The ship was beyond fast. Alien fast. And yet, somehow, the accelerations we were subjected to once strapped and secured in our flight seats didn’t seem much more aggressive than anything I’d ever experience in a much slower skimmer.
It was a mystery, but hardly the biggest one. For instance, there was the fact that Parker seemed to be controlling the ship by telepathic influence alone. There was the generally similar but unmistakably alien architecture of the cockpit—or the flight room or whatever they called it. There was the fluidly responsive “viewport” at the front of the room, which had basically morphed from solid opaque purple wall to what resembled an enormous curved display that seemed to know exactly when and where to zoom, based on how we looked at it.
And then there was the deep, star-speckled black of outer space that utterly swallowed us as we cleared the last few layers of atmosphere only to find ourselves, I realized, still attached to the ship deck by some form of artificial gravity. In outer-freaking-space.
Just when I’d thought my day couldn’t get any weirder.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Siren whispered beside me.
I looked over to find her looking uncharacteristically clammy, her lips drawn tight. On the other side of her, Garrett looked a little green himself, but his pale reddish eyes were fixed on me.
“Lovely plan you have here,” he muttered.
“Haldin is the only one of you who displayed even a modicum of logic back there,” Parker called without looking back from his high-backed flight seat.
Parker’s praise made me feel dirtier than any insult ever could have. Instead of wasting my breath arguing with either of them, though, I focused on controlling it and trying to calm my racing thoughts. I seriously needed a game plan. Or, at the very least, I needed to figure out what in demons’ depths I was supposed to do until I could find the others and see what they’d come up with.
Lost as I was in my thoughts—not to mention in gaping at the wide open blackness of outer space, as Parker did whatever it was he was doing—I nearly jumped when Siren took my hand and twined her fingers in mine. At first, I thought she was just toying with me. She had seemed to genuinely enjoy making me uncomfortable in the past, after all. But then I glanced over and saw that Garrett was already holding her other hand, and I understood that the contact was intended only to circumvent my cloaking pendant.
Sure enough, Garrett’s voice came to my mind almost immediately. “We need to get this info you’re after, figure out how to land this thing, and get rid of that bastard before he can do whatever the scud it is he’s planning to do with us.”
I glanced at Parker’s turned back, not necessarily disagreeing. Part of me wanted to say that I didn’t think he planned any harm to the three of us—that he couldn’t have possibly even known Garrett and Siren were coming at all. But the thought sounded hopelessly naive even in my own head. Parker had been scheming every inch of the way to get here. Which, for the thousandth time, just reminded me that I couldn’t trust a single thing about the raknoth.
“What are you after, anyway?” came Siren’s voice.
I eyed her, wondering if I could trust the two of them—or anyone else besides Elise and the others, for that matter.
“He showed me something before things hit the turbines back at Haven,” I finally sent.
“I take it it wasn’t what he’s packing beneath that jumpsuit,” Garrett sent.
“We all know you’re a hard man to impress there,” Siren added, which earned me a slightly sharper glare from Garrett.
Great. As if the man needed more fuel on his fire. Why not bring up the time his girlfriend had tried to sink her seductive fangs into me?
“He showed me something about the Sanctum’s origin,” I sent. “Something that convinced me to break him out of there. Not that I had much choice after High General Auckus sent a squad to kill me.”
They traded a look.
“Is there a single tingler nest you haven’t kicked on this planet, Raish?” Garrett sent.
“Yours, obviously.”
He narrowed his eyes, and I swear the irises glinted slightly redder.
“What kind of secret’s worth siding with a creature that’s done the things he has?” Siren asked.
I was surprised by the depth of disgust in her mental tone. For a scant second, it almost sounded like she really cared. About everything. The hybrids. The war. The current predicament. And maybe she did. Maybe they both did.
“You never told me why you two decided to come looking for us in the first place,” I sent.
“It’s rude, you know,” Parker cut in aloud before they could reply, “whispering behind closed doors, so to speak.”
Ahead, he unstrapped and rose from his flight chair, apparently done with the navigation. By unspoken agreement, we all unstrapped and stood too. At the ready, just in case. However it was generated, the ship’s gravity felt comparable to Enochia’s.
I was still running through my assessment of our situation and Garrett was busy giving Parker a hot retort—something about the raknoth having some serious nerve—when the scene in the viewing wall began to shift. It started with a cool light at the bottom of our view, muting out some of the aggressive blackness of space. Then it grew, an enormous, hazy sphere of green and blue and white, cutting through the darkness, rising into view. Even Garrett fell silent.
Enochia.
The world rotated into view, all but filling the wall display with its tranquil beauty. Never in my lifetime had I thought to see my planet like this. Space travel had always been a job for those rare techs who worked installation and maintenance on Enochia’s plethora of monitoring and communications satellites. That was it. They didn’t go farther than orbit. What was the point?
As the Sanctum had reminded the world a hundred years ago when some pioneering adventurers had thought to go explore the moons, there was nothing out there for us in the cold depths of space. Alpha had already placed us on the finest utopia the universe had to offer, after all. So there we’d remain, worshiping his wisdom. To do otherwise would’ve been madness.
Staring down at the planet from on high, I really couldn’t argue with the utopia bit. For several moments, none of us could seem to find words. Except for Parker, I gathered, when I finally tore my eyes away from the view and found him watching me with a smug grin.
“Nothing like traveling to see just how small your problems are, when viewed at the appropriate scale. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I wanted to argue that our problems still seemed pretty damn big, and that it was bullscud to think what was happening down there was all right on any scale, but I was still too busy gaping at Enochia.
Besides, maybe he had a point. It was hard to imagine so much pain and chaos happening on a planet that looked so perfectly peaceful from far outside. I couldn’t help but wonder how everyone else on the planet might feel if they could somehow all see what I was seeing now—not in the vids and the pictures, but here, drifting in space, staring down at the magnetic enormity of the planet that gave us all life.
How could those people all be so willing to live in fear and conflict and hatred when there was so much beauty down there? So much space for everyone to live their lives, free from fear?
Because the Sanctum won’t let us, came the acidic reply from some dark corner of my mind.
I looked to Parker. “I need to see the rest of it.”
To my surprise, he didn’t argue or quip. Just nodded. “Yes, I think it’s time.”
Somehow, the lack of teasing and insults only reminded me that I should be furious with the raknoth for having once again played me like a harpa to get me aboard this ship. But I was aboard this ship now, and there was too much happening for me to worry about being pissed. I knew I couldn’t trust anything I didn’t yank directly from his mind—and that even that information should be treated with thorough skepticism. For now, it was enough.
Beside me, Siren tore her gaze away from the view. “If yo
u two are gonna swap dirty secrets, I’m coming.”
She looked defiant about it, like she expected us both to argue the point. I almost expected myself to argue too, but when I actually thought about it, I didn’t really see any reason why the two of them shouldn’t be aware of the truth about Sarentus and the rest of it. Sure, it was dangerous information. Extremely dangerous. And I was far from certain I could trust either of the ex-Seekers. But at this point, what was the worst that could happen?
For the first time since Carlisle had died, I was truly back on the outside—on the run from the entire planet—and while they hadn’t said as much, I was pretty sure Garrett and Siren were here first and foremost because they sensed that staying on the sidelines would inevitably mean a short life, spent running from overzealous mobs.
“I think you should both come in with me,” I said.
Parker said nothing.
“Grop that,” Garrett said, looking between the two of us and then to Parker. “I’m not stepping into his head.”
Parker quirked an eyebrow. “You don’t secretly want to scour my thoughts and find out if I’m sorry for what I did to you?”
“Pretty sure I know the answer to that one.”
Parker studied Garrett, and Alpha only knew what was going on in his head. “Many would call your alterations a gift, you know.”
Garrett tensed, but Siren laid a hand on the back of his neck, and he settled long enough for them to have a short telepathic exchange—a less than ideal one, judging by the darkening expression on Garrett’s face.
The ex-Seeker drew his dagger and touched the blade point experimentally before focusing back on Parker. “How about this one? I’ll watch from the outside. And if I get the slightest inkling you’re up to something, I’ll cut our losses and jam this gift right through your thick skull.”
To my surprise, Parker didn’t have a snide comment. He actually looked a touch uncertain.
“The memories we are visiting… they are quite potent. I’d rather you not react hastily. Haldin and Alexia will in all likelihood have some external reaction to what I intend to show them.”
I shot a confused glance at Siren, who looked startled and none too pleased herself. “Alexia?”
She scowled at Parker before turning to me. “Such a pleasure to meet you, Demon.”
“Yeah.” I looked between her and Parker. “I think I’ll just stick with Siren.”
She showed me a venomous smile. “I’d rather you did.”
“Perfect,” Garrett said. “Now if you two could focus on the raknoth telling me not to worry if he accidentally fries your brains…”
“He’s not wrong,” I said. “About us reacting, I mean,” I added quickly at Garrett’s incredulous look. “What he showed me in the brig put me in a cold sweat and… well, it took a toll.”
“Yeah…” Siren said. “Maybe we should start with a crash course on what I missed so far.”
Parker just sat down to wait, but I didn’t miss the way he rolled his eyes or the way he tapped his fingers on his crossed arms. Apparently, even a 2,800 year old alien could experience impatience. But he said nothing as I did my best to recount what Parker had shown me so far—that our holy prophet Sarentus had really been the raknoth, Nan’Sarentus.
“Bullscud,” Garrett said.
I continued on until we reached the other, even less palatable revelation.
“What do you mean they brought us here?” Siren asked. “That’s…”
“Bullscud,” Garrett provided. “Complete, softsteel-sipping bullscud.”
Parker yawned.
“I saw it,” I said. “Or saw them talking about it, at least.”
“Oh, right,” Garrett said. “You mean you saw a memory you can’t trust of the lying aliens talking about how they supplanted an entire Alpha-damned world population from some make believe other planet to start this one? Forgive my skepticism.”
I did forgive his skepticism. It’s not like it was unreasonable.
There was more I could have told them, I suppose. There were the memories of Earth I’d seen in Al’Kundesha’s memories back before the White Tower catastrophe. There were the corroborating drawings from the Emmútari text to consider—the ones Franco and I had seen in Pasty’s dungeon that showed Sarentus as a raknoth and also depicted a great mass of people debarking from an enormous ship at the base of the Bjornan Mountains. But we didn’t need to open those additional drawers of messy complications right now.
“I’m not asking you to take my word for it,” I pointed out, tilting my head at our silently waiting raknoth. “You know as well as I do that telepathy doesn’t lie.”
“In humans,” Garrett amended.
“What will it hurt for me to see for myself?” Siren asked.
He looked at her like she’d just asked if he’d like to take a deep space stroll, which in turn prompted another round of private telepathic communication between the two of them. Again, Garrett didn’t look happy when they broke the contact, but he didn’t try to stop Siren. Mostly, he just glared at nothing in particular.
“We’re ready?” Parker asked, taking Garrett’s surly air of defeat as his cue. He spread his hands to the open deck space adjacent to where he sat, indicating we should join him in a more stable position—which, after my near-collapse back in the brig, didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
I sat to Parker’s left, folding my legs up and assuming a comfortable position. Siren sat to his right, closing our little circle. Garrett hovered behind her, patting the flat of his blade apprehensively against his thigh.
“Right, then,” Parker said with a perfectly pleasant—and perfectly shallow—smile. “Let us get started.”
18
Harvesters
If I could’ve chosen any one telepath on the planet to have my so-called back while invading the vast minefield that was Alton Parker’s raknoth mind, Siren probably would’ve been somewhere around the bottom of the list. But she was here, and that was that.
Maybe I should’ve given her more credit. One near murder attempt and one nearly catastrophic attempt at seduction aside, she actually had been something of a reliable ally since she’d strutted into my life. At times. Sort of.
She’d seen fit to out General Auckus as the Sanctum’s inside man in the first assassination attempt, at least. And she’d also probably saved my life and several others when she’d lent her strength to help me hold Frosty at bay at the canyon ambush.
Despite that, though, I wasn’t about to consciously let her anywhere near my private mind.
We went in hard and fast, and with defenses fully intact—against each other as well as against Parker. As before, Parker made it easy, leaving himself wide open for us to stroll right in.
Even knowing what to expect, it was still a kick in the brain, adapting to the raknoth’s alien mind, and to the extent of his intricately sharpened senses. I felt Siren floundering in the initial wave of it. Setting my better judgment momentarily aside, I reached out to her, thinking calming, stable thoughts.
She steadied, then gave me an abashed thanks.
“It’s a lot to take in,” I admitted. “Just remember that we’re in control in here.”
Together, we faced our attention toward the vast expanse of Parker’s memories.
“Okay,” I sent. “We’re here. What is it you want us to see?”
“You’re the one in control here,” Parker’s voice drifted to me from the darkness all around. “Perhaps you should begin with what you’d like to see.”
He was still going to play it coy? Fine. I was the one in control.
So I pushed Parker down to the gutters of our shared mental space, bade Siren to hang on tight, and focused as clearly and willfully as I could on a singular thought: What is this ‘greater threat’ Parker keeps rambling on about?
In hindsight, it was a foolish move.
One moment we were adrift in the relative calm of Parker’s mind, most of his active thoughts and feelings relegat
ed to background noise. The next, there was nothing but a planet-shaking roar blasting me dead in the face, threatening to tear the flesh from my bones.
I could barely even fathom the enormity of the beast the sound came from, drowned as I was in the sensory overload of that roar, and the crushing pressure that came with it.
Pressure. That was the first word that flashed through my head, even if it was terribly inadequate. More accurate to say it was a telepathic onslaught, the likes of which I never would’ve wished on anyone.
It fell on us like a crashing ocean of boiling rage. It blasted all traces of Siren away from my side and set my nerves on fire until I forgot that it was a memory. It didn’t matter that this was not my body, that I’d been in control only a moment ago.
For a second, I was there, alone. And I was terrified.
Then the moment passed. The flash of memory dimmed—by my doing or someone else’s, I couldn’t have said—and I yanked myself back. Away from the memory. Away from Parker’s mind. Back to my own body, and sweet, blessed safety.
I surfaced to the ship deck just in time to see Alton Parker’s hand shoot up, blindingly fast, and catch Garrett’s descending dagger straight in the palm. It was a testament to Garrett’s preternatural strength that the blade pierced all the way through to the back of Parker’s hand, and a testament to raknoth pain tolerance that Parker didn’t make a sound.
He just scowled at the dark blood dripping to the deck, then up at Garrett, then to me.
“Well, that was close.”
Garrett’s wild eyes flicked to me, assessing.
“It’s okay,” I said, raising my hands in peace. “Misunderstanding. We… We’re okay.” I looked at Siren, who was pitched back on her hands, pale, sweaty, and panting. “I think.”
Garrett ripped the dagger free and dragged Siren back a few feet, ignoring her murmured protests. “It’s not okay,” he growled in response to whatever she said. “And you’re not going back in there.”
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