Terminus Shift (Targon Tales - Sethran Book 2)

by Chris Reher

  He nodded, thinking how much easier it would be to sneak Ciela out of this place and head for Delphi. But Pacoby’s willingness to sacrifice utterly unaware bystanders had galled him for years. The man was not just on Air Command’s list of Most Wanted, but also on the one Seth kept very close to his heart. That aside, he wasn’t sure Ciela would be in any way agreeable to jump to Delphi at this point. “Trouble is, Magra is two weeks out.”

  Ciela glanced at Ruthala. “No, it isn’t.”

  Seth turned his head very slowly, not sure he had heard her words correctly. “What?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Ruthala interjected. “We can’t have you go there, Ciela. What are you thinking? You’re all we have left.”

  “I don’t care!” Ciela said. “I had to leave them behind and it’s killing me. We now have the chance to find out where they are. If we can stop this from happening we have to try. We are going to Magra, and that’s it.”

  “I’m sure Ter Dace will have something to—”

  “Ter Dace is your boss, not mine. Last time I checked, Velen Phar was in charge of my crew. So Ter Dace can go and ask him where I’m working these days.”

  Seth grinned and reached for his discarded shirt. “So are you going to call up a shuttle or make us walk down the hill, Ruthala?”

  The woman looked from one to the other, clearly at a loss.

  “You can come with us,” Ciela said.

  After some consideration, Ruthala shook her head and went to the door. “Sebasta’s people know me and what I stand for. It’ll give the whole thing away if anyone saw me. My father can get you recommended for Pacoby’s group. This is on your head, Ciela. I hope your boyfriend knows what he’s doing.”

  Seth gave her a benign grin. “I have the feeling it’s Ciela who knows what she’s doing.”

  Chapter Nine

  Four high-ranking Intelligence officers already faced the conference screen when Colonel Tal Carras arrived at the administrative wing of Air Command’s main base on Targon. General Tanvin Dmitra was among them, as was Daphine Verick. The other two were specialists in matters dealing with rebel politics rather than military operations.

  Carras saluted the general and took a chair beside Major Verick, a question on his face. She leaned forward to activate the conference displays. “Thanks for coming so quickly. It’s not often that Delphi decides to just drop in on us.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “We’re about to find out,” General Dmitra said. Something in his densely tattooed, bronze-colored face called for caution among those seated here. Whatever the matter was, it had come unexpected and unwelcome. He nudged a recording onto the screen. “This is what we got earlier.”

  Carras nodded when he recognized Captain Anders Devaughn, a Human ambassador living and working on Delphi.

  “General,” the blond, fresh-faced officer began. A scientist by training and inclination, his rank was largely a formality. Having been raised on Delphi, the man was one of the few non-Delphians whom they did not consider an outsider and uninvited. He usually carried a pleasant grin and an arsenal of quips and jokes in direct contrast to the reserved natives with whom he worked. Perhaps it was because of his guileless, straightforward ways that even the Clan Council of Delphi counted him as one of their own. Today, however, there was no smile on the sun-bronzed face and the tapestried wall behind him suggested that the recording was made in the council hall itself. “The Council wishes to meet at once and decided not to travel to Targon. Please prepare to receive a coded transmission. It is meant for Colonel Carras’ team.”

  The recording ended without farewell.

  Carras drummed his thick fingers on the table top. “I don’t recall ever receiving a conference from Delphi.”

  The major nodded. “They do prefer to deal with us in person.” She smiled. “Even if that means coming onto the base on Delphi.”

  “Captain Devaughn seems unusually reserved. Do we know what’s got him rattled?”

  “No hint at all.”

  “What projects do we have that involve Delphi?” the general said.

  Carras pursed his lips. “None. That sub-sector is secure and silent.”

  A flicker across the screen announced a new recording received and decoded. Only about ten hours of real-space travel and a single jumpsite separated Targon from Delphi, but communication still required transmitting a message packet to the jumpsite where relays picked it up to send it through to the receiving side. Any two-way conversation made for a tedious and expensive exchange.

  The officers looked up to see three Delphians facing a camera on their side, their expressions as non-committal as always. Anders Devaughn hovered in the background.

  General Dmitra and the colonel exchanged a surprised glance. “Lord Phera,” Carras breathed. “What the hell is going on over there?”

  The elder sat with his hands folded around the conference control pad, apparently in no hurry to begin whatever he was prepared to say here. He served as the head of Delphi’s most prominent clan and his leadership, although unofficial, was uncontested. Like the man on his left, his dark blue hair was braided and pulled back from his gaunt face. The deep color suggested an age rumored to be approaching two hundred. The woman on his right, younger, bore softer features and short blue curls. All three were garbed in the official robes of the Council, making this official business, indeed.

  “He’s not often seen by offworlders,” Verick said. “In person or otherwise.”

  They noticed Anders Devaughn, behind them, lift a finger as if asking the observers for patience. No doubt the Delphians were still conferring among themselves although they rarely did so in the presence of those who were not part of their mental link. The slight breach of manners added to the peculiar atmosphere of this meeting.

  “There are others in the room,” one of the specialist working on analyzing the message said, measuring sound, light and the shift of Anders’ eyes.

  “General,” Phera finally spoke. Verick turned off the translator when they realized that the elder used thickly-accented Union mainvoice rather than his native Delphian, perhaps to avoid any misunderstanding created by mechanical translators. His thin lips barely moved but the eyes under the profuse brows darkened, betraying a strong emotion that his face did not. “We have come to some information and must ask you to act upon it immediately.”

  “Here we go,” Carras murmured.

  “We have evidence that several of our people are living among your Arawaj rebels, possibly held against their will, almost certainly the children of expedition members that set out from Delphi long ago and did not return.”

  “What what?” Verick said. “They turned up?” Her aide immediately accessed the database to start searching.

  “What evidence?” Carras said, leaning forward.

  “A recent message sent to one of our people working on Magra is very conclusive,” Phera continued as if he had heard the colonel’s question. He slid a few symbols around on the pad in his blue-nailed fingers and his image was replaced by another recording. This one was of a couple sitting in some sort of cockpit or control room. Carras grunted when he recognized Sethran Kada. The woman beside the agent at first glance also appeared Centauri. They listened, astounded, as Seth’s message played for them, hearing his suggestion that she was Delphian, trained as a navigator, and that others like her were about to be sold to the Shri-Lan. Most damningly, Air Command was mentioned in the recording.

  The Delphian elder reappeared on the screen. “Your people seem to be aware of the situation. We have identified the woman by the DNA sent along with that message. She was part of the expedition—” the recording stopped abruptly when General Dmitra waved his hand over the sensor.

  The others turned to him, startled.

  “Colonel,” he said. “I’ve been following your investigation into the rebel activity on Taancerum. You suspect some spanners are changing hands as part of a significant deal between the factions. Is Lord Phera abou
t to inform us that those spanners are, in fact, Delphian?”

  Carras looked back up at the screen where Phera’s cold countenance was frozen in mid-sentence. “We have no intelligence about them being Delphian. We weren’t sure that this was even happening. All we have is hearsay.” He cleared his throat. “It is not impossible.”

  “The Centauri on that recording seems to think it is. Phera would not contact us with this if he wasn’t damn sure those are his people.”

  “Timeline checks out,” the Intelligence officer said, his eyes still on his work. “Those kids that disappeared would be roughly the age of that woman now.”

  Dmitra jerked his chin to the screen. “That was Kada, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where is he now? Where is that woman?”

  “We… er, we have lost contact for now. It is of course not unusual for the operatives to stay silent.”

  Dmitra’s face seemed lost in a cloud of smoldering rage when he resumed the recording.

  “—that set out from Delphi for the Badlands forty-five years ago. They never returned. We have always understood the possibility that they were taken by your enemies and that seems to have been the case all along. It gives us hope that they may return to us some day.”

  The woman beside the elder leaned forward. “As you know, our children are mentored and taught through ancient mental disciplines to nurture their innate intellect. This message offers no news about the adults that were part of this mission but we are of course anxious to ensure that the children receive the care they undoubtedly need most urgently by now.”

  “Never seen an anxious Delphian,” one of the agents mumbled and received an icy glance from Verick.

  Phera placed his hands flat on the table in front of him, a Delphian gesture meaning that negotiations are complete. Perhaps he had done so without realizing it. “To see our people used in this despicable fashion is unacceptable to us. General, given the harmonious relationship between our people, I will assume that you simply meant to verify all details before informing the Council of this discovery. The families of these individuals are most anxious to see them returned to us without delay. I have assured them that you will of course leave no option unexplored to retrieve these captives.” He paused a moment, perhaps in silent conversation with the others.

  “Get ready,” Verick murmured.

  “We’ll remain here until we receive your reply, General. I will remind you that your enemies are not ours. The harm that befalls us because of your wars is not of our making and yet we continue to offer our skills to your service. We trust that our losses will not keep Delphians from leaving our homeworld in the future.”

  Dmitra hissed and leaned back in his chair when the recording ended. Although never directly voiced, Delphi’s single trump continued to be the simple fact that their people made it possible for the Commonwealth to keep its enormous fleet moving. Without potential spanners carefully recruited and taken off planet for training, the Union would have to rely on lesser talents to navigate the keyholes. Creating a new jumpsite from one of them could take years. Although most of the Clan Council despaired at seeing so many leave to find adventure away from Delphi, it was not in their mindset to forbid it. But they had learned from others and everyone knew that, should Council ask it of the people, the exodus of talented minds would end.

  “Sir, I assure you—” Major Verick began.

  The general held up his hand to silence her and looked to her specialist instead. “Write me up a reply to send back. Of course we’re trying to extract them and thank you for their message and then add something polite.” He turned to Carras and Verick. “What do we have.”

  “A problem,” Carras said. “We’re largely viewing the situation from a distance. Taancerum is off limits to us. We can’t even get a satellite in orbit without it being taken down. We have agents on the ground, but no forces. Our influence in the matter is managed by infiltration.”

  “How.”

  “We’re counting on the ongoing infighting within the Arawaj faction. The opposition to any cooperation with Shri-Lan is considerable. It’s of course in everyone’s best interest if the two groups remain separate and at odds. But they’ve seen successes when they do collaborate. The Arawaj are fearless and have some good thinkers among them. Shri-Lan have the capital. Our best option is to disrupt any formal merger.”

  “You’re counting on the Arawaj core group to do that for you. Sabotage.”

  “Yes. We’ve given them, through our agents, the location of the meeting. A sabotage attempt there would mean minimal collateral damage but deliver their message. Shri-Lan look for easy prey and quick victories. They don’t have the appetite for seeing the remaining Arawaj turn against them.”

  “Very tidy,” Dmitra said. “Except for this.” He gestured at the blank screen before them. “Now we have not just our agents in there, we also have civilians that we don’t particularly want to see thrown off a cliff when this goes down.” The general rose from his chair. “Figure it out, Carras. Send backup if you have to. Get those Delphians off Taancerum.”

  Major Verick waited until the general moved away to join the technician at the camera to record his response for Delphi’s council before leaning close to Colonel Carras. “That’s your boy in action, Tal,” she said under her breath.

  “You caught that, eh?”

  “Kada didn’t inform us who the spanners are. He told Delphi. He knew it’d light a fire under our backsides if Air Command gets mentioned in that message to Delphi, didn’t he?”

  Carras sighed, once again reminded that Major Verick’s ability to keep Kada’s quirks to herself was another reason he valued her so highly. “He’s not about to let us have the woman, or anyone else we might be able to recover.”

  “Well,” she said. “At least he’s on his way to Delphi with one of them. It may keep Council at bay for a while.”

  Chapter Ten

  The reddish ball that was Tadonna slid slowly from the Dutchman’s uncaring view to be replaced by millions of points of unblinking lights, a few of them explored, others never to be reached. Ciela stared up at the unremarkable display until Seth reached over from his pilot’s couch to poke her arm. She flinched.

  “So talk.”

  She rose from her bench to go back into the main cabin. They had expected resistance from Ruthala and her people but other than more grumbling from the rebel, no one tried to stop them from returning to the freshly-decontaminated Dutchman and launching immediately toward the keyhole.

  Seth followed her and leaned against the entrance to the cockpit to watch her move about the cabin, picking up discarded clothing and other items he hadn’t organized yet and likely never would, and piling them where they probably didn’t belong, either. She stopped this after a while when he simply stood his ground. “We’ve been up for twenty hours. I need to sleep if I’m going to jump.”

  “We’ve got hours till we get to that keyhole.”

  She sat on the edge of his sleeping bunk with an audible exhalation of air. He came to sit on the bucket chair fused the floor beside it. “Let’s have it.”

  “It’s a secret.”

  “Sounds to me like it was a secret.”

  “I mean, outsiders aren’t supposed to know. Um…”

  “I am not an outsider. I’m no one at all. I’m a sometime mercenary and I pick jobs that suit me. Sometimes I get paid, sometimes I get locked up. If that makes me a rebel, I’m a rebel. If that helps the Commonwealth, then so be it. I don’t agree with either side on what is basically a pretty stupid conflict.”

  “Stupid? Is it stupid to fight for our freedom?”

  “Freedom from what? Trade agreements? Exploration? New technologies for people who’d never even dreamed of leaving their solar system?”

  “From exploitation. Those people should be left to figure things out for themselves.”

  “And you decide that?” Seth returned, amazed to find himself drawn into this argument
yet again. Since when had he ever cared what these fanatics thought? Precisely since Tayako, wasn’t it? Why did this girl refuse to stay in that mental space where he categorized rebels by affiliation and temperament? She had him teetering from absolute suspicion of every word she said to handing her a gun to fight at his side. Had he lost all judgment of the situation? She was an enemy specialist who had to be removed from the field like any other, be that through capture or elimination. And right now she was a not-so reluctant captive who might just be the key to finally hunting down Pacoby and his gang of radicals. Nothing more, he told himself. “It’s not the Commonwealth that makes First Contact, in case you don’t know. That happens long before they’re even interested. You’re looking in the wrong place to put your blame.”

  He got up to put some space between himself and this pointless debate. “Let’s not do this,” he said from the galley, prodding the tea press more firmly than he had to. “I should not call this stupid. Your ideals are not wrong. The results of all this are stupid. People dying is stupid. Now your own people are burning villages to make some point and that is stupid, too. I think we can agree on that.”

  She looked down at her hands. “Yes.”

  He returned to hand her a cup of warm berry juice, pleased when she smiled at him to let him know he remembered correctly. “Let’s start over,” he said, sitting down. “If we’re going to try to help your friends, you have to trust me a little. So if you can get to Magra faster than every single chart ever made says you can, you’ve got my attention.”

  She sipped and thought a moment. “All right. I guess I—”

  He leaned forward and put his hand on her knee to squeeze it gently. “No games now, Ciela. No more trickery, no lies. Let’s pretend we’re on the same side because if Pacoby decides to stop this deal he will find a way to make it spectacular. Taking out the Brothers is about as spectacular as it gets and he won’t give a damn who gets in the way. So you and I pretty much have the same goal here. Agreed?”

  Her eyes met his without wavering and he suddenly felt that it might be possible to simply fall into those dark pools, perhaps to drown. His breath stopped when her teeth caught a trembling lower lip as if to stop some unspoken words. “You’re right,” she said then, startling him out of his trance. “You’ve been right all along. And honest with me. I owe you nothing less.”