by Rhonda Mason
“That is the most outrageous thing I have ever heard,” Vayne said. “It’s amazing the crew of the Yari survived as long as it did, huh?”
“So, are you in? I hope so, but I’m going whether you’re with me or not.” No one could stop her now. She was already making plans. She’d need an energy cell strong enough to power one of the lifts through the unpowered section, an EMU—there was no guarantee that Zimmerman had turned the life support on there, even if she suspected he had—and a bullpup, as hers was left in the barracks where they’d found Tia’tan.
“Are you kidding? You couldn’t leave me behind if you wanted to. Let’s go.”
* * *
They were armed and ready with bullpups in minutes, jogging down the corridor to save time on their way to retrieve a power pack and their EMUs. Vayne hoped the PD housing was powered and atmosphere-controlled, as Hekkar had speculated. That way, his bullpup would function and he could shoot every last one of the stepa hiding out down there.
Then again, the weapons they’d stolen would function as well…
Fair enough: he was in the mood for a fight.
So bloodthirsty, my dear Vayne. I like it, Dolan purred in the back of his mind.
“Shut up,” he muttered.
Kayla gave him a funny look. “I didn’t say anything.”
“No, I know, it’s just… Never mind.” It’s just that he was crazy, that’s all. Maybe he should stay on this ship with all the rest of the insane people when this was over. At least then, when Dolan finally succeeded in either taking over his mind completely or convincing him to kill himself, no one would think it was odd.
“Sense anything?” Kayla asked as they jogged. Somehow, she managed to run with her bullpup semi-aimed at the same time.
He shook his head. Not a person nor a psionic blocker either. He’d had zero experience with those blockers in his previous life—they’d fallen out of use on Ordoch as espionage became a lost art—but he was adapt at sensing them now, thanks to the one on the barracks. Or previously on the barracks, he should say, as that one had since been destroyed.
As they neared the lift, the doors opened and a man Vayne recognized only from a military ID stepped out. “I hear you’re looking for me,” he said.
Zimmerman.
It was tempting to shoot him in the head right there and call it done, but Vayne needed answers, not more corpses.
Kayla looked decidedly less likely to hold her fire.
“Woah!” Zimmerman spread his empty hands out at his sides. “Let’s take it down a notch, shall we? I’m First Officer Oliver Zimmerman, presently of the Yari.” He was tall for a male Wyrd from five centuries previous. His teal hair was cut military short, his skin was as pale as any spacer’s, and he looked completely sane. At that moment, at least. “And you’re going to have to come with me if you want answers.” He stepped backward into the still waiting lift even though neither Vayne nor Kayla had lowered their weapons.
“I haven’t kept hidden all this time by having conversations with strangers in the middle of corridors,” he called.
Vayne took a cautious step, but then the lift doors started closing and Kayla sprinted, so he held the doors open and raced in after her. No one spoke until the doors closed and the lift started moving.
“Where are we going?” Kayla asked. Zimmerman merely shrugged.
“I didn’t sense you,” Vayne said, confused. “Not until you came into sight.”
“We’re soldiers trained for war. We’re skilled in stealth, in the technique of cloaking our minds.” He looked Vayne up and down, assessing him. “Even from someone as strong as you, it would seem.” He lowered his hands to his sides. “We’re overdue a chat. Why don’t you put your weapons down and I’ll try to answer your questions.”
Vayne hesitated. He was so full of rage and fear for Tia’tan that he wanted to shoot something. Kayla pointed hers at the floor but held on to it, ready to shoot Zimmerman if he so much as breathed suspiciously. Vayne had to follow suit.
“To answer your first question: no, we did not kill Officer Kendrik and the others. We did not murder your friends.”
Something was off about the man’s speech, but Vayne couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “Who did?” he demanded.
“You’ll have to ask the captain about that.”
“Are you saying Ida did it?” Kayla asked.
“I’m saying she knows who did.”
The lift opened on a powered level that looked just like any other powered level. No one else waited for them, no sign saying “secret base this way” came into view. Even knowing it was risky, but with no other choice present, Vayne and Kayla followed Zimmerman down the corridor until they came to a commissary. No one waited inside there, either. It was merely the three of them in the long, empty soldiers’ commissary. No trap, no ambush, no firefight.
“What are we doing here?”
“Chatting,” Zimmerman said. “You didn’t think I was going to take you to my secret lair, did you? This is just as good a place as any.”
The discrepancy came to Vayne then. “You speak clearly, without the archaic dialect.”
Zimmerman laughed. “That? That was easy enough to shed. We’ve listened to every transmission that’s ever come through the Tear from Ordoch, spoken to modern-day Ordochians on the other side. It took little effort to learn the necessary adjustments. “The captain and the others could do it if they wanted to,” Zimmerman said disparagingly. “I think they like being antiques.”
“Why did you learn it, then?” Kayla asked.
“Why else? To join the future. We want off of this ship. We want to start a new life on Ordoch, a second life. We want to see our homeworld again, live among our people.”
“You keep saying ‘we,’” Vayne said. “How many ‘we’ are we talking about?”
“Enough,” Zimmerman answered. Vayne couldn’t tell if he intended that as a threat or not, but it didn’t exactly comfort him.
“Why are you hiding?” Vayne asked instead. “You seem sane enough to me—so far. Why are you not with the rest of the crew?”
“Is that what she told you?” Zimmerman asked. “That we’re hiding out because we’re insane?”
“Brain damaged and insane, technically.” So far, though, he found Zimmerman to be the most normal of the ancient crew. “Are you mutineers? Is this some personal battle between you and the captain that we’ve stumbled on?”
“You could say that. Ida and I are at war because I know she’s a traitor and she wants to keep me quiet.”
Interesting… “A traitor to who?”
“Ordoch.” Zimmerman looked at them as if they should have known that.
Kayla looked skeptical, and Vayne agreed. Ida might be up to something, but she was the most loyal commander he knew, sticking by her commission even five hundred years later. Staying on point and on mission to protect Ordoch from its enemies.
“You have to be joking,” Vayne said. “Is this a five-hundred-years-ago thing?”
“When you have frontal lobe damage from shoddy cryosleep pods, five hundred years ago is now, and vice versa.” Zimmerman looked almost sad for a moment. “You have to remember, we haven’t ‘lived’ for five hundred years, not really. We were asleep for almost the entirety of it.
“War is still our reality.” Zimmerman seemed to be remembering a different time as he spoke. “While other officers were woken from cryosleep periodically by the system in order to check on the ship and everyone else, I wasn’t woken. Ida had me declared a traitor and locked in a pod the moment she realized I had discovered her secret.”
Okay, now Zimmerman wasn’t sounding quite as sane as they had hoped for.
“Get to the point,” Vayne said. “People are dead, or nearly dead, and all of this goes back to you and Ida, each declaring the other and their followers insane.” The hand holding his bullpup twitched as he spoke. “Tell us what happened, exactly, and do it quickly.”
Kayla added,“Why shouldn’t we comm I
da and tell her exactly where we are?”
“If you didn’t doubt the captain, at least on some level, you would have already told her,” Zimmerman countered.
Score one point for Zimmerman.
“Ida isn’t Ordochian, not really. I mean, she’s genetically Ordochian, but she was raised on Ilmena. She and several others on board were raised by crazy fundamentalists with an intense hatred for all things Ordochian.” He paused, clearly ordering his thoughts, trying to decide where to start. “Bah. There’s so little time. Already your absence has been noted and deemed suspicious.” He gave the ghost of a grin. “The manhunt is on. Again. Or still. Whatever.”
Vayne hadn’t heard a thing. Then, for one brief second, he heard everything, a dozen mind voices calling to each other, tracking whereabouts and clearing levels. Corinth searching for Kayla’s mind, terrified beyond words to find nothing when he reached out. Before he could reply to any of it, the sounds all disappeared.
“You’ve been blocking us,” Vayne growled, though he should have expected it. Zimmerman had been keeping him or Kayla from contacting anyone psionically and vice versa.
Zimmerman held up a hand. “I can tell you’re both ready to murder me, but there’s something I need to show you first.”
Vayne kept his weapon trained on the man as he went to the defunct food synthesizer to retrieve something.
“This—”
The commissary doors suddenly slid open behind them. “Watch out!” someone shouted from the entrance, and a shot streaked over Vayne’s shoulder, white-hot plasma cutting a ribbon through his own shield before it headed toward Zimmerman.
“Get down!” Zimmerman called, and he dodged out of the way, but not quickly enough. The blast hit him in the thigh and knocked him sideways. Benny came sprinting past, followed by Ariel, who jumped on the struggling Zimmerman.
“Which ones do we shoot?” Kayla shouted without looking away from the combatants. Suddenly Zimmerman had a plasma pistol in his hand, and Ariel was wrestling to keep it pointed away from her.
Benny turned to Vayne. “Get out of here for safety being yours! Go!”
Another bolt of plasma lit up the room, this time launched from the pistol upward to the ceiling. Benny, Kayla, and Vayne hit the floor simultaneously.
We are so getting shot. Vayne strengthened the psi shield he surrounded Kayla with, even while she scuttled to cover his body with her own.
Neither of which would do a damn bit of good if that pistol got turned their way.
“We need him alive,” Kayla yelled. “Don’t kill him.”
Vayne sent a blast of telekinetic energy toward the weapon, intending to knock it from both Ariel’s and Zimmerman’s grip. Instead, it ricocheted off the tangle of physical and psionic forces the two were using against each other. At least now he knew where to get in. He struck out a second time and the gun went flying across the room, landing against a bulkhead where Vayne trapped it, making it impossible for any of the others to reclaim it.
Benny rose to his knees, still clasping his bullpup, but Kayla was quicker. She drew the imperial weapon she wore at her hip and unloaded the complete charge at Zimmerman and Ariel.
Holy—
“What have you done?” Benny screeched.
Kayla sat back on her haunches. “Relax. That was stun level.” She sighed, looking at the now unconscious crew members. “That happened so quickly…”
“You were fools to being trust of him,” Benny snapped, his voice hoarse from the attack he’d suffered last night. “Fools to of his talk be listening.” He shook his head in disgust. “Could have been killed, and then where would Ordoch be? Come. You help to get to the brig now.”
Benny stood and strode to the comm system. “Calling off of the search, we are having possession of Zimmerman.”
21
Vayne stood in the corridor in front of the medical station, looking through the glass at Tia’s still form. The medics from Ordoch had completed a second surgery on her abdomen and now she lay peacefully, undisturbed. The blanket covered most of the bandaging, but her forearm had a skin patch where they’d entered to put pins into the broken bones, and her brow had tiny dermal regenerators on it to heal the scar from where she’d been struck. As long as she hadn’t received any brain damage—and it was still too early to tell—she’d be as good as new in a little while.
All in all, she looked remarkable, considering she’d looked like a corpse less than a day ago.
He saw it perfectly, as if for the first time: Tia on the floor, bloodied and mangled. Tia on the bed, alarms beeping and the surgeons shouting, “we’re losing her.”
And he, locked on the other side, frozen, useless. Just as he was now.
I could have lost her.
The pain hit like a kick to the chest, so hard and unexpected that his shoulders hunched in response and he couldn’t draw breath.
::I’m sorry.:: He couldn’t stop his emotions from accompanying his voice, they were too big to hold in. Shame. Failure. Fear. Longing—futile longing, for something that would never be. A desire to be known. Truly known. Not as the person he was before Dolan, as the person he could become.
Thankfully, Tia’tan was too far gone in unconsciousness to hear him.
Would she have seen him, in a different universe? In a lifetime where he could actually escape Dolan’s ghost?
Which brought him to why he was here, now, saying a pitiful goodbye like an idiot while everyone else on the ship made final preparations for the rooks’ jump.
Vayne’s brief conversation with Malkor earlier—not even half a day ago—had convinced him of what he needed to do. The best way to keep his ro’haar safe, to keep Corinth, Natali, Tia, and Noar safe, to help his people and his world, was to stop Vega. And if he had to play the bait in Malkor’s scheme to steal the Influencer, he was more than ready for that.
Kayla’s words from earlier came back to him: “Stopping Vega, freeing Ordoch—that’s the ultimate defeat of Dolan and his plans. You will finally be free of him. Your captivity will finally be at an end.”
He wasn’t sure he believed that, but… He glanced at Tia one last time… It sure would be nice if it were true.
Inside his head, he could hear Dolan’s ghost laughing.
We both know what you are after, my dear Vayne, and it isn’t freedom. The Influencer is the ultimate prize. With your strength and my knowledge, we could rule the galaxy.
“I’d rather die.”
You forget how well I know you, how well I made you.
“You know nothing,” he snapped. Void, was he really arguing with a dead man, standing in the corridor where anyone could hear him? At what point would he concede that he’d finally gone over the edge?
We’ll see shortly, won’t we?
Time to go.
* * *
In a perfect world, Vayne thought as he rushed to meet with the rebel Shimwell, he wouldn’t be leaving the Yari just yet. In a perfect world he’d have the luxury of tearing the entire ship apart in search of the murderer who’d nearly killed Tia’tan.
Most on board the Yari believed Zimmerman to be the killer who had torn through the prisoners’ barracks. With him now in the brig, they considered the ship relatively secure.
But Kayla didn’t, Natali didn’t, and Vayne sure as the void didn’t. It didn’t make sense. Zimmerman had been perfectly hidden for so long, why come out now to kill Kendrik and the others? And why would Kendrik trust him if she were aware he could do something like that?
Zimmerman was probably the root of most of the danger on the ship, but he wasn’t guilty of this crime. Not that they’d ever know for sure, since Zimmerman refused to speak to any of his interrogators.
Vayne hustled to the maglift, anxious to rendezvous with Shimwell—the rebel Kayla seemed to trust—before the man changed his mind. Shimwell was extremely loyal to the rebellion, Vayne learned, which worked in Vayne’s favor. The man readily agreed to commandeer one of the Yari’s shuttles and fly
him out to the Tear. He looked doubly excited when Vayne explained it was for a mission vital to regaining Ordoch’s freedom.
They were almost to the shuttle bay when Shimwell mentioned he needed to confirm the transport order with Natali first, since she was his superior on board. Vayne spouted off three different reasons why even Natali couldn’t know about the mission, and that was when his plan hit a snag: Shimwell had seen Natali in action.
And once a person had seen Natali at her haughtiest, iciest, most authoritative, they never wanted to cross her.
Luckily invoking Wetham’s name saved the day. Shimwell’s ultimate loyalty belonged to Wetham, not Natali. After that it was as simple as claiming that Vayne’s orders came directly from Ordoch’s de facto leader, especially considering they couldn’t contact Ordoch to confirm the orders with Wetham and still keep it secret from those on the Yari.
And if, after they’d launched the shuttle, the entire ship, including his ro’haar, were shouting on the comms at them to turn around and return to the ship for the jump, well, Vayne could make up for that later. After all, he’d left Kayla a note explaining his reasoning. That would serve to blunt her wrath a little bit, right?
Definitely not.
Poor Shimwell was going to get the dressing down of his life once he returned to the Yari without Vayne.
The trip through the Tear was as terrifying as it was brief. Luckily it hadn’t decided to close and send him to oblivion— this time—and he arrived at the cavern in one piece. Vayne doffed his EMU and followed an overawed rebel to the main level of the base, where Wetham and others waited to greet him. The rebel leader ushered him forward. Vayne made himself nod and acknowledge people as he walked down the plascrete corridors of the subterranean levels, all the while thinking, If any of you come near me, I’m going to lose it.
Luckily no one demanded a speech, and Wetham brought him to the room where Malkor, the remains of the octet, and several of Wetham’s lieutenants were meeting.
Once greetings were finished, Malkor pulled Vayne aside. “How did it go with Kayla? I admit, I’m a little surprised to see you at all.”