To Lydia’s surprise, Fajir threw her head back and laughed, a crazy sound more like a roar than a note of joy. Maybe it was the insanity that put Lydia at ease: Fajir said “kill,” but she might as easily save Lydia or boil an egg or declare that she wanted to weave a rug for everyone in the world. The further she got from sanity, the more unpredictable she became.
To someone who could see the future, that was…comforting.
“I’m tired, Nemesis.”
Lydia didn’t know if Fajir wanted a nap or if she meant she was tired of life, but it didn’t matter. “Lie down. I’ll make sure no one bothers you.”
Fajir gave her an odd look, something between touched and amused before she snorted and lay down in the cubby, stretching her limbs and sighing. It had to have been hard to sleep as trussed up as they’d kept her, but Lydia wouldn’t have dreamed of untying her out there in the wilderness. Fajir wasn’t unpredictable all the time.
* * *
Dillon tried never to get lost in sentimental bullshit, but being back in a body felt as good as when he’d first come to this backward, fucked-up planet. After years of living on the Atlas, the wind had felt so good. He’d relished the air in his lungs and the sun on his face, and now, after being trapped in Dué’s mind, it felt really good to stretch.
Standing on the plains, he allowed himself one more look at the waving grass and the rocks that dotted the landscape like herds of sheep. It reminded him a little of his great-uncle’s farm in Ireland, one of the few places on Earth that hadn’t gone fully industrial.
Dillon sighed and turned back to the mine, fighting a stab of grief that he’d never go home again, and everyone who’d ever known him on Earth was long in the ground.
Then he reminded himself that he’d hated most of Earth and most of his relations after his old man passed. And on most planet-side missions, he’d been overcome with nausea or some other ailment. There weren’t enough push-ups to cure him of a sensitive stomach or a shit immune system, and to maintain the respect of his troops, he’d had to pack his own meds or see the company medic on the sly.
Now he had a new fucking body, one acclimated to this planet. There was no need for Simon Lazlo, that backstabbing little shit. This body was young and fit. He’d have some time before it started to fall apart. And once it did, well, there was always Patricia Dué.
The thought of her powers should have made Dillon smile, but she was a problem waiting to happen. Panicked because of Naos, she was safely under his thumb. But if she got comfortable, she might turn her powers on him. He’d probably given her enough shit while sharing her head that she’d leave him be. Her own pride would keep her out of his head.
He rubbed his chin as he passed through the gate into the small town sitting before the mine. Patricia was enamored with his old body; maybe she’d start to feel that way about this new body with his old mind.
So…would he screw her in order to keep her close? He’d manipulated women that way before. If he pretended to fall for her, she’d lap it up. But…her new body was so young. In his old body, people in their twenties and early thirties had seemed young to him. Patricia’s new body was about fifteen, if that. Really young women hadn’t done it for him in years. He wanted a woman with experience, and Patricia looked like a girl, at least on the outside. If he’d had a kid as a teenager, a fifteen-year-old could have been his fucking grandchild.
On the other side of the camp, she stood talking to his old body with its new, sycophantic mind. That burned him; she’d made Jonah such a tool. With a sigh, Dillon told himself to let it go. Patricia was attached to Jonah. If Dillon went around badmouthing him, it would only push her away.
But Jesus fucking Christ…
Patricia waved him over. He could practically smell her desperation, see it in her mismatched eyes, one brown, one blue. She looked moments away from panicked as she tucked her long brown hair behind her ears. The worry on her teenage face made him want to use a nickname with her, something soothing that would calm her down. When he’d been stuck in her head, it had been sarcastic, but now the nicknames naturally came to mind because of her youthful looks, something like pumpkin or honey or sweets, his old standby.
His old body glared like a cartoon, and it almost made Dillon burst out laughing. He’d unnerved many a recruit with a well-timed look, but outside of his body, the glares were a fucking joke. He supposed it was a good thing that he couldn’t intimidate himself.
“We’re talking defenses, but no defense is going to be good enough,” Patricia said, the words running into each other as she spoke too quickly. She gathered the hair off her neck and tied it into a hasty knot, but a few sweaty strands stuck to her jaw. “Nothing’s going to be good enough. She’s going to roll right over us.”
“Easy,” Dillon said, barely keeping back the term of endearment that wanted to follow. He picked one of the damp strands off her face. “You know what we have to do.”
She nodded. “Go to Gale.” She blinked, and there were goddamn tears in her eyes. “But I don’t want to.”
He had to laugh. “None of us want to, sweet…Patricia. But we both know Naos didn’t come here to sit on her ass in the mountains. And it’s going to take more than you and me to beat her. If we go to Gale, you can shield my mind from any nosy interlopers, and I can watch your back.” He nodded at Jonah. “I’m afraid the old bod will have to stay here.”
She looked even more stricken, and Jonah’s brows practically met, he glared so hard. Dillon had to cough or he would’ve brayed a laugh. “My old bod walking into Gale would cause too much trouble. Some would want to worship it, some to kill it, just like always.”
“Jonah,” Patricia said softly. “He’s right. You’re going to have to wait for me outside Gale.”
“Mistress,” Jonah said, nearly a whine. Dillon wanted to kick him. “I’ll always do as you ask, but I’d rather be by your side.”
“Does he know what he is?” Dillon asked. “Who he used to be?”
Jonah ignored him. Patricia gave Dillon a warning look. He guessed that was a no.
“You’ll wait on the plains with some of my followers,” Patricia said. “And watch for Naos’s approach.”
That was a good idea, proving yet again that her body and mind didn’t match.
“He can watch the road to the mine, too,” Dillon said. “That way the Galeans won’t be able to sneak around and retake it.”
She smiled, clearly pleased by the praise. And now that she was calmer, Dillon led her to the house where they were keeping the two paladin captives. He hadn’t wanted her working on them before, not while she was so keyed up, remembering when Lazlo had tried to augment Natalya while angry. He’d ended up turning her into a little Naos: lots of power with a dash of nutjob thrown in. He’d ended up augmenting a healer, too, which would have been nice if that healer hadn’t abandoned Gale with the rest of the renegades. Dillon’s takeaway had been that power users needed to be calm before they did anything, no matter how powerful they were. Runaway emotions bred recklessness.
Now that they had a plan, Patricia walked with her head up, her eyes clear if still a little pinched. She kept her frown, and he bet that if he could peek inside her head, he’d see someone desperately trying to convince herself that everything was going to be okay.
The inside of the little house was dim. It had been a shabby place to begin with; the whole mine had a temporary look that Dillon remembered from many a bailiwick out in the field. Though with the old tech he’d had under Pross Co., their soldier encampments looked a lot better than some colonist outposts, especially those who were slow to receive tech and went back to the land, so to speak.
Patricia had tried to spruce it up. She’d stopped the miners from keeping equipment in their sleeping shacks. Instead, she’d had them double up the bunks and turn the most tumbledown wooden structures into storage sheds. Now the bunkhouses contained only beds, small chests, and a few chairs.
Everyone had been shooed out of thi
s bunkhouse except two still forms on the beds. Patricia had kept the paladins asleep, and Dillon had stripped their metal and leather armor. He knew both were uncomfortable to sleep in. Patricia could heal any aches and pains they developed, but Dillon wanted to save them pain if he could. They were going to be his people again, after all.
Patricia knelt by the first cot, the one with the lieutenant. She stared at him, her eyes losing focus as she used her power. Dillon’s scalp tingled, and he was so glad she’d been distracted when she’d put him in this body; she’d let his power come with him, though he wouldn’t be able to use it in front of the Galeans.
Or maybe someday he could, when certain people had been gotten out of the way. Maybe he could claim that the yafanai had come up with a new process to give powers to those fully grown, a process that usually started in early adolescence. Any older than that, and there was a risk of madness, the brain not being able to stand such radical changes.
“You have to let me into your mind,” Patricia said, and it took Dillon a moment to realize she was talking to him. He tried not to smirk. She could force her way in anytime she liked, but after his lessons, she was asking permission.
“Go ahead.” He didn’t add that she should take care where she wandered. There was no need to threaten her now.
The tingle over his scalp increased, and he got flashes of memory, the lieutenant’s memories, playing in fits and starts like a corrupted vid. His name was Porter. He was popular, everyone smiling when they spoke to him. Even Cordelia, the mayor’s niece, seemed to like him, and she seemed a bit of a battle-ax, from what Dillon remembered. Porter had gone with the renegades, and Patricia sorted through his memories looking for Liam Carmichael, Dillon’s new body.
Porter hadn’t had many conversations with the new mayor. He’d seen Liam with a drushkan girlfriend; that could be a problem, though girlfriends could easily be gotten rid of with a little indifference.
Patricia sped through the memories, and Dillon watched the battle against the plains dwellers and the Sun-Moon from Porter’s perspective. It was quite a show, even with the drushkan power winging about that Porter hadn’t understood. Dillon watched the return journey to Gale, and his hand curled into a fist as Porter helped the humans that the drushka had poisoned. Fucking drushka! He’d known they’d be trouble. He wondered if Enka, the envoy who’d tried to seduce him, would ever come to Gale again. If she did, he’d fry her ass, secret powers be damned. No one poisoned his city and just walked away.
But Porter and the paladins hadn’t let the drushka get away. Cordelia had organized a rescue and revenge party, and Dillon found himself admiring her. She was a pain in the ass, and she was tight with Liam, so he had to get rid of her, but fuck, what a waste. While Liam waited in Gale, she led a rescue party for the ages, going off on her own at last with only a handful of drushka to face the head honcho face-to-face. He wished he could have seen it.
Instead, Porter was part of a team of decoys that drew parties of drushka away and killed them or kept them busy so Cordelia could get inside the final drushkan perimeter. Porter was a brave guy, loyal, and Dillon saw plenty of ways to make use of him.
At last, Porter had a memory of returning to Gale with the rescued hostages, and Dillon finally saw more of Liam. He’d been elected mayor while Porter had been gone. He’d made great strides in putting the city back together. Point to him. He’d let the Yafanai Temple get burned down. That was a mark against. He’d come up with some scheme to feed the town—probably with Lazlo’s help—another point, but he’d neglected to check on the mine, allowing Patricia to dig in. Mark against. Starting off even stephen with the people of Gale, Dillon could work with that. Feeding and sheltering the common folk would always go further than the yafanai being homeless, and most people had never seen the mine; out of sight, out of mind. Plus, Liam’s connection to Cordelia would help Dillon ride high on her rescue effort.
“That’s it,” Patricia said, sitting back with a sigh.
Dillon nodded. “Good job. Can you make up some excuse to cover the time Porter’s been out? Like, we were all caught in a collapse at the mine, and you’ve just now managed to put us back together?”
Patricia nodded slowly. “I could work in that you’ve had a little brain damage, and I’ve done what I could. That will explain why the mental blocks that Cordelia’s healer put in your mind are no longer in place and will cover up the ones I’ll put in to shield you from the yafanai.”
He frowned at having brain damage, but it might account for some of his inevitable “odd” behavior. And he could say her blocks were holding his mind together. As gross as that seemed and as incompetent as that might make him appear, it was for the best. He kept his grimace down. “Sounds good.”
She gave him a shy smile, letting him know he was still on the right track with her.
They dug into the private’s mind too, identifying her as Sunny Swanson. As a new recruit, she wasn’t known strictly by her last name yet. People kept comparing her to Cordelia Ross, which both delighted and annoyed her. Cordelia was her idol, but she wanted to make her own name, too. Dillon grinned, always happy to have a gung-ho soldier on his side. With the right mentoring, she could become his Cordelia Ross one day, his loyal guardian of Gale.
But as for info about the mayor, she had almost nothing except what she’d observed on the trip here. Fuck.
Dillon decided to stay while Patricia built new memories for Porter and Swanson. He knew his presence would comfort her.
When Patricia was done, she sat back. “I’m surprised you’re okay with building new memories. I thought you disapproved of all telepathic manipulation.”
“Mind fucking,” he said with a grin. “Call it what it is.”
“But this is okay?” Her tone turned defensive. “As long as it’s in your interest?”
His instinct was to get angry right back at her, lob more accusations, but he kept his temper, summoning the tactics he’d used on irritated senior officers. He sighed and leaned forward on one of the bunks, clasping his hands. “I don’t claim to be perfect, sweet…Patricia. And I believe one should use every tool in one’s arsenal to survive, and that includes mind powers. All I meant before was that you don’t have to use powers all the time. Sometimes, a good speech will do.” He nodded at the sleeping paladins. “But not in this case, obviously.”
She stared, probably wondering if he was only trying to control her. He had to make a stronger case. “You lived without mind powers on Earth,” he said. “Just like the rest of us, you had to convince people to give you what you wanted the old-fashioned way.”
“I was never any good at it.” She stood and paced. “With telepathy, I can guarantee loyalty instead of just trusting that I have it!”
He shrugged and leaned back, feigning nonchalance. “Then do it. Travel the world and mind fuck everyone to your side. Then when you come against Naos, you’ll have a whole world full of people to throw at her. That’ll work, right? I sure as fuck hope so because that’s what an army of zombies would do, just keep leaping at the target even though it doesn’t do any good.”
The bluntness and the profanity seemed to snap her out of her own head. She stared again, stock straight, fury in her drawn brows, her quivering shoulders. He sat still, not daring to interrupt her thoughts, knowing she’d realize he was right. Her true nature, that one that never thought of her as the kind of person who hurt other people, would reassert itself. Finally, she sagged, and he nearly smiled.
“I just want to be safe,” she mumbled.
He crossed the room to put one affectionate hand on her shoulder and rubbed slightly with his thumb, working the tension out. “And you will be. We’ll work together, and we’ll get Gale to help. None of them can match you in power, not even Lazlo, so they’ll be reluctant to fight as long as you keep a confident face and don’t let your power leak out.”
She smiled, a lopsided grin that had an air of familiarity. After having him in her head, she was no doubt th
inking she knew him well. “‘It’s enough that he knows you have the biggest dick,’” she quoted. “‘You don’t have to swing it around’?”
“Exactly.” He nodded toward the door. “Now, if you want to wake up our paladins and give me some room, I’ll explain what happened when the mine fell on them, and we all got a little brain damage.”
She nodded, but her smile edged into a frown. “Are you sure you don’t want me to implant a directive in their minds to always do what you say?”
Tempting, but it seemed akin to telling an outrageous lie, one that could quickly snowball until the liar had to tell one more lie after another, building a wall around themselves that would one day collapse. “I can manage them. Have faith in me.”
“I do, God help me,” she said, sounding a lot older than not just her youthful face, but whatever age she’d been when the Atlas first left Earth. Of course, they were all far removed from then.
Chapter Five
Cordelia began to wonder if running from one crisis to the next would be normal from now on. When she’d lived on the plains for nine months, she’d occasionally been desperate for something exciting. She’d participated in wrestling matches among the Uri to get out of digging wells or settling petty disputes. She supposed that was always the way: the calm times were too boring and the busy times too hectic.
As she caught sight of Gale, she lined up everything she had to do. Step one: make sure the city was operating as it should. That included double-checking that the new Shi was keeping her promise to stay clear. Two: get Liam back. Three: make a plan for Naos. Four: make a plan for Patricia Dué? Could that be the same plan?
So, number four but possibly five was: do something with the plains dweller captives to see if they’d been brainwashed, and if so, find out if the yafanai could fix them. If not…well, first things first.
And last, figure out what to do with fucking Fajir. Any future crap had to have something to do with Naos. Maybe Lydia’s prophecy meant they were going to take the fight to her rather than waiting for her to attack Gale. That was a fucking relief, at least.
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