My heart felt sick. What had he done to Jennifer? How had Abaddon escaped hyperspace? Just how many Kargs had he brought through with him?
“Creed,” a distant voice shouted. “Wake up, Creed. You’re having a nightmare.”
I blinked, confused. Abaddon’s burning eyes disappeared. I no longer stood on the strange bridge. Neither did I drift in space. It felt as if I zoomed upward toward the light.
“Can you hear me, Creed?”
I felt so utterly weary. Even so, I wanted to wake up.
I did, to find a redheaded nurse whose name I didn’t know standing over me. She told me I’d been raving, shouting incoherently. Was everything okay?
I blinked at her, confused. The dream had felt so real. Yet how could Abaddon have spoken to me from hundreds perhaps a thousand light years away? That made no sense. What I’d seen couldn’t be reality.
As always, my subconscious must have taken many truths and twisted them into the nightmare. Yet, I have to admit, part of me believed I had glimpsed something more. Could I tell anyone about this, though?
I decided to wait.
Whatever else had happened, the fever had finally broken. The nurse let me suck on a straw as she held a can of vile glop. This time I kept the liquids down. That was a beginning.
I vowed never to let anyone shoot poisons into me again. Why had I gotten fancy with Sant? I should have killed the tiger and been done with it before he could use the needler.
Debating with myself what I should have done with the Lokhar—letting the Abaddon dream dissipate back into my subconscious where it belonged—I fell into a deep sleep. I stayed that way for twenty-three hours. Something had exhausted me beyond normal. It had to be the fever, right? A dream couldn’t have done it. Only a fool would believe such a thing.
In any case, I woke up twenty-three hours later, scaring the nurse with my red eyes. She called a doctor. He examined them, shining a penlight into the pupils. After he clicked off the light, he patted me on the shoulder and said I was recovering. I shouldn’t worry about the redness. It would go away soon.
Finally, two days later—minus twenty pounds and feeling permanently lightheaded—I allowed the nurse to help me stand. I shuffled to a chair, collapsing into it and panting.
“Why are you up?”
Lifting my chin off my chest, I found Ella Timoshenko in the room with me.
A little over six years ago, Ella had been a Russian scientist. I’d first met her in Antarctica the day after the Earth died. Now, she was a former assault trooper turned guardian. Despite the steroid-68, Ella was still thin with a pretty face. Actually, she had sunken cheeks just like a porn star I’d seen in my misspent youth. Her dark hair dangled to her cheeks, giving her an elfin quality. There was nothing pixy about her razor-like mind, though. She enjoyed things you could count and weigh—using the scientific approach wherever possible.
“Hello to you, too,” I said.
Ella grabbed a stool, setting it near me, studying my face. “We thought you might die this time, Creed.”
“I feel like I’ve been dead,” I said. I wondered if I should tell her about my dream. Then I realized our scientist would be the last person to believe it could have been real.
Ella smiled, nodded and turned away. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this. You’re still getting better.”
“Are you kidding? I’m sick of being sick. What’s the problem? Give me something to think about.”
Ella regarded me, biting her lower lip. Finally, she said, “The Lokhars on Ceres keep pestering us about Doctor Sant.”
“Oh?”
“They want him back.”
That didn’t seem right. The Lokhars on Ceres were Orange Tamika warriors. They’d been with us on the portal planet. Out of ten million tigers making the attack, they were the handful who had survived. What’s more, they lived because of us. They owed the assault troopers everything. I had the impression they had dedicated themselves to the Forerunner artifact and to helping mankind survive as a species.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “They want Sant even after he tried to kill me?”
Ella smiled tightly, looking as if she had a secret. “They have no idea what occurred in your chamber.”
“You’d better explain that.”
The woman’s lips thinned as she stared into my eyes. “You have to understand something first. The doctors didn’t think you’d make it through this time. You’d just been in the healing tank. A second immersion this soon…”
“Go on,” I said.
“We thought you were dying, Commander. You can understand our grief and rage.”
“Sure. What did you do to Sant?”
Ella bit her lower lip again. “Rollo and Dmitri agreed with me. They said I should proceed with the experiment. Only N7 demurred.”
“What about Diana and Murad Bey?” I asked.
They were the principle Earth Council leaders. The council governed the people in the space freighters, the bulk of humanity, in other words. As Forerunner Guardians, we are outside the Earth Council’s jurisdiction. It was something I’d hammered home to the others many times. Even so, I tried to coordinate with Diana. There weren’t enough of us left to allow squabbles.
Ella shook her head. “We didn’t tell Diana or anyone else on the Earth Council. Rollo and Dmitri agreed with me that we keep the experiment among ourselves.”
“Enough,” I said, panting. I couldn’t believe how weak I’d become. “Just tell me what you did.”
“You know my area of expertise, Commander.”
I nodded slowly. During the assault on the portal planet, we’d gained a tiny Forerunner artifact the size of a person’s fist. In fact, we stole it from the Orange Tamika Lokhars on the Dreadnought Indomitable. That’s another of those long stories. In any case, the artifact called EP had beamed a pink ray at Ella. It had fiddled with her mind somehow.
Later, EP had helped me move the larger Forerunner relic presently near Ceres. The small object had remained in the larger one. We hadn’t seen EP for years now.
What had the pink ray done to Ella’s mind? We all wondered that, she more than any of us. That became her devoted area of expertise.
She commandeered every piece of alien equipment that had to do with the mind and thought control. Using the various devices—the primary tool a Jelk machine from our hijacked battlejumper—our Russian scientist had begun experimenting. After two years, Ella had declared herself free of any alien entanglements in her thoughts.
I hadn’t been so sure, and I’d made the mistake of saying so.
After that, Ella went into overdrive. Unbelievably, she found several hidden commands in her mind. Using her alien machines, she deprogrammed herself.
Now, I should tell you that I’m skipping tons of technical jargon. I’m not a scientist, though. I’m a fighter. During her experiments, Ella reached dead-ends. She also had two seizures and raved like a lunatic for a month. At that point, I’d had enough. I locked her in a cell for further study.
Three of her assistants broke Ella out of confinement and took her back to the worst machine, the Jelk device. There, they pushed the limit of their knowledge, using Ella’s notes to try one last test. It proved to be the breakthrough.
The next day, Ella had greeted me as her loveable self. She went into exquisite detail what had happened. Her fingers kept tapping her reader, showing me brain charts. As if I’d known what any of that meant.
Believe me, I’d still had my doubts about her.
Ella Timoshenko hadn’t. She continued working with the machines in the basement of Mars Base. After that, though, the thrust of her experiments changed. She no longer worried about possessing a traitorous mind. Now she wondered how to read, break and recondition alien minds. Ella’s ordeals had given her a thirst to mess with the aliens who had messed with her.
Orange Tamika Lokhars happened to be in the solar system, but those tigers were our closest allies. Purple Tamika Lokhars regularly ca
me to Earth to deliver automated factories. A few of those tigers had disappeared here and there. They found themselves in Ella’s chambers with the brain machines.
Before you judge us too harshly, listen to our reasoning. The Lokhars had come to Earth, slaughtering ninety-nine percent of humanity. The last one percent barely hung on. We’d tried to join the Jade League and gain greater protection. The Purple Tamika Emperor had vetoed our entry. Okay. We were on our own, right? As the weakest group around, we relied on our wits and complete ruthlessness. If that meant kidnapping an alien or two to work on…we did it.
That doesn’t mean I was proud of the deeds. I simply recognized the crisis and acted accordingly.
Ella experimented on Purple Tamika tigers. Several had died. Two become raging lunatics, and one remained a comatose vegetable. I knew her area of expertise, all right. It was one of our darkest secrets.
As I sat in my chair in the medical chamber on Mars Base, I said, “You’re not telling me you put Doctor Sant under one of your machines.”
“I am, Commander,” Ella said.
“Why?”
“At first,” Ella said, “we wanted to know what happened in your quarters. It was obvious you’d used the force blade against him, but where had you gotten the weapon?”
“The knife belonged to Doctor Sant,” I said.
“I know that now,” Ella said, her lips stretched in one of the evilest smiles I’d ever seen.
Seeing the smile tired me out. I sagged against my chair.
“Are you all right, Commander?” Ella asked.
“Give me a minute.” My eyes closed of their own accord. I don’t remember falling asleep or anyone picking me up.
When my eyes opened again, I was back in my quarters. My blanket—a new one—was pulled up to my chin. I let my eyes rove around. The room looked as good as new. The viewing panel showed the same red sands in their mindless swirling patterns.
“Hello, Commander.”
I turned my head in the other direction, spying the nurse, the pretty redhead. She smiled, stood and checked on me. After fussing for a while, she retreated, leaving the chamber.
When the door opened a second time, Ella walked in with a tray of eggs, ham, toast and orange juice.
My stomach growled as I sat up. I felt ravenous. My hand shook as I picked up the fork. A second later, I forgot about that as I tasted the scrambled eggs. They were delicious.
Ella sat on a barstool, waiting. After I wiped my lips with a napkin, she put the empty tray on the bar.
I burped, feeling full, rested and alert. Maybe I could finally start regaining my strength and putting back on the weight I’d lost.
“Do you remember our last conversation?” Ella asked me.
It took me a moment of recollection. “Yeah, you were about to tell me the worst. What happened to Doctor Sant? Why didn’t you tell the Lokhars on Ceres about his murderous rampage?”
“I had another breakthrough with the machines,” Ella said, with the excitement shining in her eyes.
“Meaning what?” I asked.
“Doctor Sant told me everything that happened in here.”
It took me several seconds to catch on. “You’re kidding? He gave you a recap?”
“He gave me much more than that, Creed. I know about the Shi-Feng. I know why Sant reacted as he did. I also learned some Orange Tamika secrets.”
“You tore those from his mind?” I asked.
“I did,” she said.
Doctor Sant had been a good friend once, maybe the only true one we had among the tigers. Why had he gone crazy? I imagine after his ordeal with the mind machine that he raved madly or lay catatonic on a bed, staring up at the ceiling.
“Is Sant still alive?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, Commander,” Ella said. “He’s quite alive.”
I whipped off the bed cover, stared a second and yanked the blanket back over my nakedness.
“Where are my clothes?” I asked.
“Forget about them,” Ella said. “Don’t you want to hear what I’ve discovered?”
I realized I did. “Who are the Shi-Feng?” I asked.
“A death cult of assassins,” Ella said. “According to Doctor Sant, their origins belong to the pre-Lokhar Space Age. They’re also pre-Creator, as in the present tiger religion. Once, the followers of Shi-Feng worshiped anthropometric Lokhar-like gods and goddesses, much like the Greek pantheon. When the tigers become Creator worshipers, the death cult changed with the times.”
“Why do they blow up?” I asked.
“As I said, they’re a death cult. They believe in purity and right thinking. The Shi-Feng are convinced that only Lokhars were made in the image of the Creator. Their fascination with the Forerunner artifacts is intense. Put the two together, and it is clear why they had to kill you.”
I thought about that. “Why did they wait so long to make their first strike then?” I asked.
“As to that,” Ella said, “I don’t know. It is a good question.”
“When you tell me all this about the Shi-Feng, what you really mean is that these are Doctor Sant’s views about them, right?”
“That is correct,” Ella said.
“I’m not faulting you,” I said. “I’m merely saying we don’t know everything about the Shi-Feng, just Sant’s coloring of them.”
“Yes. It’s good to remember that.”
“So why did Doctor Sant attack me?”
“I believe he told you during your confrontation,” Ella said. “Among the Lokhars, the Shi-Feng are held in religious awe. They have an amazing mystique. Legend holds they never fail.”
“So…?”
“Doctor Sant believes the Shi-Feng wield supernatural powers. You told him about their attack against you. Once he realized you spoke the truth, he believed that he had to kill you immediately. If he didn’t, the Shi-Feng would come after him. On all accounts, he couldn’t allow that.”
“You mean he had to stay alive at all costs?” I said.
“I doubt you realize why,” Ella said.
“Of course I do, for self-preservation.”
“You’re both right and wrong,” she said.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said, crossly.
“Then bear with me as I explain. Doctor Sant believes he must stay alive at all costs. You’re wrong in thinking it’s purely because he loves life. In his mind, he must live in order to preach his new message to the others of Orange Tamika.”
“What message?” I asked.
Ella slid off her stool and went behind the bar. There, she mixed herself a dry martini, setting the glass on the counter. “Would you like a bottle of water?” she asked.
“Give me a beer,” I said.
“You’re not supposed to have any alcohol yet,” she said, sipping from her martini. “Ah. That’s good.” She sipped once more, taking the olive and popping it into her mouth. As she chewed, she regarded me.
“You’ve told me about Sant’s metamorphosis from scientist to religious seeker more than once,” Ella said. “I know you’ve told me about him in order to tease me with the idea that maybe I could get religion too.”
Ella finished off the martini. She looked pretty doing it. Then she set the glass on the bar. “I never want to become like Doctor Sant. Once, he viewed reality through a common sense lens. Now, he’s a mystic. That he survived the transfer from the portal planet to the solar system has taken on religious significance for him. He can’t accept that it simply happened. He has to believe it happened for a reason.
“Naturally, what we’re seeing is the guilt of his survival. He wants to subscribe greater significance to the event than it warrants. Why would he live instead of the others? He can’t accept the luck of the draw.”
“Okay,” I said.
“In his search for reasons,” Ella said, “he pores over ancient Lokhar holy books. He studies the artifact. He ponders his existence.”
“Sant told you all this while he was under your
machine?” I asked.
Ella nodded.
“And?” I asked.
“He yearns to preach a crusade against Purple Tamika. He believes the Emperor acted without honor in sending Princess Nee to Indomitable.”
The Emperor’s daughter-wife that I shot,” I said.
“Sant sees that moment as an act of the Creator. If you hadn’t shot the Purple Tamika princess, she would have turned the dreadnoughts back into normal space. We never would have closed the portal planet. The Kargs would be destroying all life in our universe now. In Sant’s mind, that was the first strike against Purple Tamika. Since Orange Tamika closed the gate between the space-time continuums, they should hold the throne.”
“Doesn’t seem so farfetched to me,” I said.
“I agree,” Ella said. “The only part that’s odd is his need to put a religious coloring to his desire.”
I pursed my lips, nodding after a time. I could see her point.
“And that is why Doctor Sant had to kill you. He has a holy message to bring to Orange Tamika, or so he believes. If the Shi-Feng slew him, that righteous cause would die with him.”
“Okay. I’m following you so far,” I said. “But how does Sant figure Orange Tamika has a chance of taking over from Purple Tamika? The Orange lost too much strength in the destruction of the three dreadnoughts.”
“That’s the strange part,” Ella said. “I wanted to keep Sant under the machine and learn more. The protestations of his warriors on Ceres meant I didn’t have the time.”
“What are you talking about now?” I asked.
“I wanted your opinion about what to do next. It’s why I spoke to you a few days ago. When you passed out again, I had to make the decision on my own.”
“Back up a bit,” I said. “What’s the strange part first?”
“It concerns the Jelk Corporation,” she said. “We know there’s been less combat between the corporation and the Jade League these past six years. Sant’s heard rumors as to a possible reason why.”
“This I want to hear.”
“Several major Saurian fleets appear to have left the frontier,” Ella said.
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