by Elana Brooks
“But, sirs, what’s going on?” Chelless looked back and forth between them, eyes wide.
One of the large Seraphim dropped its voice. “The alien spy has named Besseel and several others as his accomplices.” It swung its snout to indicate other positions around the ship. Beverly looked where he indicated and caught glimpses of similar clusters of Seraphim scattered around the guard sphere. “We think he’s lying, but we’re not taking any chances.”
Another of the large Seraphim glowered at Chelless. “You’d better not let any aliens through on your watch, Ess-scum.”
“No, sir!” Chelless stiffened into what must be rigid attention, his body a precise S-curve, his fins spread wide.
The other Seraphim chuckled nastily and headed toward the ship, towing their captive in their midst.
Beverly let herself drift back, numb with indecision. Adrian really had been captured. Naming the other Seraphim must have been a ploy to divert attention from their real allies. Her impulsive side wanted to launch an immediate attack against the patch of stars she knew to be Chelless, blow the Seraph away before he knew what hit him, and storm onto the ship to demand Adrian’s release. But her more cautious nature hung back, searching for a better plan. It wouldn’t do Adrian any good for her to be captured and tortured beside him.
A flicker next to her drew her attention. Keiko’s voice whispered, “Steve was able to mark Miheel’s position. Solomon believes we should wait for the other Seraphim to withdraw into the ship, then approach him.”
A much better plan. If Adrian had succeeded in contacting Miheel, the Seraph might help them. If not, it would be easy to overpower him and stop him from sounding an alarm. Beverly backed slowly away from Chelless, keeping pace with Keiko’s patch of stars, meticulously adjusting her camouflage to keep herself unnoticed.
Once they were far enough away, they quickened their pace, arcing around the sphere of guards. They reached the point where Steve and Rabbi Sensei waited. After an intense whispered discussion, their plans were set.
Beverly approached Miheel’s patch of stars. None of the others had wanted her to take the lead, but she’d flatly insisted and refused to listen to their pleas. Eventually they’d been forced to agree. When she got close, she said quietly, “Miheel? Did Adrian get a chance to talk to you before he was captured?”
The patch of stars popped into the shape of a Seraph. “Who’s there?” he demanded, eyes searching the space around him and coming to rest on her.
She let her astral form resume her normal shape. “My name is Beverly.”
To her surprise she felt startled recognition from Miheel as he blinked at her. “You’re Adreen’s… more-than-friend. I saw you in his mind.”
“That’s right,” Beverly said past the lump in her throat. “He found you, then? Are you willing to help us?”
“I am.” Miheel straightened. “I will stand with my friends Gabeel and Adreen, with you and the rest of your people. What do you need me to do?”
“Thank you,” Beverly whispered. Louder, she said, “Can you let us pass, so we can sneak onto the ship?”
“Easily. Now and whenever you need me to. I stand guard on the third shift, although this isn’t my usual position. Here, let me show you.”
Beverly opened her mind to his. He shared with her his knowledge of the cycle of shifts and the point on the sphere that was his assigned post. Beverly absorbed it with mounting excitement. This would allow them free access to the colony ship whenever they needed it. Even if the Bleaters couldn’t help them in any other way, this was priceless.
She summoned the other three forward and introduced them. Miheel bowed to each in turn. “Those who are friends of Adreen I consider my friends also.”
“And you are a very great friend to us,” Rabbi Sensei told him. “Gabeel spoke wisely when he named you as one who would see the truth and act on it, as he did.”
Miheel ducked his snout momentarily beneath his tops fins. “I do only what I must, because it’s right.”
“As do we all,” Keiko said, inclining her head to him.
Steve turned a grim look on the ship. “Do you know where they’re holding Adrian?”
“He was in Corrections, but not long before I was ordered on duty I heard rumors that Commander Sarthex commanded him brought to the bridge for interrogation.” He telepathically showed them the location.
“It should be easy to get in there unseen,” Steve said thoughtfully.
“If you disguise yourselves well enough. Although everyone will be on heightened alert right now.” Miheel eyed them anxiously.
“Even if we’re caught, continue to do as you have,” Rabbi Sensei told him. “Stay quiet and follow your usual routine. Others might come to you to be let through. Beverly, let me see that information. I’ll pass it on to the rest of the Eight.” Beverly obediently opened her mind.
When she was done and Rabbi Sensei had sent a telepathic message on its way, they bid farewell to Miheel, changed their appearance back to stars, and slipped past him. Very carefully they approached the ship. When they were well past the guard sphere but still a good distance away from the ship, they shifted around so that they descended on it from above the peak of the cone.
Just before they reached it, another wave of pain hit Beverly. This time it started out mild but grew stronger and stronger, until even damping as hard as she could, she writhed and could barely hold her disguise. Even though her astral form was altered, she felt the pain in her body. Heat flickered at her toes, grew to a scorching blaze, climbed up her shins to her knees, engulfed her thighs. Just when she was sure she couldn’t bear any more without screaming, it stopped.
She could feel the others’ concern, but she sent them reassurance. Her trembling voice betrayed her weakness, though she tried to keep it steady. “As long as Adrian can bear it, I can.”
Rabbi Sensei’s voice murmured, “I wonder…” More briskly, he said, “I have an idea, but I need to observe what they’re doing to Adrian directly, first.”
“Quick, then, before they start up on him again,” she said, ignoring her fear. She wasn’t sure if it was more for Adrian’s pain, or for hers. She didn’t want either of them to suffer any more. She hurried toward the ship.
The blunt peak of the cone was pierced by several broad transparent viewports. Avoiding them, Beverly flattened herself to the hull and slipped inside it. The outer skin of the ship was several inches thick, not quite enough to let her hide completely within. Following the directions Rabbi Sensei had given her for this contingency, she made her outer surface match the color and texture of the hull, then very slowly and carefully let a tiny sliver of astral substance, as transparent as she could make it, slip through into the space of the bridge. As the others settled around her and did the same, she focused all her vision and hearing in that tiny portion of herself.
Adrian hung suspended in a sphere of gray mist. She fought to control her reaction. His astral body was intact, in his normal human shape, apparently unharmed, although that meant little given the ability of astral forms to regenerate. But his eyes looked so tired. Battered, as if he’d been through miles of hell and saw only more of the same ahead.
A giant black-and-copper Seraph swam slow circles around him. Beverly quailed from his menace. It was him. Commander Sarthex. Her own personal nightmare. A desperate need to flee overwhelmed her. She couldn’t let him become aware of her presence. If he ever turned his arrogant, withering, contemptuous attention on her again, surely she’d dissolve into weeping, incoherent nothingness.
For now, though, all his attention was fixed on Adrian. “Have you nothing to say?” he growled. “Next time I won’t stop. You’ll watch her burn until her body is a charred and blackened carcass, begging for the mercy of death. But it will never come. I can keep her alive in your mind while she undergoes a thousand worse fates.”
Adrian struggled to raise his head against the paralyzing field, his face twisting into a sneer. “None of it is real,”
he forced out. “You can hurt me, but you can’t hurt her.” He licked his lips. “I won’t break. And if I survive long enough, eventually my friends will come to rescue me. You can’t afford to let that happen. I’ve learned far too much about your ship, about its weaknesses, about your methods. If I carry word back to Earth, next time we’ll be much better prepared.” He gave the Seraph a good approximation of a haughty glower. “They might be on their way right now. You’d better kill me before they get here.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Sarthex waved a lazy fin at him. “Don’t worry. We have all the time we need. What will you offer this time, I wonder, when you finally can’t bear it any more? Another clever lie, or the truth? It’s not just her I can show you, you know. You care for the others who were here as well, don’t you?” He swam closer, fixing Adrian with an unblinking stare. “Should I show you them burning, too? Or should they be the ones applying the flames?”
Adrian swallowed, his eyes flickering away. Sarthex drew back his lips from his pointed teeth. “Yes, that will do nicely.”
Beverly jumped as something brushed the portion of her astral form that remained outside the ship. She jerked her attention there.
Rabbi Sensei’s voice whispered to her from where she could barely perceive his astral form, so perfectly disguised it seemed no more than a shadow. “I understand now what Sarthex is doing. You’ve been dampening the pain that comes to you from Adrian, yes? So it won’t resonate back to him through your soul bond. This time, don’t.”
She stared at him. “But it will be like that time before I learned to dampen the resonance. We’ll both—” Understanding dawned.
“Pass out. Yes. I’ll keep you safe. Commander Sarthex’s tortures affect Adrian’s mind, not his body. They can’t touch him if he’s unconscious.”
Oh, god. Of course. Beverly welcomed the pain that bloomed in her chest, the burning in her feet. She let go of the tight clamp she’d been holding on the soul bond, keeping Adrian’s misery from bouncing back at him. Instead, she gave it an extra shove. Faster than she could perceive it was back, magnified, but she fought the urge to shrink from it. It echoed through her body and mind and back down the bond again.
After that she couldn’t have controlled it she’d tried. Flames consumed her mind and body in a screaming explosion of pain. Everything went black.
Chapter 32
Reality slowly swam back into focus. For a single blessed instant Adrian wondered if it had all been a particularly gruesome nightmare, and now he was waking up. But Sarthex’s glaring yellow eyes met his gaze as he blinked the darkness away, destroying the fleeting hope.
“Don’t worry,” the Seraph hissed at him. “I now know the level of intensity that’s too great for your puny mind to handle. All I need do is keep the visions just below that level. You won’t escape me that way again.”
What had happened? He’d been steeling himself to face yet another horrific vision, when all of a sudden the pain had turned physical, soared to an unbearable peak, and he’d fainted.
At least he’d gained a moment of respite. This vision hadn’t even progressed as far as the last one; Beverly’s toes had just begun to blister in the flame of the torch held by a leering Rabbi Sensei.
Maybe his heart was going numb, or maybe Sarthex had pushed his visions so far into the realm of the ridiculous it was easier to disbelieve them. But he thought he could endure them for a while yet. As long as he remembered that Beverly and the others weren’t really touched by any of it.
Sarthex wagged his head. “A notch less intense, then. But closer to the heart of what you fear.”
Beverly and Steve, standing close, gazing into each other’s eyes. Beverly smiled and raised a hand to caress Steve’s cheek. Steve reached to cup Beverly’s breasts. She gave a little moan of pleasure and pressed close to him. He bent to kiss her, hands unbuttoning her shirt, her jeans—
An undefinable time later, Adrian struggled back to consciousness. Thank god he’d been spared enduring any more of that. Although why it should make him pass out, when the earlier scene of Beverly about to be raped hadn’t, he couldn’t understand. His own pain at seeing her with another man had been acute, but at least she’d been unhurt. Was he so selfish, after all, that he could more easily bear to see her suffering than happily betraying him?
Sarthex lashed his tail. A wave of his vexation swept over Adrian. “How are you doing that?” Despite his aggravation, he seemed almost pleased at the challenge. He circled Adrian, eyeing him calculatingly. “Just because you’ve come up with a clever defense, don’t think you’ll be able to keep it up for long. I’ll soon discover a way around it, and then you’ll wish you’d had the courage to face my mild little games. You should have saved your cowardly retreat for when I decide to get serious.”
How was he doing it? Certainly not on purpose. Adrian closed his eyes and tried to figure it out. Was his subconscious mind able to shut down his brain somehow? A variety of self-hypnotism? But it didn’t feel like that. It felt more like that time Beverly’s anger had swept down the soul bond and hit him unaware, the feedback loop making it soar out of control before he could dampen it…
Oh, god. Had he failed to contain his pain enough and let it slip down the soul bond to Beverly? The thought chilled him. He mustn’t let her get involved in this. She was safely out of the conflict, or would be once he was dead. Commander Sarthex was even more ruthless and terrible than their first encounter with him had suggested. If that had freaked her out so badly, he couldn’t imagine how she’d react to facing his full power. She’d fall apart.
He couldn’t keep letting what he felt seep into the soul bond and reach her. If she realized what was happening, she might get some crazy notion that it was her responsibility to come charging in to rescue him. He couldn’t let that happen. Even if he could salvage nothing else from the mess he’d made of this mission, he had to keep her safe.
Damn it, why wouldn’t Sarthex just kill him and get it over with?
Sarthex called over several of the Order Police and conferred with them. Under his supervision they made adjustments to the containment field. Adrian listened to everything they said, engraving the jargon-filled discussion in his memory. It was nothing but technobabble to him, but he hoped that if by some miracle he survived to carry word back to the Covenant, it might provide clues as to how such fields were generated and maintained. What he wouldn’t give to trap Sarthex inside such a field!
Finally Sarthex was satisfied. He moved to face Adrian again, smirking. “That should solve the problem. Now, let’s see what you make of this.”
Beverly’s body sprawled naked, pale and smeared with blood, staring blankly at the sky. As his viewpoint drew ruthlessly closer, maggots squirmed in her eyes, consuming them. White wriggling worms spilled from her nose and ears and mouth. Streaks of putrid green crawled down her limbs. The sickly-sweet stench of decay filled his nose and mouth. Her belly bloated, swelled, obscenely large, about to burst—
The darkness lasted longer this time. Or at least that’s what it felt like as he groggily revived. Was there no end to his foe’s inventiveness? He was almost impressed. Whatever nightmare Sarthex came up with next, he was sure it wouldn’t be boring. The Seraph should go to Hollywood and get rich making horror movies. They’d be better than most of the dreck that got produced these days…
He was losing it. Adrian struggled to get control of his thoughts. The constraining field wouldn’t let him shake his head, or even blink, but he could still control his breathing. Inhale slowly and deeply, a three-stage yoga breath, filling first his belly, then his chest, then his throat, as much air as they would hold. Exhale in reverse order, sighing like a deflating balloon, pushing out the last dregs of stale air with his diaphragm. Hold for a moment, repeat…
As his thoughts stilled, he realized something. It must be Beverly. Somewhere nearby, because there was no lightspeed lag. His agony must be escaping his control, seeping down the soul bond, and aff
ecting her. And for some reason she wasn’t damping either, or not well enough. The soul bond’s resonance amplified their shared pain until it exploded beyond what any mind could endure. Every time he passed out, she must, too.
Oh, god. Was she doing it on purpose? Had she realized, somehow, what was happening, and found this way to help him?
It was helping. As long as she kept it up, it could be his salvation. But the thought of what it was costing her was almost as bad as anything Sarthex could throw at him.
Beverly? His attempt at telepathy rang muffled in his mind, like words spoken into a pillow. The containment field wouldn’t let it out. But the soul bond seemed immune to the field’s effects. The Seraphim didn’t form soul bonds. They wouldn’t know how to block it.
Tightly leashed fury radiated from Sarthex. A Seraph almost as big as he was had arrived on the bridge while Adrian was unconscious. They conferred, clipped angry bursts from Sarthex, soothing conciliation from the other. The strange Seraph minutely examined the containment field, prodding its gray mist into swirls.
Eventually he turned back to Sarthex. “The field is functioning perfectly, Commander. The alien’s astral form should be incapable of producing anything but speech.”
“Well it’s obviously doing something else,” Sarthex growled. “Get out of my sight.” He made a dismissive gesture, although with his second set of fins, Adrian noticed, instead of with his lowest fins as he’d done to all the other Seraphim.
The large Seraph made a respectful gesture, but didn’t veil his face. Another Ex-caste, then. So Sarthex wasn’t the only one on the ship. It made sense—surely every Ex-caste had claimed a berth on the evacuation ship.
But clearly Sarthex was the undisputed ruler, even over those his equal in caste. Did the other Ex-castes tolerate his dictatorship willingly, or were there grumbles against his rule? Miheel and Rafeel would know how the Ex-castes determined which among them would dominate the others. Adrian would wager it involved some sort of combat. Maybe they could find a way to aggravate any dissatisfaction with Sarthex’s rule and provoke a mutiny. Whoever replaced him might be more reasonable, or at least weaker. They couldn’t possibly be worse.