“Miss Piper,” Azelon said, “where are you going? You are deviating from the path to the galley.”
“I know, Miss Azelon, but… I feel something.”
“Please define.”
Piper scrunched her face up. “I duh know. It’s like…” Piper decided to try and answer Azelon’s question more accurately, so she slipped into the Unity and reached out with her second sight. There, bursting through a hundred walls in the starship’s hull, came an image of Mr. Lieutenant Magnus fighting with a bad guy. Piper screamed.
“What is the matter, Miss Piper?” Azelon asked.
“Mr. Lieutenant Magnus… he’s fighting the other guy, and…” She covered her mouth. “Now he’s hurt, Miss Azelon! He’s hurt so bad!” Piper’s eyes flooded with tears. She snapped back out of the Unity. “He needs my help right now!”
There was a long pause before Azelon answered. “No, Miss Piper. It appears that you will be safer if you remain en route to the galley.”
“No, Miss Azelon, no!” Piper was off and running down a different corridor now, her heart pounding so loud in her chest she thought it might burst. She had to get to Mr. Lieutenant Magnus, she just had to. And right away.
Piper felt her slippered feet slide along the floor as she ran around corners, eventually stopping at one of the fancy elevators. But the doors weren’t opening.
“Miss Azelon, why won’t the doors open?”
“Because, Miss Piper, I cannot permit you to attend to this situation. Miss Awen has already summoned adequate help.”
“But… no! I have to be there. I have to save him just like he always saves me.”
“Always saves you, Miss Piper?”
“In my dreams!” Ugh—bots could be so slow sometimes. “He saves me in my dreams, so I have to make sure to save him when he needs me.”
“As I said, Awen has already requested adequate—”
“Open these doors right now, Miss Azie.” Piper adopted the name Mr. Lieutenant Magnus used with her, hoping it might pervade her more. Maybe it was persuade. Either way, Piper stomped one foot as she’d seen her mother do to get a point across.
“I’m sorry, but I—”
Piper gritted her teeth, scrunched up her eyes, and slipped into the Unity. She didn’t have her power suit on right now, so she knew she couldn’t do super extra amazing things, but she could at least try and open the doors without much effort. There seemed to be a flow of energy surrounding the door linked to small devices that looked a lot like the servos on TO-96’s arms. Those must control something useful, she thought. So she reversed the flow of energy to them.
“Miss Piper, what are you doing?”
“Opening the doors, Miss Azie.” Piper stayed in the Unity and stepped into the elevator. Then she focused on where Magnus and Awen were, and told the energy surrounding the elevator to take her to their floor. The elevator door closed, and the small pod began to move.
“Miss Piper, I must advise you that taking control of the Spire’s system without the consent of the commander is not only inadvisable, it is a direct violation of Novia Minoosh Starship Conduct Protocol Number—”
“In case you hadn’t—haven’t have—have noticed, Miss Azie, the ship’s commander is hurt real bad. And if I don’t get down there and save him, he’s probably gonna die. Or worse.”
The AI’s voice hesitated. “Or worse?”
“Yeah, real worse.”
“Miss Piper, I must insist that—”
“You’re kinda starting to annoy me now, Miss Azie.”
“Annoyance aside, I must—”
“I’m gonna turn you off now, okay?” Piper focused on all the energy coming to the elevator, especially the stuff around the speakers, and followed it backward for a while. It was really, really deep somewhere in the ship, and tracing it was getting boring. So she just pushed against the flow a little. Not enough to hurt Miss Azie, but enough to keep her from interrupting her so much over the speakers. Maybe this was what her mom wanted to do to Piper sometimes when she talked a lot. And Piper could talk a lot.
“Miss Piper, you are vi-olay-ay-ay-ate—” Azelon’s voice stuttered and then turned off with a small click.
“That’s better,” Piper said out loud, thinking that she’d now be able to focus on saving Magnus. Once she got to the appropriate floor, she brought the elevator to a stop and made the doors open. She ran down the hall, slid around several corners, and then reached out to sense where Magnus was.
Now he was standing up. That meant he was okay! She focused on Awen and realized maybe she’d helped save him. This made Piper so happy she thought her heart might explode from joy. She wanted to find out what had happened. But Magnus and Awen were moving now, to another room. She was getting close to wherever it was they were.
She rounded another corner and then saw a big door in the middle of the hallway. It looked super important and had a data pad to the side. Piper expected the door to open, but it didn’t. She scrunched her nose for a second and thought some more. Letting Miss Azie talk again might be bad ’cause Piper knew she might get in trouble for taking over the elevator and stuff. Better to leave that for later. She could just open this door by herself again.
Piper found the thingys that moved this door but they were bigger than the elevator’s. That didn’t really matter, though, because the energy flow was the same. This was way easier than finding trees in the Foundation or moving up waterfalls with Awen. Really, all she was doing was telling little doors to open using their control boxes.
She walked inside a dimly lit room with glowing red trim everywhere. A giant holo screen filled the far side of the room and Piper noticed her friends walking outside of a small room with somebody in it. In fact, there was another room with somebody else in it, but her friends didn’t seem interested in him. This place… it looked kinda like a jail or something. Piper suddenly realized that maybe this was where they were keeping the bad guys they’d captured—the pilot and the Marine from the hole in Itheliana.
“Miss Stone,” said an image of Azelon on the holo display.
Piper winced. Miss Stone was what her tutors called her when she did something bad in class. And she could tell by Miss Azie’s tone that the AI wasn’t happy with her. “Hey… how’d you get in here, Miss Azie?” Piper asked, trying to be as sweet as possible.
“Miss Stone, you are not allowed to be on this deck. I must insist that you—”
Piper rolled her eyes. She was tired of everyone insis— insists— insisting that she do what they wanted her to do. Now even the AI was telling her what to do? No thank you. “Bye, Miss Azie.” Piper slipped back into the Unity and stopped the flow of energy to the holo display. In fact, she stopped all of Azie’s energy to everywhere in the next few rooms; that way the AI couldn’t bother her.
“Now…” Piper said, scratching her chin. “Let’s see…” Isn’t that what all the adults said when they had something to figure out? And scratching her chin tickled. So she stopped. There was only one door leading out of this control room, so she stepped up and opened it. As soon as she stepped into the hallway, she heard talking up ahead, coming from one of the five forks in the hall. She’d taken no more than a few quiet steps and was about to find Mr. Lieutenant Magnus in the Unity when she heard a voice to her left.
“Psst, little girl.”
Piper turned to see a man lying on a bed in the first big room. His face looked bloody, like he’d just fallen off his hover bike without a helmet. And while she couldn’t see all of him, he seemed super strong and had lots and lots of weird looking tattoos on his arms. Suddenly, she recognized him from the fight in Itheliana. He was the man that Magnus had captured from the hole in the ground.
“You’re a bad guy,” Piper said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you tried to kill my friends.”
“Tried to kill—?” The man propped himself up a little more. He had a lot of bruises and dried blood on his chest. “Listen, I wa
s defending my men. Your friends attacked us.”
Piper wrinkled her nose. “But Magnus said you were—”
“The bad guys?” The man shook his head and looked frustrated, like someone had just stolen his bowl of cereal. “First I’m the bad guy, and then I’m an unarmed prisoner and Magnus does this to me.” He gestured to his swollen eye socket.
“Magnus hurt you?” Piper would have rejected the accusation right away if she hadn’t seen Magnus do hurtful things to other people. Piper knew she could do hurtful things too, but that’s why Awen worked so hard with her to control her powers. Suddenly, Piper wondered if Magnus had lost control of his powers and done this to the prisoner. It wouldn’t have been hard to do—after all, Magnus didn’t have a power suit like she did.
“Maybe there’s something I can do to help you,” Piper said, filled with concern for the injured prisoner.
“Like what?” The man sat up, eyebrows raised.
“When I’m sad or hurt, sometimes I just need someone to talk to.”
“Well, I could use a friend right now.”
“Then I can do that, I suppose.” Piper turned from where the rest of the voices were coming from and headed toward the bleeding man in the small room.
11
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Ricio said to the foremost figure, the one called Magnus, “and it’s not going to work.”
“And why’s that?”
“Before you were trying to scare me into telling you something.” Ricio touched his still-sore stomach. “Thanks for all that, by the way.”
“Pleasure,” Magnus replied.
“And now you’re trying to establish trust with me. You’re nice to me, I’m nice to you, and everyone gets what they want.”
“Who said anything about being nice?” asked a rather enormous looking man, clearly a Miblimbian.
“And who said you get what you want?” said the Jujari through its clenched teeth. He’d never seen one up close before, not still alive anyway.
“I was only making suggestions,” Ricio said, trying to placate the two giants with his hands. “Easy, easy.”
“Listen, this doesn’t have to get bloody,” Magnus said.
“Is that what you said to the last guy too?” Ricio nodded at the blood stains on the former Marine’s armor. “’Cause something tells me that line doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
Magnus gave a little grin. “It all depends on how forthcoming you care to be. I’m simply saying that you have a chance right now to answer our questions before things have to get… personal.” Magnus cracked his knuckles.
As much as Ricio had been trained for this sort of situation—though he very much doubted that a scenario quite like this was on the Navy’s mind when they trained him—he really didn’t feel like being tortured today. And, strangely, these people didn’t exactly seem like hardened war criminals. Though, he admitted, they certainly seemed like they knew how to handle themselves. Not to mention they were in some crazy alien armor, flying around in an alien ship in an even stranger alien galaxy that was, quite literally, off the charts.
Ricio licked his lips and folded his arms. “So, hypothetically speaking, let’s say a guy like me is interested in answering questions from a really weird group of individuals like yourselves. What kind of things are we talking about? And what do I get in return?”
“Ezo is getting really fed up with this guy already,” a disgruntled looking Nimprinth said. “Can we just toast him?”
“Easy, my love,” said a tall, large woman. Her tanned skin and exotic features had a rather alluring power to them. She had to be Caledonian. In fact, he’d put money on it.
“Mystics, you really are an extremely eclectic bunch,” Ricio said.
“I can make your face eclectic with my missiles,” the bot said.
Ricio laughed. But so did a few of the other members of this group. Then he heard Magnus whisper to one of the other female soldiers, “Tell ’Six to stay quiet, would you?”
“You know,” Ricio said, unfolding his arms. “You’re not exactly the most terrifying group of interrogators.”
“Trust me, small pilot, I can change that,” the big one said.
“I don’t doubt that. But I’m still… I don’t know. I can’t figure this thing out.”
“And what’s that?” Magnus asked. “And I encourage you to be as specific as you can.”
Ricio considered Magnus—considered each of them really. Something was going on here, and he wanted answers. “None of this adds up for me.”
“Again, how so?” Magnus said. “Last chance.”
“All right, all right, don’t get your panties in a wad.” Ricio took a deep breath, realizing that he was about to divulge top secret information… at least in general terms. “So, they sent us out here to take down enemies of the Republic.”
“Who’s they?” Magnus asked.
“It was Admiral Kane, wasn’t it,” the Elonian said.
Ricio cocked his head. Everyone in the Navy and the Corps knew Admiral Kane. That wasn’t what piqued Ricio’s interest. It was that the woman singled Kane out from all the other admirals in the Navy. Mystics, she’d singled that name out over the hundreds of captains and commanders who could have ordered a squadron on a mission. The odds of that were at least suspicious.
“I’ll take your silence to mean it was,” Magnus added.
Ricio gave him a curt nod. “Anyway, they tell us to follow a ship that left Oorajee largely undetected. It was only luck that we picked up its signature. Weird thing is, it heads to the middle of nowhere and then vanishes without a trace.”
“Sounds like a real threat if you ask Ezo,” said the Nimprinth. Ricio kept looking around wondering which one of them was Ezo and why this guy was his spokesperson.
“All the same, those were my orders,” Ricio said, looking from the Nimprinth back to Magnus.
“You weren’t given any more information about us?” the Elonian asked.
Ricio shook his head. “Nope. And even if I had, I’m not exactly sure I would have believed it. I mean, you’re not exactly the sort of people I’d pictured fighting.”
The Elonina spoke into Magnus’s ear but still loud enough for Ricio to hear it. “He’s telling the truth.”
“You’re a Luma then or something?” Ricio asked her. The woman shot him a glance that suggested she wasn’t entertained by the question. “Okay, okay, relax. Just seemed like a very Luma thing to do, what with mind reading and all.” He paused to study them, considering what to say next. “So I gave you my bit. Your turn—who are you guys?”
The Eloninan looked as though she was going to object, but Magnus spoke first. “We’re trying to stop Admiral Kane.”
Ricio whistled and rocked back, expressing a mix of genuine surprise and mock shock. “And what, exactly, is he guilty of, Mr. Former Marine? I’m guessing somebody ruffled your feathers and got you dishonorably discharged or something?”
“Yeah, cause I’d totally risk all these people’s lives to save my reputation,” Magnus replied with a sarcastic tone. “Come on, jockey, do better than that.”
“Okay, okay… then just what—pray tell—is Admiral Kane guilty of?”
Magnus looked like he was hesitating. In fact, they all seemed a little tense. Ricio wondered if they actually had something on the man—or, Moldark, as it was. Perhaps they had intel about his strange transformation, or maybe—just maybe—they had spies inside Moldark’s secretive faction of the Republic. For some strange reason, Ricio actually found himself rooting for these underdogs. He wanted them to have something on Moldark. Anything. But perhaps that was asking too much. There was no subterfuge at work with the Republic. Ricio was simply working for the highest echelons of the Navy now—the Paragon, Moldark had told him.
“That’s what I thought,” Ricio finally said, turning to sit on his bed. “You don’t have a thing. You’re just some random pocket of rebels looking to take potshots at the Republic because
somebody killed your sister and you want revenge. I’ve heard it a thousand times.” He swung his legs up on the bed, folded his arms behind his head, and lay down. “Fill out the necessary forms and submit your complaint—it will be a whole lot less trouble for you than all this, and you might actually see a couple hundred credits in reparations. Have a nice day.”
Magnus stepped forward and crossed his arms. “He ambushed peace talks, captured a Republic senator, kidnapped one of our crew and murdered her inner circle on Ki Nar 4, and is attempting to illegally acquire advanced alien technology.”
Ricio popped his head up. He held himself there for several seconds, waiting for someone—anyone—to laugh. When no one did, he decided to, and sat upright. “Oh, now that’s rich right there. And I’ve heard a lot of splick in my time. But you”—Ricio circled a finger at the group—“you all win the trophy. This is just outstanding.”
He continued laughing, but when none of their faces seemed entertained—or even put off—Ricio’s ridicule died down. He cleared his throat. “I take it you all actually believe this then.”
“We do,” said the Elonina. The rest of them nodded.
“And you have proof?”
“More than we know what to do with,” Magnus added.
“Then why not take it straight to the Republic?”
“Would you?”
Ricio thought about it. “If it’s as bad as you say? Eh, I suppose not. But still, this all seems—”
“You’re telling me you haven’t noticed anything?” Magnus asked. “Over the last few weeks, maybe months… it all seems normal to you?”
Now it was Ricio’s turn to hesitate. He squinted at Magnus. Ricio wanted to just laugh at this man’s face as he was clearly having delusions of grandeur. Only, Magnus didn’t seem pathological. In fact, none of them did. And he could hardly believe that such a diverse group of individuals would ever work together for a common cause unless it was, in fact, a legitimate cause.
Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6 Page 109