by Elana Brooks
Adrian wracked his brain for anything else that would be needed. “Rafeel, can you make it look as if Fereel died later than he did? After he was last seen, so it looks like I killed him while posing as Dineel? That way they won’t know there were two impostors, not one.”
“I can do that.”
“Good.” Was there anything else he hadn’t thought of? If so, the Seraphim would have to take care of it for themselves. “Thank you.” He gave their fins a final squeeze and released them. “I can’t tell you how much this means to us.”
Rafeel made a graceful gesture with his head and fins. Miheel echoed it. “May God go with you, and guide you, and watch over you,” Rafeel said in a formal, sing-song tone.
“And with you,” Adrian answered fervently. “Goodbye.”
He took a deep breath and carefully shifted into Dineel’s form. He shot upward, keeping hidden within walls and maintenance tunnels, following the path Miheel had shown him. Once he was far from the two Bleaters, he broke into a corridor and let the Seraphim there, including a cluster of Order Police, see him drop Dineel’s shape and assume his true form. “Death to the aliens!” he cried and plunged onward toward the bridge.
Telepathic alarms echoed through the ship. Two huge Seraphim charged him from one side. Adrian hurled balls of energy at their tethers, using the instant while they deflected his attack to flee. They pursued, soon joined by others. He kept launching attacks, enough to keep them at a wary distance.
He flashed into the bridge at the top of the ship. There was the navigation computer, just as Miheel had shown him. Summoning every ounce of telekinetic force he could muster, Adrian wrenched at the mass of wires and connections that filled its interior, inflicting damage wherever he found a vulnerability.
A sphere of gray mist enveloped him, and his astral form froze. His telekinesis was cut off. He drifted, helpless to summon energy to defend himself, held prisoner by the paralyzing field apparently being projected by the Order Police surrounding him.
With efficient teamwork, they dragged the sphere and his suspended form off the bridge, down a maze of corridors, through an ominous arched doorway, and into a large, dimly lit room.
“Welcome to Corrections, alien spy,” a large yellow Seraph sneered at him. “Commander Sarthex will deal with you when he’s ready. But first, he’s ordered us to give you a taste of Seraphim discipline.”
They proceeded to deliver what Adrian assumed was the astral equivalent of a systematic beating. Taking turns, they sent tightly focused balls of energy to vaporize small chunks of his astral form, always careful to stay clear of his tether. The pain was pretty rough, but he’d learned to deal with that sort of thing in the energyball arena. It helped that he knew they weren’t inflicting any permanent damage.
When he was sure every cubic inch of his astral body had been obliterated and regenerated at least three times, they finally quit. They hauled his imprisoning sphere into a dark cubicle just big enough to hold it and left him there alone.
Hours passed. From the telepathic orders that periodically sounded in his head, the routine of the ship was proceeding uninterrupted. He heard the third guard shift called in and the first shift sent out on duty. They would miss Fereel when he didn’t report, if they hadn’t already. He hoped Rafeel had kept his promise.
Finally a group of Order Police came to get him. They hauled him, still paralyzed in the gray sphere, back through the ship to the bridge. They positioned him in the center of the space, then melted back to hover near the walls.
Something wrenched Adrian around. He found himself facing a gigantic Seraph. It was more than three times as long from tail tip to snout as Adrian was tall, its metallic copper fins spanned almost as great a distance, and its black body was as thick as a massive tree trunk. It lowered its dragonish head to stare at Adrian through yellow eyes.
Its mind sliced into his, stripping away his defenses, plumbing the darkest depths of his psyche. With a doomed sense of inevitability, Adrian recognized Commander Sarthex’s mental voice. Ah. The impostor, indeed. Again you pretend to be something you’re not.
Adrian slammed his mind shut with all his strength. He must not let Sarthex discover the truth about his mission. He glared back, throwing all his anger and fear back at the Seraph, though he knew the attack would surely prove futile.
Sure enough, Sarthex hissed a long, low laugh. But he withdrew a little and switched to spoken words. “The little alien is bold, to attack us at the heart of our power. But stupid. Tell me, Maintenance Technician Veller, what did his sabotage accomplish?”
A Seraph looked up from where he labored in the guts of the open navigation computer. “Very little, Commander. A few broken wires, easily repaired.”
“Excellent.” Sarthex undulated his heavy coils, swimming around Adrian. Adrian remained frozen, unable to turn to watch the Seraph, unable to squirm as he imagined those yellow eyes raking over his back and sides.
“I’ve observed many, many hours of the electromagnetic transmissions that spew from your world,” Sarthex remarked conversationally as he swam around to Adrian’s front again. “Foolish of you, to broadcast your every thought and whim for anyone to intercept. I’ve developed a thorough understanding of your species’ psychology. You think yourselves strong and intelligent, when in reality you’re barely better than animals. Your scholars scoff at the possibility of anything their physical senses can’t observe, and so shut themselves off from half the universe. I admit, you’ve devised many clever ways to manipulate the physical world, but what use is that when your ignorance of the astral realm is nearly total? To use a metaphor you might understand, the most skillfully made stone tools are pitiful compared to even the most basic weapons forged from metal. Your world is trapped in the Stone Age, but now the Age of Steel is upon you. What have you to say to that?”
The imprisoning field weakened so that Adrian’s mouth could move. He licked his lips. Sarthex couldn’t access his thoughts, then, or he would already have sent Order Police to apprehend Miheel and Rafeel. His ability to telepathically probe Adrian’s mind must be limited to emotions. Maybe with careful verbal fencing he could subtly mislead the Seraphim leader in ways that would make him vulnerable to the Covenant’s plans.
He took a deep breath. “Some of us wield steel blades.” He projected a mental image of a ball of energy obliterating Sarthex’s tether, although the field prevented him from launching a real one.
Sarthex chuckled. “Daggers against cannons.” He sent a return image, so vivid it nearly overwhelmed Adrian, of a burst of energy consuming Adrian’s entire astral form.
“You may be that strong, but how many Ex-castes are there? There are many of my people far stronger than me, and I’ve had little trouble defeating those of lower castes I’ve faced.” He sent an image of the first fight with the Seraphim guards, when the five of them had easily defeated their four opponents.
Careful as he was to remain impassive, the brief memory of Beverly sparked a pang of grief in his heart. Sarthex was on it like a shark scenting blood. “There. Your fatal weakness. You trumpet it in your mythology as your highest virtue. But even though the strong among you know how to use it against the weak, you ignore the ways it makes you vulnerable.”
An image forced itself into Adrian’s brain, no matter how hard he fought to keep it out. Beverly hung suspended in a matching sphere of gray mist, eyes huge and terrified. Sarthex swam around her, probing her with his relentless gaze. A tiny, intense point of energy lanced from the Seraph’s eyes and burned a streak across Beverly’s chest, missing her tether, but cutting cruelly into her breasts. She screamed and writhed in pain.
A cry of fury escaped Adrian’s lips as the vision vanished. Sarthex wagged his head in blatant mockery of a human’s sad head shake. “So easy.” He sighed. “I suspect you’re concealing information, alien. Your attack on the navigation computer was clearly a feint, meant to distract from your true purpose here. Apparently you’ve been moving about the ship,
disguised as one of us. Perhaps you were simply gathering intelligence, but perhaps there was more to your mission. Am I right?”
Adrian shook his head, panting. “I was spying. That’s all. An experiment to see if we could move undetected among you.” He summoned an attitude of defiance. “You caught me, but are you so sure there aren’t others you’re missing?”
“Hmm.” The Seraphim expression was a soft moan, eerily like the equivalent human sound. Or maybe it was another mannerism Sarthex had pickup up from watching Earth TV. “You will tell me everything. I’ll strip away the barriers of your mind. All it will take is sufficient application of the right sort of pressure. How long will you be able to endure seeing things like this?”
Closed eyes were useless against telepathic projections. Beverly lay strapped to a table, a man in a ski mask towering over her, serrated knife in his hand. As Adrian fought vainly not to watch, the man lowered the knife to one of her fingers and began to saw.
It wasn’t real, he struggled to remind himself over the screams that lanced into his heart. Beverly was far away, thank god, safe from Sarthex’s ruthless cruelty. All the Seraph could do was pretend and make Adrian see.
The image was gone as quickly as it had come. “I’m very familiar with what humans find disturbing,” Sarthex remarked. “You love to entertain yourselves with the things that most horrify you. Pain, humiliation, degradation—especially when associated with your reproductive functions.”
Oh, god. Sure enough, the next vision showed a struggling Beverly pinned face down by a group of brutal, laughing men, while a man approached her from behind, pulling open the fly of his jeans.
It was too much. “Stop,” Adrian choked out, in the instant before the rapist struck.
“Of course.” Sarthex blinked at him mildly. “You’re ready to speak?”
Lie. “Your guards—dozens of them. We’ve taken their place.”
Sarthex’s jaws gaped in a wide yawn. “Easily checked. Would you rather give me their names, or see more?”
Desperate, Adrian blurted as many names as he could remember. “Luller, Diseel, Oreel, Areel, Tesser, Daress, Besseel, Daller, Hinner, Dineel, Lammess…”
At a flick of Sarthex’s head, two of the Order Police shot away. For a blessed moment Sarthex left Adrian alone. The giant Seraph swam to a wide viewport and gazed out at the stars.
Adrian fought against the hatred that threatened to consume him. To Sarthex, the horrific images he’d created meant nothing. They might as well be random abstract patterns of light and shadow, for all the emotion they provoked in the Seraphim. To him, this was just another contest, as impersonal as Adrian’s game with Miheel. Except this time, instead of telekinetic skill, the game was designed to test who had the stronger will.
He must not give up the Bleaters. No matter what nightmares Sarthex inflicted on him. The only power Sarthex had was over his mind. The Seraph couldn’t make those awful visions come true. Not unless he was allowed to reach Earth.
Adrian shuddered at the thought. He was certain Sarthex would regard the physical manifestation of those horrors with much the same amused detachment as their mental projection. More than ever, the Covenant’s mission was vital. No appeal to pity or morality or mutual benefit would ever deter Sarthex from his course. The Seraph would blink and chuckle and fake a yawn as he watched millions of humans drown.
In a few minutes, the Order Police would be back to report that the guards Adrian had named were untouched. Adrian didn’t know how they would confirm their identities, but he doubted it would be difficult. Then Sarthex would renew his efforts to extract the truth. Adrian would do his best to hold out, but he wasn’t sure how much he could take before his mind crumbled beneath the onslaught.
He couldn’t let that happen. He swallowed. Methodically, he began thinking of ways to provoke Sarthex into killing him.
Chapter 31
Beverly clutched her chest. Pain blossomed there, a throbbing ache. Faintly she felt a hot line slice across the top of her breasts. She damped reflexively as blackness threatened.
As abruptly as it had begun, the pain was gone. She straightened to find the others clustered around her astral form, faces full of concern. “Adrian,” she gasped. “They’re torturing him.” Her brows drew together as confusion swept her. “They’re torturing me?”
Rabbi Sensei put an arm around her shoulders. “Take deep breaths,” he told her. “Don’t try to make sense of it. Just describe what you felt.”
She tried to obey. “My heart, right where I feel the soul bond.” When she’d set out after Adrian, the awful strain on the bond had eased, and it had lessened even more as they traveled to the Seraphim ship. This wasn’t that kind of pain. It felt more like the feedback loop when her anger had resonated along the bond and bounced back at her. Not anger this time, though, or at least not directed at her. Just agony. “Awful pain. And another, fainter pain, here.” She traced the line with one finger.
Steve frowned and turned to look at the colony ship. “I wonder if he’s been captured.”
They’d taken up a post well outside the sphere of guards, where they could wait and observe without being discovered. It had been hours since they’d arrived. She’d felt a few vague, ambiguous sensations along the soul bond - once her heart had raced like she’d been running, another time she’d felt a deep sexual longing, for a while she’d felt prickly aches all over. Enough to make her wonder what the hell Adrian was doing in there. But nothing definite until now.
Keiko took Beverly’s hands and rubbed them. “Adrian is strong. He’ll resist them, no matter what—”
A new burst of pain hit Beverly. Her heart again, and this time a sharp blaze of agony in her finger. It went on and on, until she was whimpering in misery and it was all she could do to damp enough not to pass out. “Please, make it stop—”
Suddenly it did. She pressed her hand to her mouth, amazed to find it still whole. “They’re hurting him,” she cried. “They cut—” But that couldn’t be true. Disintegrating an astral finger wouldn’t hurt nearly so much. “I don’t understand.”
Rabbi Sensei swiveled to face the ship, determination on his face. “They must have him. Clearly they’re applying some sort of torture. Perhaps physical, but I fear more likely mental.”
Steve glowered at the ship. “The question is, did he succeed in contacting the Bleaters first? And if he did, have they been captured too?”
Keiko hugged Beverly. “He’s had nearly two days. Surely he’s accomplished what he set out to do. The plan was always for him to make some dramatic gesture to draw attention away from any allies he managed to win.”
Rabbi Sensei spoke softly, but Beverly heard anyway. “And be killed. Not captured and tortured for information. I’m afraid—”
The agony in her heart was sharper this time. No other pain accompanied it, but she felt helpless, terrified, like a horrible dark threat loomed behind her, about to—
She gasped as the fear released her. “We have to help him.” She sent love and courage down the bond as fiercely as she could. “He can’t take much more of this.” She didn’t know how she knew that, but she was sure it was true.
“I think we have to,” Steve told Rabbi Sensei. “If he breaks and betrays our plan to ally with the Bleaters—”
“Yes.” Rabbi Sensei stared at the ship. “I’ll go in after him.”
Keiko released Beverly and swung to face him, fists clenched. “Not alone.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Beloved, we can’t risk more of our strong, trained talents than we have to. Already Adrian is most likely lost.”
“But you’re going to rescue him.” Beverly expected reassurance from Rabbi Sensei, but he only turned to look at her gravely. Her stomach grew cold as he held her gaze. “No. You’re not—”
“Better for him to die, and me with him, than to allow the Bleaters to be exposed,” he told her, his voice gentle.
Keiko put her hands on top of his, where he sti
ll gripped her shoulders. “There must be another way,” she said fiercely.
Steve drifted toward the ship. “If we could find his tether, where it leaves the ship and heads back to Earth—” He left the rest unsaid. “But the area we’d have to search is vast. And we can’t send someone back to Earth and his body—it would take too long.”
“No!” Beverly cried. “I won’t let you!” She grabbed Steve’s arm and dragged him back.
“Beverly,” Rabbi Sensei said with great kindness, “Adrian knew when he accepted this mission what it would require. He would thank us for helping him keep the secret.”
“I don’t care.” Beverly jutted her jaw out. “That was when he thought my life was in danger from the soul bond snapping. That’s not going to happen now.”
“But, dear, it may be too—” Keiko was interrupted by a sudden commotion from the direction of the ship.
A stern telepathic voice echoed in Beverly’s mind. Luller, Diseel, Oreel, Areel, Tesser, Daress, Besseel, Daller, you are bound by order of Commander Sarthex. Corrections will soon discover any alien spies among you. Ulleel, Tasseel, Surress, Desseel, Raller, Chelless, Miheel, Nareel, report immediately for extra duty.
“Miheel?” Beverly broke away from the others and darted toward the voice, remembering at the last moment to shift her astral form into a cloud of stars that appeared motionless against the background.
“Beverly, stop!” Rabbi Sensei cried, but she ignored him. Ahead of her, at the distance from the ship where they’d estimated the sphere of guards to be, a cluster of Seraphim appeared as they dropped their camouflage. One hung suspended motionless inside a ball of gray haze. Three larger ones surrounded him, glaring at their captive.
A streak of motion zoomed toward them from the ship, resolving as it halted into the shape of another small Seraph. “Chelless reporting for duty, sirs!” it gasped breathlessly.
One of the large Seraphim waved a lower fin at him. “You will finish the remainder of Besseel’s shift, then report to your assigned third shift position after you’re relieved. We’ll inform your superior so you won’t be reprimanded for tardiness.”