* * *
“It’s easy to let the universe grind us down,” said Fitz. “Which is why she provides wonders like this for those who search for them. It’s beautiful.”
“Copy that.” Lily’s whisper was swallowed by the waterfall’s roar.
Having crossed the soot dunes, they’d followed the methane river upstream to this majestic spectacle. The scale, the power, the sheer physical presence of the phenomenon was humbling, but what made it so special in her eyes was the purity of its color.
After a landscape entirely constructed from sludgy yellows and sticky browns, the methane shed its impurities as it tumbled the hundreds of feet to the pool below, transforming into a delicate powder blue. Even the rain had stopped to allow the view to be enjoyed in all its wonder.
Moored nearby was a simple raft with a pair of outboard motors. At its banks, the methane river had lost its color purity. The edges of the raft were coated in what looked like foaming beer crusted with dark yeast flakes.
“I guess the raft’s for us,” said Lily. “But how do we get into Khallini’s base?”
“I expect we’re supposed to figure it out as we go. Don’t worry. That’s my specialty.”
They boarded the raft, and Fitz steered it toward the center of the waterfall. The sheets of methane pummeled them with ever-increasing ferocity, making visibility difficult.
At the point where Lily calculated the raft should have been at the fiercest heart of the waterfall, the pounding ceased. She was drenched in methane—barely blue pools of the liquid almost covered the floor of the raft—and the noise was still deafening, but they were in a clear channel the waterfall would not touch.
“Told you so.” Fitz sounded cheerful. “Three of my favorite words.”
“Force field?” she speculated.
“Sorcery,” Fitz replied. “Or so I’ve heard.”
They moored at a jetty on the far side of the methane waterfall and were met by a droid floating in the air. It was a messy composite of small modules, each uniquely shaped. The machine was about a meter across.
“What is your name, droid?” Lily asked, hoping to get on the machine’s good side.
“My name is Andrus. I don’t appreciate the term droid. I find it demeaning.”
“If you’re not a droid,” she said, “what are you?”
“I have explained. I am an Andrus. I am the Andrus. I’m as alive as you are, unidentified human and Captain Fitzwilliam. The only difference between you and me is that I converse with my creator every day.”
“What makes you think I don’t?” Fitz asked.
Andrus zipped in front of the captain. “What makes you think I care? Hand over the goods, Fitzwilliam.”
“The goods?” Fitz laughed. “Here you are.” He presented a data chip.
Andrus puffed gas over it, waved it in front of a variety of sensors that emerged from its casing, and then inserted it in a port.
“The contents are acceptable,” Andrus announced. “Follow me through the showers. Can’t have all those hydrocarbons exploding when we get inside. Once you’ve scrubbed up, I shall lead you to the Creator.”
* * *
“You were supposed to come alone, Fitzwilliam. That’s one of the reasons your landing field is a short trek away.”
“I decided I needed a friend,” said Fitz. “You can be quite a scary fellow.”
The old man shot a look at Lily. Saw right through to her soul.
She took a step back on the painted wooden floor, gasping for breath. She’d just been pistol whipped mentally. Or psychically. Maybe spiritually? She didn’t know what had happened, but she surely didn’t like it.
The experience was too similar to the last time she’d encountered Khallini, back on that bloody mess of an operation on Lose-Viborg. The sorcerer had paralyzed her that time. She’d gotten away lightly compared with the jacks trying to kill him.
“Lily Hjon. You wore pigtails last time we met.” Khallini licked his cracked lips as he considered her with a leer. She’d had men leer over her before plenty of times, but this was worse. He wasn’t seeing her as a woman. Not even as a human being. He studied her the way a taxidermist might consider where to place a new find within his collection. The jerk gave her serious creeps.
“As an adolescent,” he rasped, “you wished for a career as a historian, but your father wouldn’t hear of it. Isn’t it better to make history than to catch distorted echoes of what has already transpired? That’s what your father told you. Do you agree with him now?”
“I was angry with him at the time,” she replied, determined not to show the shock she was feeling inside that he knew her secrets. “But I don’t do regrets. Can’t afford them. So, yeah, I prefer to make history rather than read about it. Just like Dad said I would.”
Khallini tapped the floor with his brass-topped cane, the perfect acoustics of the room amplifying the sound. The Receiving Room, Andrus had called it before departing for less demeaning duties. In its vaulted roof and shiny mounted knickknacks that were probably priceless, there was a precision to the room’s opulence that was not reflected in its owner.
On Lose-Viborg, Khallini had looked the part of an aristo with wealth enough to own entire worlds and every person upon them. Here, he was dressed in a belted smock. Wisps of dark hair sprouted from his liver-spotted head and tumbled halfway down his back.
He was a crinkled gnome caught in his palatial lair. Only his polished cane suggested wealth and power.
Khallini turned to Fitz. “Congratulations, Captain. You surround yourself with interesting people.” He gave Lily a small bow. “Hjon is acceptable as your guest.”
That was enough! This wizard had plunged inside her mind as if he owned her. Lily’s blood finally boiled over. “I’m glad I’m acceptable, old man.”
Fitz sputtered, “Please, Lily. Show respect.”
Khallini laughed. “Respect is for the respectable, Captain, and I was never that. Always an outsider. Never wanted except when I was needed.”
“My apologies, my lord,” said Fitz.
“My lord? I reject that title too. I was never an aristocrat. It is merely a label that has some modest value but has bored me for some time.” He turned to Lily with a twinkle in his rheumy, old eyes. “Your captain, though…he is a genuine aristocrat. At least in the sense that when the Exiles first came here, they briefly flirted with feudalistic titles. In those days, they were intellectually stunted children, having to learn for themselves the treacherous contours of political liberty. With nothing to build upon, they designed what they thought were new systems of governance, criminal justice, education, economics, and hierarchy. Though in their ignorance, they mostly copied their past and repeated the mistakes of their forebears. Did you learn that in your history classes, Hjon?”
“That’s not the consensus.”
“I don’t care about consensus. I care only for facts. The Exiles made many mistakes in the early years, and you would do well to remember that. The dead-end flirtation with neo-feudalism was the least of their errors.”
“There are aristocrats today,” Lily pointed out.
“True. An upper-class elite self-appointed itself. It always does in one form or another.”
Fitz joined in. “As with the Outer Corellian Commerce Guild, sir.”
“You mean the smugglers. I have arranged payment, Fitzwilliam. You will have the funds to pay any remaining debts to Nyluga-Ree. The financial ones, anyway.”
Fitz sighed. “If only it were that simple.”
“I am aware that Ree still has a hold over you. She has a member of your team as a hostage. But I can free this person for you.”
“For a price,” Fitz accused.
“Naturally. Before I reclaim your hostage, there is something I need Nyluga-Ree to see. I fear that if I were to compel her, she would resist and be killed. Therefore you will kidnap her and bring her to a specified location.”
Fitz laughed. “Wait…are you serious?”
<
br /> “I find that when you’ve lived as long as I have, Captain Fitzwilliam, it is difficult to be other than serious. Seeing the playfulness that is so evident in you is bittersweet for me. It is a skill of the mind that, once lost, I don’t believe can ever be relearned. I’ve heard every joke, every wry observation on life, and no matter how excellent the rendition, I’ve seen it done better. It is good that humans have such short lives, because otherwise you would realize what a sham it is when you tell yourselves that you are all unique individuals. I see clearly that you are the echoes of those who went before you. As your descendants will echo you, and their descendants them. And someone or something will eventually come along from this uncaring universe and wipe you all out. Only then will the echoes cease.”
“You profess a tragic philosophy, my lord.”
“And yet an inevitable one. I also find it difficult to laugh because I find it difficult to care about you. Surrounded in my abode with my AI companions, I don’t need anyone else for my own contentment. However, that leaves me disconnected from regular people, and I now need to reconnect. I need to care. That is why I commissioned you to take me in person to Rho-Torkis. And why I wanted to see you here in the flesh.”
“Is it working?” asked Lily. “Because, let me tell you, I’ve had better chinwags.”
“Perhaps a little.” The old man gave her another piercing look, and she felt as if a corpse’s gnarled fingernails were scratching at her soul. “I know it can be done. In fact, it was one of your friends, Hjon, who tried to smash my head with an oversized war hammer. The situation was so beautifully ludicrous that I spared his life. Later the same day, I thought back on the incident and laughed for the first time in centuries.”
“His name is Vetch Arunsen,” said Lily. “He is the crewmate Nyluga-Ree took hostage.”
A look of surprise came over the old man. Lily could almost hear the desiccated skin crack as it stretched into near-forgotten contours. “Careful, Captain,” he rasped. “Your people are beginning to intrigue me.”
“May I ask one question before we depart, Lord Khallini?”
“One? I perceive several burning in your mind. Very well, but only one. Choose carefully.”
“If you find it so difficult to care about mere mortals, why are you interested in capturing the Nyluga? Why do you care about her?”
Nice one! Lily had been wondering the same thing.
“Come now, Captain. Isn’t it obvious? Why should I care about anyone other than my AI companions? You can answer that yourself.”
Lily sensed that behind his dark glasses, Fitz was stumped by this response. So was she. Regular people were just bugs to this ancient freak. Why would he care?
Fitz clicked his fingers. “Of course! The only person you care about is yourself. The only reason you need Ree—the reason you invited me here—is because you need us. And you need us because you’re afraid.”
Was there the barest nod from the old man? “Very well done, Captain.”
Khallini transitioned from warmed-up corpse to deadly threat in a nanosecond. He snatched out his right hand and dragged Lily out of her body. With his left, he reached out toward Fitz, yelling at him, “The knowledge that something out there in the galaxy scares me should paralyze you with terror.”
Lily was experiencing all this from a distance, her mind floating outside her static body. It was like being evicted from your home and watching from the street outside as it was put on the market. Literally watching.
Gods, her mobile tattoo was looking good!
This stupid, random thought shook some sense into her. And since she was out of the fight, outgunned by Khallini’s sorcery, she stopped thinking about her own nightmare and concentrated on Fitz’s.
Use your fancy hand cannon, she willed him. Blow the creep’s warty head off.
“Get out of my skragging mind!” Fitz screamed. He fought against an invisible resistance to push his arm down toward his thigh holster, but he was losing that battle. Fitz was about six feet away from Khallini’s clawed hand, the tendons and veins standing out from the captain’s neck like steel cords. She felt sure they would snap because she knew Fitz well enough to know he would never give in.
Come on you stubborn bastard. Fight him!
Cut off from her body, Lily could only think the words, but Khallini shot her a penetrating look, and she knew he had heard her. By Orion’s Balls, he could read her sodding mind!
“Your captain refuses to divulge the information I wish to take from his head,” he told her. “I can extract it anyway, but I don’t wish to break him. After all, he is currently an important contractor of mine. Whereas you—” he squeezed the hand aimed at Lily, thrusting her back into her body, simultaneously choking her, “—you are mere decoration.”
The roaring in Lily’s ears drowned out her pitiful gasps. She clutched at her throat, trying to prize away the invisible hands clawing at her windpipe. But there was nothing there! Was he screwing with her mind? Was she imagining being choked?
He raised his hand, and Lily felt herself lifted off the wooden floor. Her toes brushed the wood.
It was real all right! She pulled frantically at the invisible force at her neck, but she tired quickly.
The world was falling away.
Colors were fading to gray.
Fitz drew his hand cannon.
“Don’t threaten me!” Khallini roared at him. “I will hear your mind instructing your finger to squeeze the trigger, and I will kill you before the message is received.”
“I call bullshit. Release Hjon.”
“When you lay down your weapon and let me into your mind. Then I will release your friend. You are no threat to me.”
“I’ve started counting down in my head,” Fitz told him. “When I get to zero, we’ll find out who’s telling the truth, punk.”
“Punk!” Khallini snorted. “How strangely words echo and distort through the ages. Very well. I doubt you could do as you say, but perhaps you are right. It is, in any case, a more satisfying challenge to influence people the old-fashioned way.”
The vise around Lily’s throat vanished. She collapsed to the floor, pulling heaving breaths into her lungs.
“Yeah,” Fitz told Khallini. “Go old school, you wizened old skragg. Get what you want through memos and subliminal messages hidden in videos of cute animals in zero-g. Same as the rest of us.” He thumbed a control on the grip of his F-Cannon, activating a whirring noise that could as easily be chambering a round as readying a spell in his weird alien handgun.
With his barrel trained on Khallini’s head, Fitz advanced a step toward the sorcerer, leaning heavily into the movement as if he were heading into a hurricane. “We need to be clear on just one thing, my lord. Don’t ever mess with my people!”
Khallini laughed. It began as a snigger but built into a full-strength chuckle. His laughter poured out like a stagnant stream that had been dammed for centuries and desperately needed to be drained because something trapped inside had putrefied.
Fitz sidestepped to Lily’s position. “You okay?” he asked, without taking his aim from Khallini, whose laughter had not yet abated. Crazy old creep.
She rubbed her neck, but she felt no pain there. “I’ve survived worse. I don’t fancy Khallini’s chances, though, when I get my hands on him. Did he really call me decoration?”
“I intended no offense, Hjon,” said Khallini. “I merely meant that you are nothing more than background detail. Whether you live or die is of no consequence to the galaxy.”
“Yeah,” said Lily. “Cause none of that would be offensive.”
“I told you I intended no offense. I did not say I cared whether you felt offended. Hjon, Fitzwilliam, I withdraw all threats. Neither of you has anything to fear from me at this time. If I were going to kill you, you would be hearing these words from the afterlife.” He stared at Fitz’s F-Cannon.
The captain didn’t lower his weapon.
Far from being worried by this, Khall
ini smiled with what looked like intense satisfaction, but who could tell? The old man was insane.
As if to confirm Lily’s opinion of him, Khallini went on to say, “My boy, please remove your dark glasses.”
Fitz lifted his shades and narrowed his purple eyes at the sorcerer.
Khallini’s mouth formed an ‘o.’ “Incredible! You’re so much like your mother.”
“My what? Don’t tell me you’re my wicked great uncle or something.”
“Amazing.” Khallini closed his eyes. “I can hear her in your voice.” He took a deep breath through his nostrils, as if scenting the air for the first time in eons. “Get out,” he whispered insistently, though not angrily. “I have given you your orders and your lives. I shall transmit further data to your ship. You have bested me, and very few can say that. Now take what you have won and go!”
Keeping Khallini covered, Fitz helped Lily to her feet. Together, they backed out of the receiving room.
Outside, Andrus was waiting for them.
“Congratulations on your continued existence,” said the flying ball of modules. “Your outer garments await in the boot and pressure suit room. I took the liberty of cleaning them. Outside and in.”
The AI resembled a mishappen metal blackberry yet, somehow, it gave the impression of wrinkling its nose at these uncouth visitors.
“Don’t get to meet real people much, do you?” Fitz asked it as he assessed Lily’s neck for injuries.
“Real? A more accurate term for you people is ephemeral. And you needn’t waste my time by examining your colleague’s neck. Her windpipe was folded from within.”
“Andrus is right,” Lily said as they followed the AI along the tiled passage. “Khallini almost choked me unconscious, but I don’t feel any bruising coming on. Not that it lets the creep off the hook.”
Fitz nodded that he understood and proceeded in silence. That wasn’t like him, but then that line from Khallini about knowing his mother was pretty deep.
It left room for Lily to try a little quippery of her own. “Let me tell you something I don’t think you’ve realized yet, robot,” she said as they passed through a blast door and out into a section of the complex that had the functional look of a starship deck, unlike the palatial inner chambers.
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