The spider and the fly, p.40
The Spider and the Fly, page 40
Clamping down hard on her lower lip, Selaris turned back to the console and input the authorization code. She was halfway through when Varm shot her in the back.
The floor rushed up to greet her as every muscle in her body gave out at once, and she smacked against the tile with an audible slap. She tried to scream, but nothing came out except for a startled wheeze. Her arms and legs were locked in place; she couldn’t even close her gaping mouth.
“I’m sorry, my dear, but you left me no choice,” Varm whispered. Distantly, she heard him set the gun back down on the desk and fiddle with something else. “Soren wants you working on your speech, but right now it’s probably best if you just took a little nap…at least until I’m done here.”
Selaris tried to scream again, but the results were the same. An oppressive wave of fatigue washed over her, and she fought desperately against the urge to succumb. If Varm injected her with a sedative, then this was all over. Foln would get his serum, and the injected Mire soldiers would wreak havoc across the city. She needed to focus and find a way to summon her powers before it was too late.
Closing her eyes, she reached out and attempted to take control of her own nervous system. She understood exactly how the stun blast worked to disable most creatures, and in theory that meant she knew how to fight it, too. All she needed to do was convince her nerves to give up their vice grip on her muscles…
“We’ll talk about this again later,” Varm said as he slid up behind her. “And for what it’s worth, I really am sorry about Davin. He was a good man and a better friend. But no matter what else happens, we can’t let the Tarreen win this. I know he’d understand that.”
She tried again to move her arms. They twitched, albeit barely, but it would have to be enough. She waited until she felt the cold metal of the injector against her skin—
Screaming at the top of her lungs, Selaris rolled over as hard as she could. Varm stumbled to the side and had to catch himself before he smacked face-first against the floor. She still couldn’t move, at least not enough to actually escape, but now that she could see him she didn’t need to. Summoning her powers again, she wrapped a telekinetic hand around his body and hurled him across the room.
He crashed through one of the lab tables, and his collection of storage containers and datapads scattered about the room. Selaris grimaced and pressed her eyes shut, continuing her healing regimen until she could move more or less normally. It took another thirty seconds at least, but by the time she was finally able to hop back to her feet Varm still hadn’t moved. She stretched out and sucked the pistol from his desk into her palm, then slowly strode toward him.
“I should shoot you right now,” she growled. “You’re a murderer, you and Foln both!”
He didn’t respond, and after a moment of glaring down at his body, she realized she couldn’t see him breathing. She leapt forward to check for a pulse…
He was dead. A small pool of blood had already gathered at the base of his skull, and his eyes were fastened wide at the ceiling. Selaris shook her head, and the pistol slipped out of her grip and clattered against the floor.
She had killed him. She hadn’t meant to, but she had killed him. The kindly old man who had spent the last two years doing everything he could to help treat her. The patient tutor who had given her free access to his medical records and spent countless hours teaching her everything about his profession.
The coward who had murdered her father.
She clamped her hands over her mouth as a surge of white-hot rage burned away her guilt. Varm deserved it. He deserved worse, and so did Foln. They were murderers and traitors, both of them. They had abused her father’s trust and corrupted what had once been a prosperous sanctuary. And now…
Selaris forced herself to swallow as she glanced up to the lab equipment. No matter what else happened here, she couldn’t let them synthesize more of the serum. That was all that really mattered…and there was only one way to prevent it.
Pivoting back to the security panel on the wall, she entered the last sequence. The alarm klaxons blared the moment she slipped out of the room, and the containment fields flashed into place as the automated countdown began. Thirty seconds later, a blazing inferno consumed the lab, the serum, and what was left of Henri Varm.
But Selaris was no longer there to see it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jenavian told Thexyl everything. The truth about the crystal, the Widow, the Hierarchy…everything. And as she’d come to expect after so many years working with him, he absorbed each and every revelation with far more grace and aplomb than she ever could.
“I admit I feel a bit foolish not putting it all together before,” he said once she’d finished. “Many of the facts were right in front of us had we chosen to look for them.”
“Yeah, well, recriminations can wait,” she grumbled, pacing impatiently across the room. “Right now we have to figure out some way to get out of here.”
A series of mottled blue patches rippled across his neck. “So I take it you aren’t interested in the Widow’s plan for you, then.”
“Are you serious? She’s insane. This whole thing is insane.”
“I just wanted to be certain,” Thexyl said. “After our previous debates, I assumed—”
“You can rub it in my face later,” Jenavian cut him off. “Right now we need a plan. Do you have any ideas?”
“That depends. Where are we escaping to?”
She pressed her lips into a tight line. “We have to get back to New Keledon. We have to warn them about the attack and help them to evacuate. I doubt it will take the Drones long to upgrade that warship out there.”
“From what little I know about astral drive cores, installation is not a trivial task. At a minimum they’ll have to find a seat for the new engine and integrate it with the existing systems. They’ll also have to completely refit the sublight drive thrusters, assuming they want to be able to move once they shift over. For a ship that size, the process could take weeks.”
“The Drones are fast and efficient. I doubt it will take them more than a few days.”
“You’re probably right,” Thexyl agreed. He then paused and cocked his head to the side. “There is another concern, of course. What about Markus?”
Jenavian sighed and closed her eyes. Her pride was about to take the beating of a lifetime, but perhaps that was long overdue. “We have to get him out of here,” she whispered. “Based on what Ralon said before I don’t think the Drones have finished scrubbing him yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long before the Widow tries to stuff Foln inside his body. I just hope there’s still something left.”
“I’m glad we agree. Getting to him should be easy enough; freeing him and escaping the compound alive will be the real challenge.” He swiveled in his chair and keyed something into the computer terminal. “The shuttle we arrived on is still intact; the Drones haven’t dissected it just yet. That’s our only feasible escape route.”
“Assuming we can shift into astral space before the orbital tractor beams lock us in place or the Unifier blows us to pieces, anyway,” she muttered. “We’re also not going to have time to sit in the hangar bay and wait while the engines spin up—we’ll need to grab Markus and then get the hell out of here before any of the Spiders catch up to us.”
“Or the Widow,” he added grimly. “On that note, do you think it’s possible she’s already discerned your intentions? No offense to the potency of your mental barriers, but I’m not sure how well I’d trust them versus the might of a hundred something year-old Sarafan.”
“If so, I’m not sure why she’d let me leave her parlor. But either way, it doesn’t matter. There’s no point in worrying about something we can’t control. We need a plan.”
Thexyl turned back to the console as a ripple of thoughtful black crawled along his neck. “We do have options. We should be able to divert a few of the inactive repair mechs to begin powering up the shuttle without drawing undo attention. The Drones may be telepaths, but they’d have to physically access the repair logs like anyone else to notice that something was amiss with the repair schedule.”
“Good idea,” Jenavian said, tapping the console next to him and calling up a map of the compound’s floor plan. “I’d also see if you can dispatch a few others to run diagnostics near the doors. If we can seal off these three corridors, it would buy us more time before reinforcements show up to cut us off.”
“It will also increase the odds that someone notices the stray mechs, but it’s probably worth the risk. I’ll input the commands now.”
She nodded and strode over to her closet. None of the jumpsuits hanging inside were much different than the one she was currently wearing, but she wasn’t interested in a simple change of clothing. Instead her eyes fastened on the pristine suit of armor lurking in the back. It felt like ages since she’d been able to put it on, but now was as good a time as any.
Under normal circumstances, parading around the ship in full combat gear would throw up plenty of red flags, but Jenavian didn’t plan on encountering anyone if she could help it…not until she was fighting her way out, anyway. She quickly slid into the form-fitting blue mesh and locked the silver armor plates into place, then took a few seconds to make sure the shielding and stealth systems were still charged and ready to go. Once everything was fitted and in place, she tossed together a small supply pouch with the essentials—extra energy cells, a flash grenade, a sonic charge, and a multi-tool kit—and then grabbed a pulse pistol and slid it into her hip holster. The only thing left was her rifle, which she took a minute to properly calibrate as Thexyl finished reprogramming the mechs.
“Everything is ready,” he said after a few minutes. “I don’t suppose you have a Kali version of that armor in the back of the closet for me.”
“We’ll have to swing by the wreckage of the Manticore sometime and see if we can salvage yours,” she replied dryly. “Anyway, with luck you shouldn’t need it. Go on ahead to the shuttle and make sure everything is ready.”
“You may need assistance in retrieving Markus,” Thexyl pointed out. “I doubt the Drones will simply let you take him.”
“I can handle them. Just focus on the shuttle. And if for some reason I don’t make it…” Jenavian shrugged. “Then just get the hell out of here. Warn the city about the attack.”
A faint speck of yellow materialized on the bottom of his chin. “I will do what I can.”
“Good, then let’s get this over with,” she said, stepping out into the hall.
“Jen.”
She stopped and glanced back over her shoulder. “What?”
He triggered his camouflage reflex, and he began to blend in with the room’s red backdrop. “For what it’s worth, I understand how difficult this must be for you. But the people of New Keledon don’t deserve death, and neither does Markus.”
“I’m the one who brought it down on them,” Jenavian reminded him. “This is my fault—all of it. I just hope it’s not too late to fix it. Now come on.”
They slipped out of her quarters and took off in opposite directions. Her target, the interrogation room, was only one deck down and three junctions away from her quarters, but it was easily the longest walk of her life. The corridors on the Nidus were never exactly flooded with people, but if she sparked the curiosity of even a single Drone or other Spider, they could alert the Widow and this would all be over before it even began…
But thankfully most of the corridors were empty, and her psychic web gave her plenty of advanced warning to avoid the ones that weren’t. All told it took her less than two minutes to reach her destination, and once she did she pulled the flash grenade off her belt and flicked on the timed detonator. It wouldn’t buy her much time—the moment anything happened to the Drones inside the Nidus’s mistress would know something was wrong—but at least without their visual data, the Widow wouldn’t know exactly what was wrong. In the end, that might buy Jenavian a few precious seconds. It wasn’t much, but with a few galaxies’ worth of luck it would be enough.
Her hand hovered over the door’s entry keypad and stopped. One way or another, she was about to make the biggest—and, in all likelihood, last—decision of her life. Dimly, she wondered if Markus had felt the same way when he’d defected back on Typhus…
Taking in a final deep breath, Jenavian keyed the door open and flicked the grenade inside.
The charge went off almost immediately, and the trio of Drones all shrieked in surprise. Markus was there, clamped down to the med-table with various tubes pumping his body full of chemicals. The Drones surrounded him in a half-circle, their typical vacant, starry-eyed expressions replaced with shock and confusion.
Three clean shots later, they were all crumpled in smoking heaps on the floor, and Jenavian was already lunging towards the table.
“Can you hear me?” she asked as she tore off his restraints. Markus’s head bobbed to the side and he moaned something unintelligible. She’d seen enough of these interrogations over the years to know that without aid, he probably wouldn’t be able to form a complete sentence for hours, let alone walk. But she also knew that they had roughly a zero percent chance of getting out of here alive with her lugging around a hundred kilo man in her arms, and so once his restraints were off she reached over to one of the supply cases and grabbed ahold of the strongest stims she could find.
Jenavian injected three of them into his arm, enough to rupture a normal human heart in short order. His psychogenetically-enhanced organs would be able to handle it, though, and a few seconds later his eyes finally focused on her and lit up in some semblance of recognition.
“You were right,” she told him. “You can brag all you want about it later, but we need to get out of here.”
“Jen…?” he slurred.
“Just hold on.”
She draped him over her right side and shifted the rifle to her left. The first alarm klaxons started wailing the moment they reached the doorway, and at that point she knew the race was on. She just had to hope that Thexyl’s repair mechs were doing their job…
Gritting her teeth, Jenavian set off towards the hangar. Three turns and four bizarrely-empty corridors later they were hobbling down the final stretch, and she actually started to believe that this suicidal plan of theirs was going to work. But then the hangar doors abruptly whooshed open before she even hit the panel, and a warning flashed in her mind that they were about to be ambushed—
Too late. The fist of telekinetic force slammed into her chest and sent her hurling backwards into the opposite wall. Markus’s mostly insensate body tumbled to the side and flopped hard against the metal floor.
“From the first moment you found him I knew this would happen,” Ralon Sisk said, his head shaking in contempt as he stepped forward to block the doorway. “I knew he would get to you. I knew he would twist you around his finger just like he always has.”
Jenavian reached out for her rifle, but it skittered out of her reach as Sisk gave it another quick telekinetic push. Instinctively, her hand flicked down to her hip holster, but her pistol was nowhere to be found.
“I could see it again when I looked into his memories,” Sisk went on, stopping and looming over Markus’s body. “I could see the doubt on your face and hear the hesitation in your voice. I warned the Widow that you would betray us, that no matter how much you’d tried to convince yourself otherwise, you regretted not leaving with him on Typhus.” He grunted derisively. “But she refused to believe me. She insisted the fact you delivered him to us was proof of your loyalty…but I know you better than she ever could.”
“Ralon, you have no idea what’s going on here,” she said, vaulting back to her feet. “If you did, you’d—”
“I know exactly what is going on,” he growled. “Unlike with you and Markus, the Widow has never doubted my loyalty. She told me the truth after Mirador. She saw how the two of you were wavering, but she knew that I would understand.”
“Understand what? That we’re serving a megalomaniac who committed genocide against her own people?”
“She culled the weak, nothing more,” Sisk said. “And now our race is stronger for it.”
“Maybe you haven’t checked up on our race recently, but it isn’t doing too well,” Jenavian bit out, inspecting the area as casually as she could in search of an advantage. She could already feel more psychic minds approaching. They had another minute, perhaps two, before this was all over, and she needed to figure something out fast. “Do you really think you’re going to rebuild some grand order by harvesting adepts off destitute colony worlds?”
“It ensures that those who reach us are strong.”
She scoffed and took a small step forward. Sisk’s pistol was still in its holster, but hers was lying on the ground just a few meters from Markus. If she could just shift a little closer, she might be able to get a mental grip on it and yank it back into her hand…
“Don’t tell me you believe that,” Jenavian said. “All the Widow really cares about is staying in power, just like the rest of the Sarafan did. They were a blight on the galaxy the first time, and I doubt the encore would be any different.”
“The Sarafan were the stewards of the galaxy, the keepers of the peace,” Sisk replied mechanically. “They were all that stood between order and chaos.”
“And Markus thought I was the one who’d been brainwashed,” she murmured. “Listen to yourself. The Widow is about to send a cruiser to exterminate fifty-thousand innocent people, a significant chunk of whom are human. Mirador will look like an afterthought by comparison!”
His eyes briefly flicked down to Markus’s gasping form, and he kicked the pistol halfway down the hall before looking back up at her. “It doesn’t matter. I will find any Flies worth saving and discard the rest. Perhaps one of them will even be able to replace you.”
Biting down on her lip, Jenavian reluctantly settled into a combat stance. She had no interest in fighting him; he was every bit her equal, and she simply didn’t have the time for a drawn-out pummeling match. Unfortunately, she seemed to have run out of alternatives. She just had to hope she could overcome him quickly before the Widow—
