The Meridian Ascent (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 3)

by Richard Phillips

  Directing that blade downward, he found what he was searching for—a human brain that Jack Gregory believed he was protecting. With a mighty thrust, he impaled the woman whose death would shred The Ripper’s soul.

  One second Jack was looking past the sights of his pulse rifle, and the next a battering ram hammered the mind shield he had erected to protect Janet, dropping him to his knees. A glance across the hall revealed Janet’s body convulsing on the tilted floor.

  “No!”

  The word escaped his throat in a ragged gasp as he focused all of his psionic power into blocking the minds that tore at Janet’s. He knew immediately that the shield wasn’t going to be enough. Every muscle in his body knotted as fury clouded his vision. Khal Teth had formed a cursed Circle of Twelve.

  Jack reached outward, opening his mind to Moros and his Twice Bound, molding their combined psionic might into a white-hot spear that seared his brain as he thrust it outward toward one of the linked minds in the circle. It wasn’t Khal Teth’s, but that didn’t matter. He just needed to break the chain.

  Suddenly Jack felt the circle shift its attention from Janet to him. Good. He had their full attention.

  He focused on channeling more and more heat into his mental onslaught. But even as the circle’s defenses weakened, the fire in his head crept down his neck and into his spine, accompanied by a ripping sensation. His assault faltered, and once again he sensed the circle redirect its attack on Janet.

  Jack’s eyes returned to the place where she lay sprawled on the floor, her pulse rifle lying just beyond her outstretched right hand. Yielding to anger, he allowed his pain to slide across the event horizon of hate. The fire in his spinal column crystallized into an ice shard that he rammed home with an effort that sent sparks skittering across his vision.

  Then, as the mental vise evaporated, Jack felt his face smack the alien metal of the floor.

  The force of The Ripper’s mental blow staggered Khal Teth. He had required all his strength to protect himself from the attack that had killed High Councilor Serinas. He had felt her die, her mind shredded beyond its ability to power her heart. She now lay crumpled in a limp pile at Khal Teth’s feet. The other ten members of the circle were stupefied or unconscious, neutered by The Ripper.

  Someone called to Khal Teth as if from a great distance. He knew that voice, but his dazed mind failed to place the sound or to interpret its meaning. Then it came again.

  “Overlord, I need to get you to your aircar.”

  Khal Teth turned to see Zolat’s major gesturing wildly, one side of his face a bloody mess. Seeing his confusion, the major spoke with even more urgency.

  “The Khyre commander has used his Twice Bound powers to turn many of our soldiers to his side. General Zolat has sent me to get you out of the Parthian before we are overrun.”

  That sank in. Khal Teth nodded and followed the major back into the stairwell to make the long climb to the Parthian’s uppermost level.

  From the corner of her half-lidded right eye, Janet saw Jack collapse facedown on the floor. Fighting through a wave of vertigo that made her want to close her eyes, Janet climbed to her knees just in time to see one of her robots stumble and fall, a pulsed beam having turned its sensor array to slag. Her SRT headset gave her the bad news. This was the last one.

  As she struggled across the floor to pull Jack around the corner, she gave the robot one last command. The high-pitched whine that issued from its overloading power supply preceded a detonation that shook the floor and sent a fireball roiling down the hallway Janet had just exited. She blinked, watching the ends of her eyelashes fall away in flakes of ash.

  Janet risked a quick peek around the corner, letting her eyes follow her rifle sights to the devastation. Where the stairwell portal had once been was now a jumble of wrecked metal, some of which dripped glowing molten blobs. Nobody was going to be getting through that anytime soon.

  Behind her she heard a groan that ended in a coughing fit. She turned to see that Jack had rolled to a sitting position, his back against the wall. His grimace slowly changed to a grin as he looked up at her, his appearance battered and bruised.

  “Your eyes are bleeding,” she said.

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “Oh yeah? When?”

  “I’m having a little trouble remembering. I’m sure my nanites will make it all better.”

  Janet looked around. “My robots are done for. We probably need to get going.”

  Jack closed his eyes as his forehead furrowed in concentration. When he opened them, he struggled to his feet and bent over to pick up his pulse rifle.

  “Khal Teth is on the move. He’s headed for the top of the building.”

  “Do you think you can find us another way up there?” she asked. “I’d really like to put an Earth bullet in that son of a bitch.”

  Jack shook his head in an attempt to lift the fog that had settled there, then wished he hadn’t. Whatever his nanites were doing, they weren’t getting rid of the burning sensation in the back of his neck or head.

  “There’s a maintenance lift not far from here,” he said. “You up for a little rail climbing?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  They made their way rapidly through empty hallways, letting the muzzles of their weapons lead the way. An eerie silence filled the building that had previously resonated with the sounds of combat.

  Jack knew why. Without Khal Teth down on the lower levels lending his psionic protection to his Dhaldric fighters, their minds had been no match for the Twice Bound energy that Captain Moros wielded. But if Khal Teth escaped, all of today’s efforts would be for naught.

  “This way,” he said, ducking into an alcove where the oversized door to the maintenance turbo-lift barred their way.

  “Now what?” Janet asked.

  Jack reached out, his left hand passing through its nanoparticle surface as if it were only mist. Beside him, he heard Janet’s surprised gasp.

  “What the—”

  “The problem with nanoparticle doors is that they require power to solidify. That’s why most Altreian military facilities don’t use them. The Parthian is a government building. Follow me.”

  Leaning forward, Jack gripped the edge of the doorway with one hand and poked his head inside the shaft. Here, the darkness was almost complete, but to Jack’s eyes, its surfaces were painted with a mixture of greens and blues. He grabbed the nearest rail and began climbing. Two seconds later, Janet followed, her small tactical flashlight held in her teeth.

  Feeling the need for speed, Jack sprinted upward, allowing Janet to move at her own pace. As gifted a climber as she was, she lacked the neural enhancements that the Altreian commander’s headset had imparted to Jack. But at least he had managed to restore her mental shield.

  As his lungs worked like a bellows, he hoped his augmentations would be enough.

  Khal Teth stepped out onto the Parthian’s swooping outer walkway, startled by the spiderweb of cracks that spread across its transparent walls and curved ceiling. Altreia’s magenta orb appeared to be spouting branches of lightning into the orange lace of the Krell Nebula. The tilted floor made every step an oddity, as if this were an alien world rather than his own.

  His thoughts turned to that fateful night in Calcutta, India, when he had made the ultimate mistake, offering Jack Gregory an extended life in exchange for hosting Khal Teth’s mind. He had made the deal before with the most exciting people of Earth’s past . . . Alexander, Cleopatra, Caligula, Attila, Joan of Arc, and another Jack who once roamed the backstreets of Whitechapel. It was ironic that this might be the host who was destined to destroy the mightiest psionic mind in the history of this universe.

  Khal Teth’s growl turned the major’s head toward him. But the look in his eyes refocused his escort on the mission to get the overlord out of the Parthian to the safety offered by Dhaldric forces elsewhere on Quol.

  A deep rumble shook the Parthian as a distant portion of the building’
s arched superstructure, outer wall, and roof imploded. Despite being on the far side of the building, the shock wave that radiated around the outer hallway and reflected off the curved ceiling hurled Khal Teth into a wall and left him gasping on the floor. The dizziness tried to keep him down, but he struggled back to his feet. There, lying three paces away, lay Major Jelaran, his black eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. His head faced upward while his chest was pressed against the slanted floor. The major’s neck had been twisted unnaturally.

  What had just happened? Was the Parthian under attack from outside? Who would do so with the leaders of both Altreian factions still inside?

  Khal Teth’s mind cleared, and he reached out with his thoughts in the direction from which the blast had come. The lone survivor of the crash lay broken and dying, having been slung out through a gash in the starship’s hull. A mixture of pain, terror, and despair accompanied a vision of the Parthian as seen from within. Speared by the wreck of a once-graceful ship, the Parthian’s multihued teardrop dome had crumpled in upon itself, revealing an unfiltered view of Altreia’s magenta orb on the horizon. And against that backdrop, dozens of starships battled in the twilight sky.

  A sudden movement from Khal Teth’s left spun him just in time to see the muzzle of a pulse rifle lead The Ripper out of a connecting hallway. As the barrel swung toward Khal Teth, he focused all his will on the man behind those sights, preventing the trigger squeeze just as the weapon aligned itself with his head.

  A smile born of elation carved itself into Khal Teth’s face. “Yes, Jack. It’s your time to die.”

  Jack felt the viselike grip of Khal Teth’s mind freeze him in place. He reached out for Moros, trying to channel the mind energy of the Twice Bound, but all he felt was the fire that seared the base of his skull.

  Ever so slowly, as he stared into Khal Teth’s eyes, seeing the red glint that danced within those black orbs, he felt the rifle shift in his hands. The muscles in Jack’s arms corded, writhing beneath his skin as they fought against one another, but still the butt of the weapon dropped away from his shoulder while the muzzle moved off Khal Teth, inching toward Jack’s face.

  Shaking with effort, Jack tried and failed to prevent his right thumb from sliding down onto the trigger. As the tip of the weapon moved closer and closer to its new target, a memory filled Jack’s mind with such clarity that it pulled him back into an earlier self, making him see through eyes lost to madness.

  Jack moved forward along a rough stone wall in a shooter’s crouch, blinking hard to clear the film of dust that coated his eyes, trying to identify anything that moved in the inky blackness that stretched out before him.

  He took one silent step. Then another. Instead of a pulse rifle, he now held a flaming torch.

  Jack’s head swam in a roiling sea of disorientation. He spun, looking back for Janet. Only she wasn’t there. Just an empty torch-lit passage. As a fresh wave of fear released an adrenaline rush that robbed Jack’s limbs of strength, his mind struggled to cope with the new situation.

  What was happening to him?

  Just as he’d done once before, Jack had stepped across the boundary into crazy land, this trip worse than the last. This time it had happened when he could least afford to lose control. Jack squeezed his eyes closed and concentrated.

  Come on. Breathe deep. Focus.

  The sound of the stuttering torch, the feel of its heat against the skin of his face, pulled his eyes open. Back in the direction from which he came, the passage stretched away undamaged, the orange light of his torch sending shadows crawling along the uneven walls. Jack spun to face forward, his sudden movement making the flame sputter and hiss as it whipped through the still, musty air.

  With his heart hammering his rib cage, Jack resumed his forward motion. Inside his head, something whispered to him.

  Hurry . . . hurry . . . hurrrrry!

  Though he fought the urge that pulled him forward, Jack found himself walking faster and faster, feeling the time in his hourglass drain away with each step. Somewhere up ahead was the thing that had done this to him, a terrible thing to be destroyed.

  With a mental count ticking down in his head, Jack again felt the dimensional shift that placed him back in a past that wasn’t his. But this time he was ready. Rage could pull him back to the present, and right now, rage was in plentiful supply.

  Jack took another step forward, thinking about the woman he would no longer see or feel in his arms, focusing on the being who was trying to make Jack sacrifice both their lives. Red liquid rage consumed him. Around him, the tunnel beneath the Kalasasaya Temple shifted out of existence.

  The muzzle of the pulse rifle had frozen in place a half inch from Jack’s head. The dream-memory was gone, but the resulting fury remained. And as it had in the past, that pure fire burned away the clenching tendrils of Khal Teth’s control.

  Jack dropped the rifle and lunged forward, his right hand striking Khal Teth in the temple and sending him rolling across the floor, extracting a scream filled with pain and terror. Jack didn’t put all his strength into the blow. This thing didn’t deserve a quick death. Jack’s rage wouldn’t allow that. Khal Teth would learn what suffering was all about.

  General Zolat felt his mental connection to Major Jelaran die as the stairs collapsed beneath him. But Zolat grabbed a railing and did not fall, although the force of the blast sent pain shooting through the muscles in his arms. Pulling himself up, hand over hand, he crawled up onto the top-level landing and regained his feet. As he stepped through the mist of the powered-down nanoparticle door, he sensed Khal Teth’s elation change to confusion, terror, and pain. The Ripper was there, and he was killing Zolat’s one chance to restore the glory of the Altreian Empire.

  Zolat pulled his pistol and ran along the hallway that would take him to the place on the outer hub where Khal Teth fought for his life. No matter what psionic abilities The Ripper had acquired, he could not read the protected thoughts of a seeker. He could not sense Zolat’s intent. Not even Khal Teth could do that.

  Having reached the upper level, Janet selected a hallway at random and followed the sights of her Glock. She had dropped her pulse rifle down the shaft when the blast shuddered through the Parthian, but she didn’t miss the weapon. Right now, the grip of the familiar pistol gave her a touch of home.

  With no idea which direction Jack had gone, she just wanted to reach the curved outer walkway that he had described to her. It looped around the exterior of the Parthian, past the overlord’s chambers, and to the deck where the aircars for the members of the High Council were kept. That was where Jack would go.

  A distant scream echoed from a crossing hallway, and Janet turned into it, sprinting toward the sound. That hadn’t been Jack’s voice, but he could still be in trouble.

  Damn it! Why the hell didn’t you wait for me, Jack?

  Khal Teth tried to roll away, but The Ripper was on him with an otherworldly strength and quickness augmented by skills honed through a lifetime of personal combat. The overlord attempted to make use of the strength that The Ripper’s occupation of his body had imparted. In desperation, he lashed out with an elbow aimed at the side of Jack’s throat.

  Jack caught the hand and whipped his legs around into what Khal Teth’s horrified mind knew was an arm bar. The snap that followed pulled another scream from the Dhaldric’s throat. Giving the broken arm a savage twist, Jack rolled back to his feet and delivered a stomp to Khal Teth’s left ankle. Another snap. Another scream. Why couldn’t this demon just kill him?

  Jack reached down to grab Khal Teth’s good arm by the wrist, rolled him onto his back, and straddled his chest. Then the beating began in earnest. An Earth phrase flashed into Khal Teth’s delirious thoughts. Ground and pound.

  The first blow shattered his nose. The ones that followed puffed the tissue around his eyes and squeezed his vision into a red-limned straw. Then, as all Khal Teth’s strength to resist faded into the gathering darkness, Jack jammed his thumbs into t
he gill slits on both sides of the overlord’s throat and pulled.

  At the pinnacle of agony, Khal Teth saw a distant figure step into the hallway and raise a pulse pistol, sending a sudden ray of new hope through his brain. Perhaps it was the look on the overlord’s face that warned The Ripper, but he released Khal Teth and rolled away as the beam punched a smoking hole through Jack’s left shoulder.

  Janet rounded the bend in the outer hallway at a dead run, just in time to see an Altreian soldier shoot Jack as her husband spun off Khal Teth’s prostrate form. Without slowing her momentum, she pulled the Glock’s trigger twice in quick succession, both rounds aimed center-of-mass at the soldier’s back. Perhaps it was the boom of the Earth weapon or maybe the impact of one of the 9mm rounds that spun the soldier toward her. But as the pulsed weapon’s blast sizzled past her ear, her next bullet hit the Altreian between the eyes, spraying blood and brains out the back of his head and dropping him in a limp heap twenty feet in front of her.

  Without sparing him a second glance, Janet raced toward where Jack lay faceup beside Khal Teth. Sliding to a stop between them, Janet glanced down at Khal Teth’s battered face and twisted limbs, understanding the rage that had fueled the beating.

  Feeling the tendrils of the Altreian’s thoughts touch her mind, she fired two shots into Khal Teth’s head, holstered her Glock, and knelt at Jack’s side, trying to calm the beating of her heart.

  A wave of relief flooded over her as she saw that the laser pulse had missed Jack’s vital organs, punching and cauterizing a bloody hole just below his left collarbone, a hole that the nanites in his blood were already working to repair.

  “Ah,” he said, shifting his head to look past her to where Khal Teth lay in a swelling pool of blood. “That was stupid of me.”