Tanik favored her with a reassuring smile. Now that his face wasn’t lit red by that flickering sign, he looked less frightening—even the lumpy scars running down the side of his face inspired pity more than fear.
“My dad wasn’t always like this,” Cassandra said. “There has to be a way to get him back.”
“It’s not his fault,” Tanik said, nodding. “I warned him that he needed to stop using the Sprites, but he wouldn’t listen, and Admiral Ventaris urged him to continue. The feeling of power and euphoria they induce makes them as addictive as any drug. Before long he couldn’t resist using them. But they do more than manipulate their hosts’ by stimulating opioid receptors. They also change brain chemistry, and make a person crave power.”
“How do we undo all of that now?”
“I think I might know a way,” Tanik replied.
Cassandra’s heart leapt with eager anticipation. “How?” Her eyes darted back and forth, searching his.
Tanik wrapped an arm around her shoulders, gently turning her and walking with her back the way she’d come. “Let’s go meet my team.”
“Your team?” A flicker of suspicion crawled through Cassandra’s gut. “Are they Keth?”
“No, not Keth. A human and a Togran—he’s cute. You’ll like him. And there’s someone else. Someone you should recognize.”
Her suspicion gave way to curiosity. “Who’s that?”
“Gatticus Thedroux.”
Cassandra stopped walking suddenly, and Tanik’s arm slid off her shoulders. “No way! How did you find him?”
Tanik turned to her with a grin and shrugged. “Mysteries of the universe. He won’t remember you, though, I’m afraid. He had an unfortunate accident.”
Suspicion returned with a cold rush, and Cassandra’s eyes narrowed. “My dad said you were that accident.”
“Yes. I admit it,” Tanik said. “He tried to stop me from going to rescue you and the others from the Crucible, and I overreacted.”
“He tried to stop you? Why would he do that?”
“Because he was an Executor in the Union, and I was commandeering a Union Carrier to go rescue conscripts from their secret war with the Keth. We were on opposite sides of an old conflict.”
“And now?”
“Now, we’re good friends, but—” Tanik held a finger to his lips. “He doesn’t know that I was the one who sent him away, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep it that way. We need his help to get your father back to his old self.”
Cassandra didn’t like being forced to keep secrets, but she couldn’t afford to alienate Gatticus if he was the key to getting her father back. “How is he going to help me get my dad back?”
“By re-engineering Cygnian nanites as a virus to target the Sprites in people’s bloodstreams.”
“Could that work?” Cassandra asked, hope soaring in her chest.
“Oh yes, I’m certain that it will,” Tanik replied. “We’d better go join the others before your father comes looking for you. We don’t want him to find out about our little project before we can use it to help him.”
Cassandra nodded quickly. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 29
Commander Kanos of the Marine battalion stopped at the foot of Darius’s throne and saluted. “We’ve searched the entire city, sir. It’s possible your daughter found a way to reach one of the surrounding settlements.”
Darius leaned forward and glowered at the man. “On foot?”
“She may have found transport with one of the locals. Or stolen a vehicle. We have also been unable to sense her in the zero-point field. It is possible that she does not want to be found.”
“She’s a child. This isn’t about what she does or doesn’t want. Find her, Commander, or I will hold you personally responsible for her disappearance and anything that happens to her while she’s gone, do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” Commander Kanos replied. He clicked his heels together and saluted once more.
“Dismissed,” Darius said, and waved him away.
The commander and his soldiers made a hasty retreat. The giant doors at the end of the throne room shut behind the Marines with a resounding boom as they left. The morning sun painted golden squares on the marble floors, window frames tracing dark squares of shadow between them. Darius rotated his throne to look out through the floor-to-ceiling windows beside him. The sun was just now peeking over the tops of the nearest buildings. Cassandra had been missing all night. At first, he’d thought she’d return after a few hours, once she calmed down and realized what a brat she’d been. But that hadn’t happened, and she was still actively hiding her presence from him, making it difficult to find her. Darius scowled. Cassandra was going to be in a lot of trouble when his troops finally found her.
The doors at the end of the throne room burst open, drawing his attention to the fore. Dyara came striding in and stopped at the foot of his throne. She stared up at him.
“She’s still not back, is she?” Dyara asked.
Darius scowled. “Who let you in here?”
“Forget about that and listen.”
Darius could tell this was going to be a tiresome conversation. Reaching over to a compartment in the side of his throne, he withdrew a flask of living water and took a long sip. The Sprites tingled on his tongue and in the back of his throat, clearing his mind and sharpening his thoughts. Much better, he thought, his eyes half-closing with bliss.
“Look at you!” Dyara said. “You can’t even function without them, can you? You’ve driven your own daughter away, I can’t stand to be around you—who’s next?”
Darius waved a hand at her, and she braced herself with the ZPF for a kinetic attack. He arched an eyebrow at her and a wan smile curved his lips. “Someone’s jumpy,” he remarked.
“Can you blame me? The last time you waved your hand like that, you threw your daughter into a wall.”
A flash of anger tore through Darius with her accusation. “That was an accident.”
“An accident?” Dyara blurted. “If that’s so, then why did you justify it afterward? And why was I the first to check on her? Face it, you’ve lost all control over yourself. The Sprites are controlling you now.”
Darius took another sip from his flask but said nothing.
Dyara saw that and went on through gritted teeth, “If you don’t wake up and do something now, it’ll be too late. Fight back! You’re not completely gone yet. I know you’re still in there somewhere.”
Darius gave her a stony look. “Are you done?”
Dyara gaped at him. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself? Your daughter is gone! She’s out there somewhere.” Dyara gestured to the walls of windows flanking the long hall-shaped throne room. “She’s lost in an unknown city, on an unknown world. She could be in trouble, or hurt, or abducted by a gang of criminals. The Darius I know would have been out there looking for her all night, but instead, you’re in here brooding and drinking that.”
“She’s actively hiding her presence from me and the other Revenants,” Darius replied. “If she were in trouble, she’d let us find her.”
“Not if she’s dead,” Dyara replied.
“She’s not dead.”
“How do you know? Or maybe you just don’t care.”
Darius pointed at the doors. “Get out.”
“Fine, I’ll go,” Dyara replied, nodding slowly, “but I’m not coming back.”
Darius shrugged. “Good.”
Dyara fixed him with an incredulous look. “One day you’re going to wake up and realize that you’ve driven everyone away and you’re all alone. I just hope by then it’s not too late for you to do something about it.”
Darius watched as she turned and walked away. He took another sip from his flask to clear his head and cool his temper. The doors to the throne room banged shut in Dyara’s wake.
She was a fool. If she’d stood by him, he would have made her the governor of her own star system—maybe even more tha
n one star system—but now she’d have nothing. Without him, she was a worthless nobody. Hopefully, Cass would learn from her example when his Marines finally found her and brought her back to the palace.
Chapter 30
—TWO DAYS LATER—
A loud knock sounded on the rusted metal door of the warehouse, and all eyes turned to Tanik.
“You’d better answer that,” Gatticus said.
“It’s probably another patrol,” Trista added.
Tanik looked to Cassandra. “Go to the basement, just in case.”
Cass got up from the aging brown couch where she’d slept for the past three nights. She knew the routine.
Tanik walked back through the abandoned warehouse to the front door. When they’d first found the place, it hadn’t even had a door. They’d had to fashion one from some old metal sheets that they’d found lying around. They’d had to improvise and scrounge all of their amenities. Trista remained thoroughly unimpressed, calling it a kakhole, but so far they’d managed to elude discovery by Darius’s soldiers. The trouble was that the patrols kept coming, either having forgotten that they’d already checked this warehouse, or having been ordered to search the same places repeatedly.
More knocking sounded on the door just as Tanik reached it. “We can detect your heat signatures!” a muffled voice said. “Open the door, or we’ll cut it open!”
Tanik lifted the metal latch on the inside and pulled the door open to a width of a few feet, revealing a full squad of Revenants outside, all of them wearing glossy black plates of armor, but no helmets.
“You live here?” the squad leader asked. He was a gray-furred Korothian with sharp green eyes.
Tanik nodded slowly, making his own eyes wide and frightened. He held his hands up, revealing ragged holes in his baggy shirt. He’d found a change of clothes in the warehouse. They smelled like sour milk, but they made him look the part of a homeless drifter. The others had refused to trade their clothes for smelly rags, but it didn’t matter. Only Tanik needed to look the part. No one was actually going to search inside the warehouse. “The moon is falling!” he said in a sudden shout. “It’s falling!”
The soldier’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword, and he tried to peer around Tanik. “Is there anyone else in there with you?” he asked.
Tanik nodded gravely. “The Phantoms.”
The soldiers looked suddenly alarmed. “There’s Cygnians hiding here with you?”
“There goes one!” Tanik said, pointing to a giant insect crawling through the dust at the man’s feet. “It’s a baby.”
“He’s crazy!” one of the other soldiers said, shaking his head.
“We’re going to have to search the whole place,” another added. “I can detect at least one other person in there.”
“Probably just another homeless wretch,” said the first.
The leader glanced back at his squad. “We have our orders.” He turned back to Tanik and nodded. “Step aside.”
Tanik smiled and shook his head. “Not safe. Phantoms will eat you.”
“Dumb goff,” the man muttered. “I said step aside!” He drew his sword, and both he and the blade began radiating the pale white glow of a shield.
Tanik reached into the ZPF and took hold of their minds. In the next instant, they all wore vacant expressions with hollow eyes. He planted a false memory in their heads of having searched the warehouse and found nothing but poor, crazy bums living in squalor, just as they were expecting.
Before he released their minds, Tanik backed away and shut the door, so that when they came back to their senses they wouldn’t remember him standing there, barring the entrance.
By the time Tanik returned to the others in the abandoned offices where they’d set up their research and living facilities, Tanik could already sense that the soldiers had moved on. He dropped down onto the brown couch where Cassandra had been sitting earlier and reached out to her telepathically, telling her that it was safe to come back upstairs.
“That’s three patrols in as many nights,” Trista said, shaking her head. “They’re not going to give up looking.”
“Eventually they will,” Tanik replied. “Darius isn’t your average concerned parent.” Cassandra arrived at just that moment, making what Tanik had been about to say awkward, but he went on anyway. She couldn’t afford to be naive if she was going to play her part in Darius’s downfall. “He’s only looking for her because she’s making him look bad by eluding capture, and because it annoys him to be thwarted.”
Cassandra was leaning against the wall, looking at her feet and picking at her finger nails, as if she hadn’t heard what he’d said.
“Cass, come sit down,” Tanik said to her. He patted an empty cushion beside him with the stuffing bleeding out of it. “It’s safe now. I sent them away.”
“I don’t know why you make me go downstairs every time if they never even come inside,” Cassandra complained as she flopped down on the couch beside him.
Tanik gave her a long-suffering smile. “Because I like to be careful. Some Revenants are stronger than others, and planting false memories is delicate work. I can’t be certain that I’ll always get it right.”
“I still say we should leave. Look at this place!” Trista threw up her hands in disgust. She was sitting on a rusty, unpadded chair at a lop-sided table that they’d propped up with a loose brick. The walls of the office were badly cracked, paint peeling away in big papery sheets. The overhead lights and equipment were all patched into a solar-charged emergency power cell that Tanik had found in the basement, and the bathroom facilities were buckets. Food and water had to be sourced outside by creative means, all the while dodging Revenant patrols.
“I’m sure we can do better than this,” Trista went on. “Maybe you can use that mind control power of yours to convince a real laboratory to let us use their facilities. I bet it would make the work go a lot quicker, too. What do you think, Gatticus?” She glanced over her shoulder to where he sat statuesque in front of a glowing black and white holoscreen.
Gatticus gave no reply. He was plugged directly into the computer console. Lines of code scrolled rapidly down the holoscreen as he wrote new instructions for his test batch of nanites. He was trying to get them to recognize Sprites in a sample of blood that Tanik had given him earlier.
Buddy hopped up on Trista’s shoulder, gnawing on a leg bone from lunch. “Forget lodging, what about food? Why don’t you get a restaurant to send a nice fillet of fish for each of us? No, make that two fillets, or...” Buddy’s expression grew contemplative, and he tapped his chin with one small finger. “You could probably get a whole hover-truck full of fish delivered here, couldn’t you?”
Tanik looked back to Trista. “For now, this is as safe as we’re going to get. Darius will move on before long in order to keep consolidating his empire. He’ll leave his men here to keep looking for Cass on their own, and as soon as he does that, I’ll open a wormhole back to the Coalition fleet so that we can finish the work there.”
Trista frowned, obviously unsatisfied with that plan. “What happens if Darius comes poking around here personally? You said he’s immune to your mental tricks, and from what I hear, he’s not going to be happy to see you.”
“He won’t come,” Tanik replied. But deep down he wasn’t so sure. And after their last two confrontations, he harbored no illusions about how a third would go. If they met again before Tanik had a chance to finish engineering his virus, he would be killed, and there would be no one left to oppose Darius.
Part 3 - Corruption
Chapter 31
—THREE MONTHS LATER—
“The virus is ready,” Gatticus said as they entered Yuri Mathos’s quarters.
“Is that true?” Yuri asked, and slowly turned from the wall of viewports behind his desk. “Tanik?” Yuri prompted, re-directing the question to him.
He nodded. “Yes.” Since leaving Tarsus and returning to the Coalition Fleet they’d perfected the nano v
irus—or rather, Gatticus had perfected it while the rest of them hovered over his shoulders asking stupid questions. He’d been able to demonstrate how his re-engineered nanites could target and kill the Sprites in an infected blood sample.
“Then we are ready to deploy our weapon?” Yuri asked.
“Not yet. We need a live test subject,” Tanik explained. “Preferably someone you won’t miss in case there are adverse side effects.”
“We were thinking about the captured Cygnian on board,” Trista put in.
Cassandra frowned. “Just because she’s a Cygnian doesn’t mean we can use her as a guinea pig.”
“A what?” Tanik asked.
“It’s an expression. The point is, even Cygnian prisoners should have rights.”
Tanik smiled patiently at her. “We need to know if our virus is dangerous. The fastest way to learn that is to infect a living host. Or would you rather that we infect your father with an untested pathogen that might kill him?”
Cassandra appeared to hesitate. “No, but there has to be another way.”
“There isn’t,” Tanik replied. “Not one that we have time for, anyway. The Empire’s inauguration ceremony is less than a month from today. We won’t have another chance to catch all of the Revenants in one place.”
“Our prisoner has shown no signs of having special powers,” Yuri said. “If the virus is intended for Revenants, then how does testing it on a non-Revenant help you?”
“Anyone who’s been to the Crucible has the Sprites in their blood,” Tanik explained. “Non-Revenants maintain much lower blood levels of them, but they’re still present. If we can clear the Sprites out of that Cygnian’s system, then there’s no reason to think that we won’t be able to do the same with actual Revenants.”
Yuri nodded. “All right, let’s go see how your virus works on a live test subject.”
* * *
The Cygnian prisoner lay in the far corner of her holding cell, curled up and sleeping like a dog, blissfully unaware that a silvery cloud of nanites had been pumped into her cell through the air filtration system.
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