret out. He knew that eventually the Tarreen would find this place and destroy it.”
Selaris tried to swallow but nothing happened. “But he did it anyway to save me. He knew you were the only one who might be able to help me.”
Markus nodded. “I wasn’t sure if he’d ever told you that or not.”
“He didn’t,” she said. “But he was thinking about it before he died, and I…” She closed her eyes. “I always assumed he was spending his last few minutes regretting the decision. I wasn’t worth the sacrifice.”
“He believed you were,” Markus told her. “He never wavered on that. He recognized that you and the other Flies were the best hope for humanity’s future. Hiding on this rock would only take us so far. Eventually we were going to have to take the fight to the enemy, and he believed you would be the one to do it. I think he was right.”
“Why?” she asked. “I haven’t done anything. I’m a mess!”
“Because when this war eventually comes, having a bunch of psychics isn’t going to be enough. We’re going to need to create a lasting alliance with the other sentient species of the galaxy. Tearing down the Convectorate and replacing them with another Sarafan isn’t the answer. We’ll need a leader, a face for our movement…and you could be it.”
“Me? The other councilors here don’t even respect me. They think I’m just a pawn.”
“Foln might think that, but the others don’t,” Markus told her. “You’re young, but you’re still a Gantrell. Even aliens who hated the Sarafan came to respect that name. You’re the last link to one of the few decent things about our heritage, and that’s something worth saving.”
Selaris balled her hands into fists. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I need you here. Please.”
He touched her chin and angled it up until she was looking at him. “You haven’t needed me for a long time now. I’m no politician, and I’m certainly not a diplomat. To most of these people I’ll never be anything more than the face of their enemy.”
“But…” she whispered. “I love you.”
Markus smiled and kissed her gently. “I know you do,” he whispered as he pulled away. “But trust me—I’m not worth it.”
“Isn’t that for me to decide?”
“Not today.”
He held her for a moment longer, then turned and headed for the door. He stopped when it slid open and glanced back over his shoulder.
“Please take care of Mira for me, if you would. In fact…it might be best if you just keep her. As it turns out I’m not much of an owner.”
“I think she prefers your place,” Selaris said softly. “Maybe I’ll see if I can get the lease transferred to her name instead.”
He smiled. “Thank you. And I’ll be back—I promise.”
“Markus?”
He stopped again and turned. “Yes?”
“I sincerely hope that you’re right about Vale.”
“Yeah,” he murmured. “So do I.”
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 that, 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.
