by Jean Johnson
Nodding, Li’eth turned to the right. Together, both men walked in grim silence. Twice, V’kol drew in a breath to speak, then fell quiet again. A third time, he merely shook his head, dismissing his thoughts. Thanks to the teachings of Jackie and Master Sonam, Li’eth blissfully didn’t hear any of it. Formerly fragile and easily torn in moments of agitation before encountering the Terrans and their training methods, now his mental walls stood strong and resistant to fluctuating emotions and energy levels. He was tired from his efforts to help protect the Palace and city, but he didn’t have to endure stray thoughts from anyone anymore.
His own thoughts and memories were unpleasant enough as it was.
The next bank of lifts lay down a shallow ramp, around a corner, and at the far end of a long hallway. Two Imperial Elite Guards approached from a side hall just when they neared those lifts. Both gold-and-scarlet-clad men bore grim expressions, their attention focused on the prince. When he squinted a little, checking their auras, they swirled with aggressive reds and determined browns.
Wary, Li’eth slowed. “. . . Is everything alright?”
“Imperial Prince Kah’raman. By order of the Imperial Regent, you are to report immediately to the Dusk Army for reassignment back into the Fleet,” the right-hand Elite told him.
Li’eth narrowed his eyes. “My assignment is liaison to the Terrans. While the Terrans are still here, I am still their liaison.”
“Their embassy is closed,” the Elite on the left stated dismissively. “That means your position as liaison has ended. We are to escort you straight to East Hangar Bay 2, where you will be flown to your next duty post.”
This was not right. Something was very much not right. “I choose to exercise my right as Imper—”
“—Sorry,” the Elite on the left apologized blandly, drawing a small handheld device from his thigh pocket.
Li’eth recognized it instantly, the V’Dan version of a Salik stunner pistol. He had an instant in which to react, and flung out a telekinetic wall, shoving everyone back. Unfortunately, the Elite’s aim was true . . . and a holy force that could move physical objects did absolutely nothing to stop an energy-based weapon . . . just as Master Sonam had once warned him, during his lessons on what telekinesis could and could not do. Static snapped over his senses, dropping him out of consciousness.
AUGUST 11, 2287 C.E.
AVRA 4, 9508 V.D.S.
Jackie woke to a throbbing, splitting headache. For a long moment, all she could do was lie there in agony, breathing through her nostrils in an attempt to control the pain. Her breath finally escaped on a faint groan. Noise nearby made her pry her eyes open in time to see Maria reaching for her forehead. Beyond the dark-haired woman, she could see nothing but plain beige walls and the recessed, diffused lighting strips that served the local illumination needs.
Blinking a little, Jackie managed to make a grunt of inquiry.
“Take it easy, amiga,” the doctor told her. She pressed her left wrist to Jackie’s forehead, taking her temperature in the most basic of ways, wrist to brow. “Still no fever . . . How do you feel?”
“Like my head was trampled by an elephant cavorting in a field,” Jackie muttered. Dizzy, disoriented, and . . . it felt like the whole room had slanted to the left somehow. “What happened?”
“You dropped like a tree felled by a lumberjack in the Guard Hall halfway past the Imperial Wing. Clees tried to rouse you, and when he couldn’t even reach your mind, he ran for the Elite, then for the Marines and me. The Elite in turn were deeply alarmed since they couldn’t find a cause. They rushed you to us, since we’re closer than their infirmary, and we know more about psychic ailments, but . . . my beautiful infirmary was buried under the rubble of three higher floors,” Maria told her. “Lieutenant Buraq has a broken leg, Doctor Du has a concussion, and Doctor Kuna’mi . . . Doctor Kuna’mi is dead. I’m sorry.”
Jackie blinked at that. She knew that Maria, their chief doctor, knew that the V’Dan woman known as Doctor To-mi Kuna’mi was considered the foremost authority on the jungen virus in the entire V’Dan Empire. That was the virus that had altered V’Dan DNA so that their people could survive the high histaminic triggers found in the local plant life on this planet. That virus had given the V’Dan people their distinctive stripes and spots. The doctor was the foremost authority on it, however, because she was the Immortal, the being who had originally created it thousands of years ago.
She almost said aloud, But To-mi is the Immortal; she cannot be dead. She was still with us when we deflected the missiles . . . Maria continued before Jackie could find the strength to speak, however.
“She came by about a quarter hour before Clees did, stating she was there to help dig out survivors, and not two minutes later, a section of ceiling and a pillar collapsed on her. A couple of Elites tugged her out and said she wasn’t revivable. Apparently, her chest was crushed, so they carried her off in a V’Dan body bag. I don’t know where they put her. Ours have been laid out in the Guard Hall second floor.” At an inquiring grunt from Jackie, Maria nodded. “Kuna’mi wasn’t the only death, V’Dan or otherwise. I don’t think anyone had gotten around to discussing Terran funeral practices, but they’re presuming we’ll want to do something specifically Terran with them.”
“How many of ours?” she asked, head still spinning, making it hard to focus on thinking. Hard to focus on looking at anything around her. Maria’s face, she could see, and the ceiling, a bit of the walls, but it was too much effort to move, just yet.
“Seven,” Maria stated, and named them: two nurses, two Marines, and three staff members, all Terrans, and ending with, “. . . including Advisor Amatrine, I’m sorry to say. At least it was quick, for her.”
Wincing, Jackie rubbed at her forehead. Amatrine Castellas. The most important of the deceased Terrans, a former lawyer and judge, a former regional representative, and the official Advisor appointed to the embassy staff. Amatrine’s job involved intercepting would-be lobbyists so that they could not attempt to bribe either Jackie or her Assistant Ambassador, Rosa. Jackie closed her eyes in silent grief.
She had liked Amatrine, quiet, no-nonsense, able to cut through to the heart of a proposal and impervious to bribes. Amatrine would accept them—that was her job, after all, with all bribes carefully logged and diverted into various funds and assets reserves—but she hadn’t been swayed by them. Instead, the other woman had learned the fine art of dangling hope in her would-be lobbyists’ hearts with one hand, while using the other hand to delve into the true motivations behind any such offers, sending her agents to delve deeply into the actual consequences of any attempted piece of legislation. Lobbying for a particular action by the Council could actually be a good thing . . . though if it came with a bribe or “incentive to examine our request,” then that request had to be examined quite closely.
Ironically, these days, groups often tried to bribe Advisors so that their proposals would be more deeply investigated and hopefully proved to be sound, safe, and advantageous for all. Amatrine had treated all cases with equanimity and careful inspection. In fact, Rosa had complained good-naturedly that the V’Dan had tried filing complaints about the woman’s “. . . obstructing true acts of commerce, which means Amatrine is doing her usual exemplary job of imitating an impassable castle wall.”
She would be missed. She would also, Jackie acknowledged, have to be carefully replaced. Advisors were one of the few groups of nonpsis who had to undergo telepathic ethics evaluations twice yearly. Anyone who came to V’Dan would have to be able to resist a barrage of brand-new temptations, many of which would greatly improve Terran life. But the motives for the companies making those offers still had to be carefully scrutinized to make sure they weren’t trying to cheat or harm the Terrans in some way.
The others would be missed as well. Jackie had taken the time to get to know each and every person in her embassy, both those on the trip to V�
�Dan and the personnel who had arrived since. But—callous as it might seem—most staff positions and guard positions and nursing positions could be replaced by someone new. Replacing an Advisor who was trustworthy was more difficult.
Maria stayed silent a long while, head bowed in respect for the dead. Two of them had worked closely with her, the nurses. She had her own pain to manage. Finally, she drew in a breath, and continued, “. . . We had thirteen more injured alongside Buraq and Du, stragglers and a handful of Marines who weren’t assigned to go to the bunkers. Fourteen, including you, though technically you’re not actually injured.
“We’ve been able to patch up everyone, but it’s all just patchwork medicine aside from getting Jasmine’s leg set by the V’Dan. They’ve had around fifty injured, including their Empress, and their infirmary is overloaded. Rumors of five dead, too . . . but not including Her Eternity. Not yet. Nobody’s called to say her situation has stabilized, either, so we’re still in the dark on how bad it actually is.”
“I knew it would be bad,” Jackie murmured. “I doubt they’d let Vi’alla make herself Regent over a few cuts and bruises, or even just a few broken bones . . .”
A corner of her brain remained locked on the other information. To-mi’s body was carried off by Elites . . . perhaps by allies? Who reported she died, a Terran or a V’Dan? Was she actually injured, and has she repaired herself somehow? How does immortality work, anyway? The odds of a fatal accident or life-threatening injury go up as time goes on, of even just a maiming injury, yet she appeared healthy and well. So she had to have suffered some sort of catastrophic injury several times over long before now if she’s really lived over ten thousand years . . .
Maria distracted her from her thoughts. “So that’s the list of injured and dead. The only one we weren’t sure about, injury-wise, was you. Thankfully, when the news came in about what happened to Prince Li’eth, I realized what your problem was.”
“Li’eth? What happened to him?” Jackie asked. She tried to sit up. Maria pushed her back down with her left hand, but Jackie finally managed to get her eyes focused well enough to see that the doctor’s right arm was in a sling. “And what happened to you?”
“I’m not one of the fifteen injured by the bombing. I strained a muscle trying to lift patients for evacuation. Du yelled at me a few times when she caught me using my arm without a sling and dragged me to the healing station to personally put one on me,” she added, smiling briefly, wryly. “Told me I had to wear it for two days straight, and bossed more Elites into taking my place in shifting around the rubble. They took her orders seriously because of her vitiligo problem, of course.”
Jackie knew the doctor meant the pale patches where the pathologist had lost the natural tan pigmentation in her skin. It wasn’t anything like actual V’Dan jungen marks, but it was far closer to those marks than the uniform skin tones of the rest of the Terran embassy staff. “So what happened to Li’eth? What is my problem? And where are we, exactly?”
The room they were in was sort of bland, her bed a cot, with portable V’Dan diagnostic machines standing near the head of it. No windows, and signs of a bathroom through an open door, but not the sort of disabled-accessible-sized bathroom one normally saw in any sort of medical facility. Definitely not a typical infirmary room for this world. Maria looked around at the cream-hued walls, the polished-stone floor, the plain furnishings, and shrugged.
“We’re in an apartment of sorts in an auxiliary section of the Guard Hall just north of the embassy wing. Apparently they have several of these rooms they can convert into emergency quarters; they’ve handed several of them over to our injured for recuperation. As for what’s wrong with you . . . I’d already suspected something along these lines, but Leftenant Superior Kos’q got word to us, confirming that some of the Elite had stunned His Highness off to the north of the central courtyards.
“You dropped in the Guard Halls halfway here from the Inner Court. From what Clees said of the timing of things, and what V’kol said, you apparently dropped at the same moment Li’eth went unconscious, just like you both had dropped unconscious back in the Sol System. Only this time, they used that stunner weapon they got from the enemy instead of a tranquilizer dart. V’kol was apparently smart enough to quickly distance himself from their capture of the prince, so when he didn’t try to interfere, and let them take the prince without any contestation, they left him alone. That left him free to come to us while they carted off His Highness.”
“They . . . what?” Jackie asked. Her skull still throbbed with a dull, spinning ache, making it hard to render Maria’s words into some sort of more logical sense. “Why would they do that? They’re Elites; they’re sworn to protect the Imperial Tier, not attack them!”
“V’kol said it was on his sister’s orders. The new Imperial Regent,” Maria explained. “She had him shanghaied off-planet. He’s reported to us a couple times since, first to warn us of the prince’s departure and its circumstances, then it took the pink-striped hombre a good six hours to find out what happened to him after that. By then, of course, it was too late.
“Li’eth’s been hauled off on a warship headed outsystem,” she continued, making Jackie wince. “It’s supposed to go contact one of the nearest colonyworlds, where they should have enough of a fleet to spare a few ships for the home system in case the Salik come back, but I don’t know if that particular ship will be coming back with him. Or rather, V’kol didn’t know and couldn’t find out at his clearance level.
“Since we aren’t sharing our hypercommunications relays anymore, nobody could confirm it with the system in question,” Maria added dryly. At Jackie’s wince, she raised her good hand quickly. “I don’t blame you, or Premiere Callan. Nobody does; we’ve all seen the recording, and we’ve all felt the lash of being insulted for the color of our hides. It’s also caused an uproar throughout the Winter Palace. Everyone’s taking sides for or against the Imperial Regent—politely, civilly, but icily taking sides.
“We cannot do anything about that,” the doctor reminded Jackie. “It’s a V’Dan internal affair, so for the time being, we have to treat it like the common cold and let it run its course. It’s politics, and there’s nothing I personally can do. I can do something about you, however, besides watch you while I’m on the invalid list.”
“You can? Like what? If he’s gone . . .” Jackie muttered, trying to grasp the idea of Li’eth’s being hours and hours away at light-year-traversing speeds.
“Yes, I can. You’re going to suffer separation sickness sooner or later, if not already. You’re already suffering secondhand from stunner technology. So . . . since I cannot write down any notes without Jai Du yelling at me,” Maria stated, picking up a tablet, “I need you to describe for the microphone on this thing exactly how you are feeling right now.”
Jackie slumped into the bedding, rolling her eyes. The room still threatened to sway around her, it still felt canted bizarrely to her left however she moved, she felt like she had a gaping hole in her ribs metaphysically, and Doctor de la Santoya wanted to take notes on how she felt? “. . . Really? That is your priority, right now?”
“I need to record the progression of your symptoms so that we have a timeline for how badly you’re doing and how urgent it is to try to get you and your Gestalt partner reunited,” Maria countered. She braced the tablet, thumped it a few times, then held it up. “Start talking, amiga.”
“Ah. Well . . . like I said, I feel like an elephant trampled on my head. Dizzy, nauseated, and like my skull has been squeezed repeatedly in a vise. My sense of balance is compromised; I feel like the whole room is canted a full fifteen degrees to my left. And I have a burning hole in my mental psyche, on my left side.”
“Any panic? Scale of zero to ten, with zero being nonexistent?”
“Probably about a four. I’m not happy to hear any of this,” Jackie told her friend and physician. “But . . . it’s
like my brain is numb where Li’eth is concerned. I . . . I can’t sense his thoughts, so either he’s still unconscious, or too far away, or I’m too tired still to try. I’m still trying to process the rest of this situation, too. It’s a lot to take in, right now. I’m not feeling emotionally well, on top of physically and psychically.”
“I don’t blame you. Let’s move on to the other emotions, such as any anxiety, dread, paranoia . . . ?”
They went through the list of possible symptoms. Jackie endured it with as much patience as she could muster. What she wanted to do was try to reach out to Li’eth, but her head still hurt, and her reserves of mental energy were still low, making it difficult to focus and concentrate. She also suspected that, like the first time he had been knocked unconscious, she had woken up before him since she wasn’t the one actually knocked out. Either way . . . it took an hour and a meal before her doctor stopped interrogating her.
Finally, Maria sighed and shifted the dishes and the table they rested upon out of the way, using her good arm and the edge of her foot. “I know you’re being very patient, Jackie. I can also tell by the way you’re not wincing and frowning anymore that you feel better. When I went to get the food, I asked the others to try to find the KI machine and a generator for it. I want to hook you up to it before you try to reach for Li’eth.”
“You want to record the effects of attempting the longest-distance telepathic comm call, I know.” Jackie sighed. “I can’t blame you for your scientific curiosity.”
“That, yes, but we also do not know if this faster-than-light method of travel the V’Dan use blocks or allows telepathic communication. We’ve already established that you cannot use telepathy in the middle of a hyperspace tunnel,” she reminded her patient. “But we don’t know how far you can reach for a Gestalt partner. He may be out of range.”
“The hyperspace thing is more from sheer discomfort than anything else; it’s hard to be coherent enough to speak normally when you’re being shaken hard, or the metabolic equivalent of it,” Jackie said. “I can also wait a little while before contacting him . . . but you said I’ve been unconscious for a day. I feel like it. I’ve been stewing in my own sweat since the mass Gestalt to shift the city ten klicks west—I didn’t notice it at the time, but I can smell it now. Any hope for a bath and a change of clothes?” she inquired hopefully, wrinkling her nose.