The Vanished Seas (Major Bhaajan series Book 3)

by Catherine Asaro

  “Not an answer,” Angel said.

  “The quarries only work,” Bessel said, “if you send the quasis map of what you want to transfer through Kyle space.”

  “Why only Kyle space?” Jak asked.

  “Because location there is determined by your thoughts,” Bessel said. “So the object isn’t moving through space. If you’re thinking about transferring the object between two different places, those places are on top of each other in Kyle space. Also, it lets you transmit the map with better accuracy and precision than with three-D printing.”

  “So how did Mara send it from her house?” I still wasn’t coming clear to me.

  Bessel had guilt written all over his face. Definitely not a poker player. “With a console in her bedroom. We placed the rock on the console and she used the Kyle mesh to contact the quarry.”

  “Is that why Mara’s room blew up?” I still wasn’t coming clear to me. “I thought you said this happened before the gala.”

  “It did. A copy of the rock appeared in the quarry here, like we’d hoped.” Bessel stopped, then said, “The copy immediately disintegrated into dust.”

  I tensed so much, the tendons in my neck felt like steel. “What about the original?”

  He spoke with difficulty. “Apparently the process eliminates the original, maybe so no duplicates exist. The original blew up, just a small explosion.”

  Jak looked ready to shoot someone. “In other words, both the copy and the original were destroyed.”

  “Yes.” Bessel ground out that one word.

  “So you tried it on a human being?” I asked. “Are you fucking insane?”

  “We didn’t!” Bessel said. “The box activated itself.”

  “Itself?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

  “No one set it up to do a transfer.” He took a ragged breath. “It happened several days later, with no warning. It tried to transfer Mara from her bedroom into a quarry box here.”

  “Not good,” Angel said.

  No shit. She was a genius at understatement.

  “Did it?” the lieutenant asked. “Transfer her, I mean.”

  “We found dust in the quarry, like with the rock,” Bessel said. “More this time, enough to account for a human being.”

  I stared at him. “Are you saying it tried to make a copy of Mara Quida, and that copy turned to dust? And then it blew up the original Mara in her mansion?”

  Bessel answered in a hollow voice. “Yes.”

  “Gods almighty,” the lieutenant said.

  “That couldn’t happen.” I didn’t want to believe any of this. “Why would the quarry try to transfer her? And what materials did it use to build the copy of her body? If none of you planned it, doesn’t that mean no one put any chemical or biological material into the quarry to use in making a copy of a human being?”

  “That’s right.” His hand shook as he pushed back his hair. “So the quarry pulled material from the cave wall behind the boxes. It constructed her body out of rock. It did the same to Chiaru Starchild. Both times, the copies disintegrated.”

  “And the originals?” I didn’t want to hear the answer, but I had to know.

  “Detective Talon found no trace of Mara or Chiaru in their houses,” Bessel said. “Just dust flung around the room. She wouldn’t have realized what it meant if she hadn’t seen what happened when we tried to send the rock. She analyzed the dust herself.” Grimly he said, “It was all that remained of them.”

  “She knew.” I was so angry I could barely speak. “Talon gods damned knew. And she’s setting up Lukas Quida for his wife’s death.” I felt as if I were going to explode. “These ships have been here for thousands of years. Didn’t it occur to you that they’re off limits for a reason?”

  “Of course it occurred to me!” Bessel said. “We were sure we were being careful.” His voice shook. “You act as if it’s fine for the military to hide this knowledge, to control all access to discoveries that could literally transform human existence. You call that moral?”

  I wanted to punch something, anything. “You all fucking sacrificed your morals and the lives of two people to further your power.”

  “Bhaaj.” Jak spoke quietly. “This isn’t the time.”

  I drew in a deep breath, trying to steady my pulse. “Why did it only transfer members of the High Mesh? The quarries have been here for thousands of years. Why not transfer other people?”

  “They weren’t active before,” Bessel said. “We activated one to study it. Daan did, actually, but he didn’t know why or how he managed it.”

  “Daan’s in danger, too.” I described the explosion in the tunnel. “Was a quarry active then?”

  “We were working on it,” Bessel said. “Without a Kyle operator, we couldn’t do anything. We were talking about how much we needed Daan’s help.”

  “You must have done something,” Jak said. “It wasn’t like the quarry randomly picked any Kyle operator. Why only your three?”

  “Feels moods,” Angel said.

  “All three were empaths, yes,” Bessel said. To me, he added, “So are you, apparently.” He sounded as if he still didn’t believe it.

  “Not the people,” Angel said. “Box feels moods.”

  Bessel squinted at her. “Did you say the box?”

  “She’s right,” I said. “The quarries know when an empath links to them.”

  “If that’s true,” Bessel told me, “and you’re a psion, it should have tried to transfer you.”

  I stared at him. My need to solve this had just abruptly turned very, very personal.

  “We have to destroy the damn boxes,” Jak said. “Now!”

  “No, wait!” Bessel said. “Even if we could get down there, destroying the boxes could boomerang on every Kyle who has ever used one.”

  “The box didn’t do anything to Major Bhaajan,” the lieutenant said. “Not even when she was using it.”

  “I don’t think it’s enough to be an empath,” I said. “Mara, Chiaru, Daan—something they did activated the quarry. Something I didn’t do.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Bessel said. “You were right here. Mara, Chiaru, and Daan were all too far away. They could only have interacted with the quarry by using the Kyle mesh.”

  “How?” the lieutenant asked. “That cave under the ship doesn’t have a mesh console.”

  “Maybe the quarry itself acts as a console,” I said.

  “It might,” Bessel said. “We don’t really understand how it works.”

  “Mara Quida had a console in her bedroom,” I said. “Starchild had one in her kitchen.”

  Max spoke for the first time since we’d started grilling Bessel. “Neither record of the Quida and Starchild disappearances show either of them using their console.”

  Bessel jerked as if someone had struck him. “Who the hell is that?”

  “He’s my EI,” I said. “Max, in both cases, no record exists for the few moments when they disappeared. That could happen if they and their surroundings went into quasis. It’s the same as you not having a record of what happened with Daan down in the tunnels.”

  “Daan Bialo didn’t have a console,” Jak said.

  “Tried to send wealth,” Angel said.

  We all turned to her. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Angel tapped her gauntlet. “Used this. On his arm. Send away his winnings.”

  It sounded like she meant he tried to transfer his winnings from his chip to some account. Probably he wanted to make sure that if anyone caught us, he had nothing incriminating on his person. The transfer itself could draw attention, but given how rarely he won, he might not have realized that. However, gauntlets didn’t normally include a Kyle console. It took more tech-mech than most people could carry on their wrist.

  “Normal gauntlet?” I asked Angel.

  She shook her head. “Big tech-mech. Like Hack uses.”

  I swore under my breath. Hack did have a minimal Kyle gate. And yah, I remembered
when I tried to sense Daan Bialo while Angel and I were taking him home. He’d been thinking some shit about copying his winnings. Ah, hell. The lunatic had wanted the quarry to copy the disk with his credits, to increase his wealth. He’d tried to employ some of the most sophisticated tech-mech in the known universe to counterfeit money. A gauntlet couldn’t carry much of a Kyle system, though. That could be why the quarry’s attempt to copy Daan instead of the disk hadn’t worked as well, letting us escape.

  “So you’re saying when Mara Quida, Chiaru Starchild, or Daan Bialo accessed Kyle space, it alerted the quarry?” the lieutenant asked. “Why only them?”

  Why indeed? I needed an answer before the quarry blew me up, too.

  “What means Kyle?” Angel asked.

  “Thought place.” My exhausted brain finally made the connection. “The quarry took Quida and Starchild, and tried to take Daan, because they were thinking about the quarries when they accessed Kyle space. Your thoughts determine your location there. That meant they were right next to the quarry. Apparently that activated some ancient, corrupted coding in the machine.”

  Jak swung around to me. “If that’s true, then any empath who’s been in contact with a quarry is at risk.”

  “He’s right,” Bessel told me. “You’re the only other psion thinking about it.”

  The lieutenant squinted at me. “Why didn’t it explode you, then?”

  “I wasn’t using a Kyle gateway,” I said. “You have to contact the box through Kyle space.”

  Jak came over to me. “Do you ever use a Kyle gateway?”

  “Never.” I spoke dryly. “I’d have no clue what to do.” Fortunately, the same was true for Angel and Ruzik.

  “The families of Mara Quida or Chiaru Starchild could be in danger too,” the lieutenant said. “Even if they aren’t thinking about the quarries, they were close to the people killed by them. That would put them close to the quarries in Kyle space.”

  “Only if they use a Kyle gateway,” Bessel said. “But no one else in Mara’s family is a psion. Same for Starchild.”

  Something tugged at my mind, something important—

  “You stay away from that Kyle crap,” Jak told me. “Don’t even think about it.”

  That was like saying don’t think about a pink ruzik. Of course then I couldn’t think about anything else—

  And then it hit home. “Not me. Lavinda Majda!”

  They all blinked at me.

  “You mean Colonel Majda?” the lieutenant asked. “You think she’s involved?”

  “We have to warn her!” I said. “Now!”

  “Why?” Bessel asked. “What does she have to do with this?”

  I gulped in a breath. “The palace is going to update their security mesh today. I’m supposed to help. They haven’t been using the Kyle gateways because someone broke into their mesh a few days ago.” Of all the results I might have expected from my cracking Majda security, I’d never have guessed it could end up protecting Lavinda by forcing them to turn off the system. “They’re bringing it back up this morning. Colonel Majda is in charge.”

  “I don’t see the problem,” Jak said.

  “She’s an empath!” I said. “A strong one. And an accomplished Kyle operator.”

  “The quarry shouldn’t affect her,” Bessel said. “It only happened when Mara and Chiaru were thinking about the project. Colonel Majda knows nothing about it or the people involved.”

  I couldn’t tell them Lavinda was grieving for her lover, Chiaru Starchild. “I talked to the Majdas yesterday, both Lavinda and the general. I told them everything I’d learned.”

  “General Majda?” The lieutenant squinted at me. “I thought she wasn’t on Raylicon.”

  “She arrived a few days ago. She’ll probably be present when Colonel Majda plugs into the Kyle. They’re having security problems at the palace. If Colonel Majda accesses Kyle space, she’ll be thinking about everything I told them.” And Chiaru. Especially Chiaru. “That damn quarry is active down in the cave. We have to turn it off!”

  “How?” Bessel said. “I sure as hell don’t know.”

  “Don’t you see? It will try to transfer Lavinda Majda—which means we’ll get another detonation, except this time it will be in the Majda palace.” Which meant the explosion would hit both Majda sisters, as well as their security staff. “Max, you have to contact the palace! Tell them not to use the Kyle gateway, none of them, especially not Colonel Majda.”

  “I can’t,” Max said. “My comm doesn’t work.”

  I looked around at everyone, desperate. “Do any of you have access to the mesh?”

  “I’ve lost all contact,” the lieutenant said.

  Bessel grimaced. “None of our comms work.”

  “How did you get here?” I asked.

  “We came in a flyer.”

  “Who is ‘we’?” Jak asked.

  Bessel turned to him. “Detective Talon, Daan Bialo, and Ti Callen.”

  “Ti-fucking-Callen?” I asked. “You mean the circus whatever? Why?”

  “I don’t know.” Bessel raked his hand through his hair. “Talon piloted the flyer. She let us out in the dunes and went on to land somewhere else, I’m not sure why.”

  “So you didn’t know where she landed,” Jak said. “She wanted an escape that didn’t implicate her if this all went bad. She’d strand the rest of you here to be caught or killed.”

  “No. She wouldn’t do that.” Bessel sounded as if he were reaching the limit of what he could handle. I even felt sorry for him. The House of Vibarr had taken miserable advantage of his brilliant mind and desire to better himself. He was the only Vibarr who would be implicated, though gods only knew how many innocent people would pay the price of their greed.

  “You think Talon already left?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” the lieutenant said. “I’d have heard her take off. A flyer landed while we were in the ship earlier, and I heard that even with bulkheads muting the sound.”

  “Do you know where she landed?” I asked.

  The lieutenant considered. “To the south, I’d wager.”

  “You can’t use the flyer,” Bessel said. “It will only recognize Talon’s activator.”

  “Then we find Talon and get her activator,” the lieutenant said.

  I rubbed my eyes, struggling to think. We had so little time. Majda would start the update in little more than an hour. Even if we could get back into the cave, we didn’t know how to deactivate the quarry. We had to warn the Majdas, which meant we had to find Talon. If she was trapped underground, she could either be in the cave or stuck in the exit passage, unable to open the hatch at its end. Over a kilometer separated those two locations. We didn’t have time to check both.

  “Angel.” I spoke in a rasp. “Ruzik. You feel his mood?”

  “Some.” Angel said. “He’s calm.”

  Calm. Good. “Where?”

  “Close, I think.”

  I turned to the lieutenant. “What are we closer to, the starships or that hatch in the desert?”

  “That’s easy.” She motioned to the east. “The ships.”

  “Then that’s where we go.”

  I hoped to the gods I’d just made the right choice.

  CHAPTER XXI

  LEGACY OF THE RUBY EMPIRE

  The third ship was still dark and the hatch to the lower deck wouldn’t open.

  Jak raised his coilgun, aiming at the hatch. “Everyone go outside.”

  “Gun not work,” Angel told him.

  Bessel spoke uneasily. “Look at the charge button. It’s lit.”

  I saw it too, the small blue light that indicated Jak’s coilgun was primed.

  “It has good shielding.” Jak aimed at the hatch.

  “No!” The lieutenant stepped forward. “If you shoot that thing in here, it could destroy a substantial portion of the ship. This deck would fall into the lower deck, which could collapse into the cave and probably kill anyone trapped there.”

  J
ak didn’t move, and I could tell how much he wanted to fire, not to open the hatch, but to blast this symbol of Cries authority. The anger didn’t go away now that we in the Undercity were improving relations with Cries; it only made it worse because it took the Imperialate discovering we had something they wanted for them to care at all.

  “Jak,” I said.

  “Go out of the ship,” he said.

  “Not going anywhere,” I told him.

  Angel met his hard gaze with her own. “You’ll kill Ruzik.”

  Bessel motioned at me. “She’s linked to the quarry. If you destroy it, that could send her into convulsions, give her a stroke, or just plain pulverize her brain.”

  “Gods-fucking-damn it.” Jak lowered the gun. “You all got a better idea?”

  The lieutenant turned to me. “Your gun worked in the desert. It would do far less damage.”

  I drew my revolver and fired. The bullet slammed into the center of the hatch with a boom that vibrated through the ship, shaking the deck.

  “Hey!” Bessel jumped back.

  The lieutenant checked the hatch. “It’s cracked. You got any shots left?”

  “Step away.” As soon as she moved away from the hatch, I pressed the stud—

  And nothing happened.

  “Great,” I muttered.

  “No more ammo?” Jak asked.

  “No, it still has shots.” I tried again, with no more success. “Dust.”

  The lieutenant went over and rammed her heavy boot heel into the hatch again and again, like a jackhammer. Her bio-hydraulics must still have been working, because her motions blurred with enhanced speed.

  The hatch broke in a great crack, the pieces falling to the deck below. The lieutenant jumped back, but when nothing else happened, she leaned over the opening. “Doesn’t look like anyone is down there.” She dropped to the lower deck. “It’s empty,” she called. “The ladders are gone, too.”

  No ladders. She needed me down there if we had to use the quarry for any reason, like getting into the tunnel. Morning was coming too fast; I couldn’t waste time waiting around until they decided if I should struggle my way down to the lower deck. I eased through the hatchway, dropped—and almost screamed when I landed. No pain, I told myself, gritting my teeth. You feel no pain. It was bullshit, but if I thought it enough, maybe I could make it true.