“Yes. Haven’t you heard of our reputation?” A smile tugged at the corners of Sinuthros mouth.
So it was true, the VoQuana had some kind of tech that could read thoughts.
“You may be the first human to figure it out in a generation. Isolation has cloaked us in myth and blinded you to the real threat. Your species thought you were sweeping us away forever, but imprisonment gave us an opportunity to grow stronger beyond your sight. It enabled us to advance our organic technology to levels beyond anything your kind thinks is possible. None of you are ready for what is coming.” A smile touched his lips.
“It’s so hard to believe we came from you. How fortunate that the gods chose to elevate us.” He stroked her hair, sending shivers of revulsion through her body. “Baron Revenant wants you alive and mentally intact. I told him he shouldn’t let an investigative reporter run around our work unchecked. but he was convinced you were going to serve your purpose better without my meddling. He’s underestimated you, and I’m going to correct that problem right now.”
Her heart raced as she tried to think about the taste of ice cream, the touch of wind on a summer’s day, anything except what she knew. She had to activate the shunt program somehow, had to focus on—pain lanced through her head like a spike driving itself in one temple and out the other. She grunted, stifling the scream before it left her throat. His hand wrap itself up in her hair, pulling her head back and up off the floor. Sinuthros drew close, his small, pointed nose almost touching hers.
Cygni tried to close her eyes, but they wouldn’t obey. She could not look away from the horrible black spheres. The circles of blue sparks within them grew larger in her vision like they were two rings of teeth opening to consume her. They became the only thing she could see, merging until only one ring glowed in her mind. She felt a touch at her forehead, like a finger pressing on the skin above her eyes a moment before it pushed through, flowing into her skull like water rushing into a cup. Neither skin, nor bone, nor her will were an obstacle to it. It filled her head creating a sensation of incredible pressure like something was trying to burst her skull from the inside.
Is this what he did to Baron Keltan? she wondered. The pressure shifted inside her head, growing tendrils through it, sifting, probing—Baron Keltan, the Queen Gaia, his body flopping on the deck like a fish—she gasped. Something was forcing her to think about the events, pushing her thoughts in directions she didn’t want them to go—Baroness Altair talking to Sinuthros, they discussed the death of a colony, Calemni, Siren—
He lurched back. The ring disappeared and his face came back into focus. The pressure in her mind flowed out of her. Her body shuddered with both the violence of its retreat and the oily, hollow feeling in her head it left behind.
“How do you know about Siren?” Sinuthros’ voice was sharp, like a slap across her face.
“Cygni, I’m so sorry,” Pawqlan said.
A stern look came over Sinuthros’ face. He let go of her hair and her head struck the floor with a painful thud. The blow seemed to return her to some of her senses. The flashing colors were gone from her vision along with the ringing in her ears. Her body felt numb, tingling like she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket. She half-remembered there was something she could do, that she had to do right now, to stop this violation from continuing.
Sinuthros grabbed her with both hands.
“No!” She screamed as the pressure flowed into her head again—
She crouched behind the divan, pushing the spy-grains into place beneath it. She could see his legs from beneath the furniture. Who was that? Gray legs, like—her mind skipped ahead—she was watching the recording, watching Baron Keltan stumble into the antechamber, watched his face widen in horror when the door opened—skip—the Abyssian, Nero Graves, was going to Elmorus where the Siren factory was. She heard Baroness Altair say it in the recording. Siren, it was a nanomachine capable of controlling others. Biren, her savage, told her that in the alley—
No! she cried out, desperately trying to fight the thing in her head. She had to hide what she knew, she had to do something—Her Biren was going to help her, along with new allies, Sanul, Giselle—No, no, no! Her mind rebelled. She felt her body convulsing like Baron Keltan’s had, but it was a distant sensation, like feeling vibration through a wall. Something was in her mouth, salty, foamy, and soft. It tasted like oranges. She realized it was her own saliva frothing as the seizure continued.
“Cygni!” Someone shouted from far away. She heard a crash and a grunt, and again the pressure retreated from her head, leaving it devoid of thought, dark, like the Cyberweb when she first shifted her consciousness into her implant—
Her implant!
She activated the multitasking program, splitting her mind in two. Partial feeling returned to her body along with an awareness of her surroundings. It wasn’t perfect, something like being half-asleep or drunk. Her head hurt with a throbbing pain, but it was good enough for her eyes to focus on the glass ceiling above her. Stars gleamed through the purple haze of the city’s aegis field, and she realized Sinuthros was no longer over her. She rolled her head to the side, and saw him on the floor next to her. Pawqlan had somehow managed to tackle Sinuthros despite being bound to the chair. They struggled and writhed, Sinuthros seemingly as unable to dislodge Pawqlan as he was to gain the advantage.
“You foolish amphibian idiot,” Sinuthros shouted as Cygni sat up. Distracted by Pawqlan’s awkward attack, he seemed unaware that she was able to move.
The Galaenean was thrashing around, trying to dig the edge of the chair’s back into Sinuthros’ gut while snapping at the VoQuana with his beak. She had never seen the gossip columnist like this—a wild, raging beast fighting for his life. She had to help him, somehow.
Her sense of balance wasn’t quite right. She tried to rise to her feet but slipped and slammed into the floor. The noise brought Sinuthros’ attention to her, and his teardrop face screwed up into a cruel mask. He redoubled his efforts to get Pawqlan off of his body, and managed to grab the back of the chair with one hand. Sinuthros slid part of himself out from under it, but the move cost him. Pawqlan got Sinuthros’ other arm into his beak and bit down.
The VoQuana screamed. Blood ran from the sides of Pawqlan’s mouth. Dark and red, it dripped to the floor beneath them. Sinuthros gave up trying to escape, and took advantage of Pawqlan’s exposed skull by slapping his other hand on top of it.
“No!” Cygni shouted, but could do nothing as her coworker went into convulsions. She tried to get up, spurred by the horror going on before her, and managed to move forward on her hands and knees. Although only a meter away, she couldn’t seem to move fast enough to do anything.
Pawqlan’s body gave a final shudder and went limp.
“You bastard!”
Sinuthros saw her coming and tried to get out from under the Galaenean again, but Pawqlan’s final convulsions caused him to bite down harder. Sinuthros struggled to get his arm free. Blood continued to stream from the point where Pawqlan’s beak bit into his pale flesh, forming a dark pool beneath them. Sinuthros tried to grab her with his free hand, but Cygni swatted it away. He gave her a hard stare, and she felt her body tingle as one side of her consciousness reacted, but the flashes of light occurred only in her mind’s eye, as distant as an old memory. The shunt was working.
Sinuthros’ expression calmed, his face became serene. “Impressive, Miss Aragón. It seems I have underestimated you as Zalor did.”
“Is he dead?” She glanced at Pawqlan.
“Quite.” Sinuthros’ voice was strained, but still calmer than she would have expected. The effect was unnerving.
She took a deep breath, causing a prickly, painful sensation to crawl up her scalp. She stared down at him, and felt the echo of the pressure he put in her mind send chills down her spine. The bile to rose in her gut. She wanted to take his head and push her thumbs into his black eyes until he screamed. She felt herself reach for him, leaning forward, but t
hen the wave of nausea overcame her, and she turned her head to the side to retch on the floor. The acrid smell set her off again, and her body contracted around itself over and over again. She groaned when the spasms ended, falling over on her side.
“I’m going to kill you,” she said.
“I don’t doubt that you want that very much. I know the harvest of information can be unpleasant, but I doubted you would—”
She kicked at him with all of her strength. Her foot smashed into his face with a satisfying crunch, bringing forth a fresh source of blood to feed the expanding pool beneath him. She did it again, heard him groan, and kept kicking. Her strikes became automatic. She was unaware of anything but the thrust of her leg, the rebound of his head, and the crunch of bone afterward. She heard herself scream, a primal, brutal sound that bounced off the ceiling ten meters above them.
At some point the throb of a dark energy generator outside penetrated the greenhouse windows, and she stopped to listen. It grew louder, and for a moment she dared hope it was someone coming to help her.
No, she told herself. No one but Pawqlan knew she was here, and he was dead because she asked him to look up Baroness Altair’s daughter.
Cygni looked down at her feet. The one that kicked Sinuthros was throbbing and felt wrong in a way that she knew meant it was broken. Her legs were covered in the dark-red blood of the VoQuana. Beside them the ruin of Sinuthros’ head lay slumped over his shoulder. At the other end of the limb, Pawqlan’s corpse still had his arm in its beak. She thought the Galaenean hated her just an hour ago. Why had he sacrificed himself for her, she would never know.
Outside the air-car landed, and seconds after the doors to the hothouse opened sending a wave of damp, cold air through the jungle of potted plants. Cygni shivered as the chill galvanized her to move. She started crawling away from the grisly scene, but still unable to completely control her body, and with a broken foot, she didn’t get very far. A figure emerged from among the plants, gauss pistol in hand.
He looked tall from her position on the floor, dressed in all black with a strange pin on the lapel of the formal jacket he wore over his uniform. She stared at it a moment, realizing she had seen a gold ring around the opal before, and her eyes shot up to his face. His hair and skin were reflective silver, like he’d been dipped in liquid mercury, but she recognized his hooked nose and strong jaw line.
“Are you okay?” Thuban Vargas said, squatting next to her.
“You—you’re silver,” she stuttered.
“It’s called hex-skin. It’s a kind of cybernetic armor.” He put a finger on her neck, and her implant informed her that she was being scanned. “Is there anyone else here?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Your foot is broken in three places. Don’t move it.” He produced a small tube from his jacket and jammed it against her ankle. It tingled as the nanomeds flooded her system.
Thuban rose to his feet keeping his gun before him as he moved over to Pawqlan and Sinuthros. He checked each of them, and pried Sinuthros’ arm from Pawqlan’s mouth before grabbing the edge of the chair and tossed it, along with Pawqlan’s body, with one arm across the room.
“Hey, what are you doing?” She twitched when Pawqlan’s body struck the floor with a crash.
“He’s still alive.” Thuban knelt down beside the VoQuana and started fishing around in his pocket.
“What are you doing? Leave him! Let him die,” she shouted.
He looked over his shoulder at her. “I can’t do that, Miss Aragón. I don’t know what he did to you, but you don’t know what’s at stake here.”
“You’re CSA. The VoQuana are the enemy! Why are you helping him?” She couldn’t help the panic from rising in her voice. Sinuthros had to die for what he did to her, and for what he could reveal if he woke up. Her friends and allies would be in danger if he lived.
“If I let him die it could jeopardize the operation. I can’t allow that to happen. Justice must be served.” He jammed a nanomed rod into the side of Sinuthros’ broken face.
“No, he has to die.” She shuddered, feeling the memory of that thing in her head again. Out of desperation she accessed her implant, directing it to query Vargas’. When it did she tried to upload her hacking program. For a moment she felt something come back down the connection, scanning her through her own implant, and then the connection broke. Thuban didn’t even flinch, but kept working to inject nanomeds around the VoQuana’s wounds.
“What was that?” She whispered. She’d never been bounced from a system like that before.
“PLIA,” he said, finished his work, and moved back over to her.
“What?”
“Programmable Limited Intelligent Assistant, a kind of low-level AI housed in my cerebral computer.”
“Are you an Abyssian?” She was shocked.
“No. What I am isn’t associated with Daedalus, but the point is not to try and hack me again.” He holstered his gun in a rig beneath his shoulder and started feeling around her foot. “Almost patched. You’ll be able to walk again shortly, but you’ll have a limp for a few days.”
She looked around him and then at Sinuthros’ body. “You need to let him die.”
Thuban stared down at her, the silver covering his hair and skin shifted. It flowed into him through his pours, restoring his dark skin and hair.
“They’re trying to take over the Confederation,” she said in desperation. “You have to kill him to protect us all.”
“We won’t let that happen. He will be transported to a secure holding facility and questioned. We need the intel he has in his head. Things are going on that you have no idea about, but rest assured, Daedalus isn’t the only one keeping an eye on the Confederation. You’ll be safe, I promise.”
“No I won’t. He—” she shuddered, feeling the bile rise again. “He did something to me. He can get in our heads—” It occurred to her that if they managed somehow to interrogate the VoQuana, then the CSA would know everything about her and her allies.
“We know, Miss Aragón. Please, trust me.”
He leaned over to scoop her up in his arms. The move put one of her hands right next to the butt of the weapon sticking out from his shoulder holster. She had only one chance, and she had to act fast or it would be lost forever. She squirmed out of his grasp, flipping over onto the floor while she accessed his weapon’s IFF chip with her implant. It wouldn’t have worked for a normal citizen, or if that PLIA thing he mentioned covered his weapon too, but she had some special hardware and software for breaking into high level security, and the chip was wide open to attack.
“Miss Aragón, please! I’m trying to help you.” He bent over her again and put his arms around her. “Once more, and this time—“
She grabbed the gun from its holster, pointed it at Sinuthros and pulled the trigger as many times as she could. The air filled with the rapport of supersonic bullets, deafening both her and her would-be rescuer as she fired. Thuban dropped her, stumbling back holding his ears while she sent one bullet after another tearing through the body of her enemy, the floor, and the glass walls of the greenhouse. She didn’t stop until the weapon was empty.
Thuban shook his head and stared at her. “What did you do? He was my prisoner.”
“Justice.” She glared at him.
He stared back for several moments. When he spoke spittle flew from his lips. “Damn it. I’m going to pick you up again, this time you don’t so much as twitch.”
She nodded, handing the gun to him butt first. He snarled, but took it and scooped her up for the third time, carrying her outside into the crisp air. Over his shoulder she could see a black air-car waiting on the platform.
Thuban lay her down in the back seat. Thinking to escape, she deactivated her multitasking function, and screamed as pain wracked her body. Her limbs went limp, falling like gummy candy over the side of the car seat. Standing just past the door, Thuban sighed.
“Stay put, and try to relax. I kn
ow you’ve been through a lot, but damn it, Aragón. I was responsible for him.” He gave her a last look with his red-brown eyes. There was no compassion in them, no reassurance—just anger.
She blinked through the pain, tears blurring the world on the other side of her UI.
“Stay here.” He shut the car door.
She watched him go back into the hothouse. When he was out of sight, she accessed the Cyberweb, first through the Spur Herald’s servers to borrow a CPAd, then through a number of masking nodes she set up to hide from tracer programs. She uploaded the recording she just made of what happened and sent it on to Biren. She was about to drop the connection when she remembered one more CPAd that it might be useful to send the recording to, though it also might be futile and/or dangerous.
Fuck it, she thought, and sent it.
Thuban came back, his face a mask of rage. “He’s dead! Are you happy with yourself now?”
She stared at him for a moment, unafraid. It didn’t matter what happened to her for at least the next few hours. She knew that if she was right about the VoQuana and Revenant there would be another monster soon, but what mattered in the here and now was that she killed this one. Realizing that sent a wave of elation through her tired, pain-racked body. She chuckled and shuddered against the synthetic leather seat.
“Today, I win,” she whispered, and slipped off into darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Fuyūyōsai, Taiumikai
41:2:20 (J2400:3146)
Armstrong’s skin was a network of puckered-white scars surrounded by angry-red blemishes where the Greeba teeth bit and tore her flesh. Out of her armor, dressed in the white cloth of a hospital gown, the pillows and blankets half-swallowed her petite form. Nero exchanged a look with Khepria from the foot of the hospital bed. Baron Mitsugawa and Setha stood near Armstrong’s head while an automadoc pretended to watch the holographic displays on the walls while in standby mode behind them.
The mercenary commander looked at each of them in turn with her mismatched, brown-and-blue eyes. “Y’all look pretty grim.”
Keltan's Gambit: Chronicles of the Orion Spur Book 2 Page 46