Broken Vision

by J. A. Clarke

  And let them reflect on that, she thought in silent glee, as she cleared them through security. In this game, anything was fair to throw off their concentration, and she hadn't told a lie. She had merely delivered a confusing statement.

  They were on her heels as she trotted down the hallway. For a nanonan there, the affable Drakal had become the hardened Mariltar warrior, highly skilled and trained in multiple disciplines, and she questioned if her plan was sound enough.

  It had to be.

  Besides, she was counting heavily on the nature of the young human male.

  She led them to the highly secure coding lab. As the heavy door slid open, utter shock rooted her feet to the floor. The lab looked like a wilding wind had roared through it. Empty bottles and food containers littered every surface in a place where food had long been banned after someone had spilled sticky, liquid mascle over a secondary console and fried several cycle's worth of work.

  An article of clothing decorated one of the wide screens. More clothing puddled on the floor together with three boots, one enormous, the other smaller two a matched pair. The small room reeked of a sickly combination of sweat and Merlon sweetbine.

  In the middle of it all, Makiee, Shal-el and Bortock sat enjoying an early morning picnic, bare feet propped up on the central console.

  "Maegan!" Makiee's feet thudded to the floor. He dropped the layered flatbread he held out of sight and turned a wide, innocent gaze to her. "We weren't expecting you."

  "Obviously," she said dryly. "Hope you can recover that. I would hate for it to go to waste, especially as it looks like you've been here all night."

  "Had a coding problem." Bortock, unfazed at being caught in several violations, took another bite of slak fruit. "Just got it solved. We were celebrating before crashing. Have some?" He waved a bottle of red ale at her.

  Makiee made a strangled sound. A startled expression crossed the Merlon's face and the bottle disappeared.

  Shal-el, who appeared to have been dozing, suddenly woke up, caught sight of the group at the door and slapped Bortock's shoulder, almost knocking him off his chair. "Look who's here," he slurred. "Our Mariltar friends. Now we can really par..." His eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped in his chair.

  Maegan felt like rolling her own eyes. She folded her arms instead. "Nimon here?"

  "Down the hall." Makiee's gaze darted away.

  The fastidious Soron, while a loyal team player, wouldn't have tolerated a less than pristine working environment. Makiee undoubtedly had shuttled back and forth between two rooms for most of the night.

  "If you're finished here," Maegan said, "I need you and Nimon for just a little while. Perhaps Bortock and Shal-el can take charge of clean up before they go home?"

  "Consider it done," Bortock shouted. He nudged Shal-el's shoulder with his bare foot. "You're in charge."

  Shal-el responded with a drawn-out groan and the red ale bottle reappeared in Bortock's hand. Maegan had a feeling the regular lab crew, due at any time, was going to be in for a nasty surprise.

  She nodded at Makiee, who had one boot on. "Meet me in the test lab as soon as you can."

  "The test lab?" His head whipped up from his surreptitious search for, presumably, the other boot. He glanced at the two men at the door, then back at her, a question on his face. They never allowed outsiders into the test lab. Never.

  She was about to break a cardinal rule, but it was the only thing she could think of.

  She ignored his silent query. "I want to look over the nav package again," she said with complete truth. "Bring Nimon. Tell her I'd consider it a favor."

  If Makiee was even more confused, he managed to hide it to his credit. He simply nodded and resumed his search. The young Bogasill was learning.

  She led Corenna and Drakal out of the lab and down the still deserted hall to a double set of doors at the very end.

  "Whatever you're up to, Maegan," Drakal said over her shoulder, "it won't work. Not this time."

  "Don't you feel even a little bit guilty about involving poor Makiee in your plots?" Corenna added.

  "Makiee was only surprised because we never let anyone not from Janas into the test lab. It's a highly restricted area."

  "Aah! And we're being honored because...?"

  "I want to look at our nav package and I know better than to ask you to stay outside. You probably have this really odd notion we have secret tunnels leading out of every room in this place."

  Drakal snorted and muttered something.

  Maegan grinned to herself. "This is a true privilege, gentlemen." She paused at the doors and ran her hand over the scanner. "The disadvantage is we will wipe your brains when we're done in here." She turned and bared her teeth. "Still want to come in?"

  Two pairs of dark eyes gazed steadily back at her. Starpits! They weren't the least intimidated. That would be too much to expect from Alerik Mariltar's team.

  She shrugged. "Welcome to the Cavern of Mind-Bending Mysteries." Bortock and Shal-el had come up with the name after spending an unauthorized night in the room not long after it had been reconfigured as a test lab. They'd been discovered flat on their backs babbling happily at the holographic shapes dancing above them.

  At first glance, the lab was like any other room. Work consoles circled the perimeter. What wouldn't be immediately obvious to a casual visitor were the disks of various sizes set into both floor and ceiling toward the room's center. Drakal and Corenna weren't casual visitors. From her periphery vision, she saw them both study the floor. It was almost comical the way they glanced up at the ceiling simultaneously, then back at her. Drakal moved closer until she could feel his body heat.

  All their vigilance wouldn't help them in the end. Time to implement the plan. Her escort at her back, she strolled the perimeter to a console halfway around the room and powered it up.

  She logged into the program she wanted and was choosing her display options when Makiee and Nimon arrived.

  In contrast to Makiee's spiked hair and general scruffiness, Nimon's sleek beauty glowed in the low lumens. Her dark hair fell loose to her hips. Her choice of clothing was interesting for a work all-nighter--tight leggings, flirty little waist wrap that barely covered her bottom and a shimmering sleeveless vest designed to make one look twice for the delights promised by its seeming transparency.

  Drakal and Corenna were more than looking twice. They were frozen in place to one side of her as Nimon glided in a direct route toward them through the disk field.

  One look at Makiee's disgruntled face told Maegan that Nimon probably hadn't dressed that way for work. It was more likely she had made him wait while she changed, once she found out who Maegan had with her. The plan was off to a fabulous beginning.

  Greetings exchanged, Maegan activated her program. Out on the disk field, a holographic replica of the Crestar System sprang to life. The hiss of amazement from one of the Mariltar warriors was gratifying. Holograph technology wasn't new, but this was the new generation, far above and beyond anything else in existence.

  "Alerik," Maegan explained to Nimon and Makiee, "is on Pallas Four for a meeting, so I thought I would use the time to get some work done and check an anomaly I saw in the program the last time we tested it. Since it might take a while, and Corenna and Drakal are in here anyway, could you show them the disk field?"

  "But of course," the Soron purred. "It would be a pleasure."

  "Why are they so privileged?" Makiee grumbled. "No one outside of the company has seen this yet." He stumbled as Nimon bumped him with her shoulder to get by. "Mag-sha!" He swung a hand up, then thought better of retaliation as Nimon impaled him with a glittering gaze.

  "Don't worry," Maegan said cheerfully, "I told them we'd wipe their brains before they left here, and they still came in."

  "What exactly are we going to be doing?" Corenna asked, his attention still glued to Nimon. She had stretched her body to open a cabinet and every slender line and gentle curve was on full display. She held the pose
for longer than was absolutely necessary to retrieve the eyebands used in the disk field.

  "Taking a tour of the Crestar System," Maegan explained patiently. "You'll be out there." She nodded to the disk field. "And I'll be right here. And the doors locked the moment the program activated, in case you're wondering. No one comes in or goes out."

  "I don't trust her," Drakal said to his teammate. "Do you trust her? Think we should stay right here."

  "Where's your courage, gentlemen?" Nimon cooed. She brushed between them and selected Drakal as her first target. Almost as tall as he was, she had no difficulty securing the eyeband around his head. "You don't want to miss out on this experience."

  "Whoa!"

  Drakal was hooked and Nimon was on board with the plan. Neither his eyeband nor the one Nimon was now securing to Corenna's head had been activated. While Maegan had remote control of the bands and could switch them on and off as desired, it was better that Nimon had figured out what she was up to and would be more prepared for what would happen in the disk field.

  Makiee, on the other hand, was scowling at her. With the two Mariltar warriors fully focused on the wonders of the disk field even before they had stepped onto it, Makiee moved closer to her and murmured in her ear, "You're going to go too far one day, Maegan."

  "This is for Morgon," she muttered back. "And when did you get to be so law-abiding?"

  "Because you keep involving me in your freaky schemes, and that mate of yours is one scary friemon."

  "Nah. Should have seen him yesterday in a pink breech clout."

  Makiee's eyes bugged. Muttering under his breath, he snatched up an eyeband and followed Nimon and the two men onto the disk field.

  With her nursemaids fully occupied, the first thing Maegan did was search for Morgon's vessel. If it wasn't at the smart dock, or anywhere else on Pallas Four, then the plan was useless. Morgon didn't make it easy. She patiently worked her way through all his safeguards and found the vessel where she hoped it would be--at the smart dock.

  Then she went to work on the nav program. She had a three-dimensional screen view of the entire Crestar System similar to what was displayed in the disk field, but only needed a portion of it. She sliced out the piece she needed and focused on plotting her route.

  Out on the disk field, Corenna and Drakal were beginning to stagger from the effects of the holographic field. Makiee and Nimon, their own eyebands activated to counter the effects, each held the arm of one warrior. Drakal went down first. Corenna followed him not long after. They lay on their backs on the floor, hands reaching randomly for shapes that didn't exist in solid form. They'd be there until the program was deactivated.

  Task accomplished, Nimon and Makiee headed for Maegan.

  "The Divide," Nimon hissed, when she saw the screen. "Maegan!"

  "Morgon's there, I'm sure." Maegan said.

  "So? Morgon goes freaky places," Makiee said. "Doesn't mean you have to. He'll show up here again eventually. He always does."

  Blazing starpits! Of course they didn't know. Maegan took a deep breath. "A Taragon priestess has him."

  "Taragon again?" shouted Makiee.

  "Priestess?" said Nimon. "Taragon has a priestess? What does that mean?"

  "We've learned it's women who control the true power in their temples, and have since long before the Great Conflict. We haven't understood their power structure at all."

  "Maegan, you're scaring me," Nimon said. "The Treaty neutralized the power of the Taragon priests."

  "Apparently not."

  Nimon sucked in a noisy breath and released it. "The children. The relay network. Tabula--The Divide!"

  Goose bumps raced over Maegan's skin. "How did...?" She looked at Makiee.

  He raised his chin. "Morgon recruited her. He was worried about you. Thought you were taking on too much. She helped me sometimes with programming the routes." He gave Nimon a quick glance. "She knows pieces, but not everything."

  Morgon's method of protecting his young recruits. Each had a piece of the puzzle, but not the whole. Including herself, it seemed. She wondered about Makiee.

  "How many others?" She thought her head might explode. Too much intrigue and mystery. Too many slieking secrets. And her uncle was the biggest mystery of all.

  "Bortock and Shal-el are the decoders. A couple others help out from time to time, but don't know what it is they're working on."

  "What are they doing with the children?" Nimon demanded.

  "Building an army across The Divide," Maegan said wearily.

  The Soron spat out some words Maegan didn't understand, but she saw Makiee step back a pace. "And what is our esteemed Council doing about it?"

  "They've yet to be convinced." Maegan tried to shut down the persistent part of her thoughts that kept scrolling through the list of Janas employees. Was everyone in on Morgon's scheme? Was Janas one big covert operation with technology creation a side venture? Or was it the other way around?

  She couldn't think about that now.

  Makiee grabbed her arm. "When you went into the tunnels and disappeared for a while, what happened? That's when Morgon showed up."

  "The Taragon priests took me. The Mariltar team negotiated an exchange. Me for Morgon."

  "Morgon's idea," Makiee said softly.

  "Maybe." Maegan closed her eyes for a nanonan and pushed the memories back. "It doesn't make a lot of sense."

  "Whole thing's a blackhole nightmare, if you ask me," Nimon grumbled. She nodded at the console screen. "So you get to The Divide. What then? How by flaming firestones do you think you have any chance of locating Morgon?"

  "I don't know," Maegan admitted. "I thought I'd conceal the ship at orbit and watch the vessel activity for a while. See if I can determine any patterns and primary locations. If I can get close enough on the planet surface, I might be able to pick up his locator signal."

  "Better!" Makiee said in sudden excitement. "He's testing the new one. He had it implanted a half rotation ago. If it's activated and working, you might be able to pick it up from orbit."

  "What do you mean, "if it's working?"" Nimon demanded.

  "It's...had a few problems." Makiee's excitement dimmed. "Think we got it fixed though."

  "You should have had me look at it. I didn't know he'd taken it for testing. I thought it was still in development. I should have had the final say on releasing it."

  "There wasn't time." Makiee shot a wild-eyed look at Maegan.

  Nimon was working herself into an impressive rage. Her fists were clenched, her slender legs braced apart. As desperate as Maegan was to get back to the nav program, there was a certain fascination in watching the Soron. She felt a modicum of pity for Makiee. No one ever wanted to be on the receiving end of Nimon's displeasure.

  "Morgon called it. It wasn't my decision."

  Nimon stabbed a finger into his chest. "And you can't ever say no?"

  "I--"

  "Pah." Nimon suddenly switched her ire from Makiee to Maegan. "You're not going alone."

  "Huh?" Maegan blinked, completely disoriented for a nanonan.

  "You can't," Nimon shouted. "It's a suicide mission."

  "So two people should go on this suicide mission?" The words popped out before she could stop them.

  Nimon's body lost all its rigidity. "Maegan," she whispered.

  And for the first time, Maegan realized just how scared the young Soron was behind all her bravado. She reached for her and hugged her.

  "It's all right," she said. "I'm just going to observe and try to locate him. I won't try to free him by myself. I'll call in reinforcements if he's there." And hope that the Mariltar team would respond.

  "You have to use the new locator as well." Makiee's tone was unequivocal. He wasn't giving her a choice.

  She blew out a breath and nodded. "If you have one ready to go. I can't wait."

  "I'll get it."

  "I'll watch them." Nimon replaced her eyeband and moved out onto the disk field. Opening the doors would shu
t down the holo program momentarily, but not long enough for Drakal and Corenna to come out of their sensory-deprived hallucinations.

  While Makiee was gone, Maegan double-checked her route, then sent the program to Morgon's vessel, Blue Zephyr. Once she was on board, she'd check it against the routes Morgon might have left stored in his vessel's nav memory, but she didn't want to take the chance he had erased everything as a precaution.

  Makiee still wasn't back. On the disk field, Drakal and Corenna continued to play, watched over by Nimon. She and Makiee would have to deal with the two men when they'd been released from the effects of the holofield, and it wouldn't be pleasant. Maegan's twinge of guilt was tempered by the fact she now knew that Nimon as well as Makiee were in on the Taragon operation.

  A blue light flashed on her console.

  Maegan turned off the program and released the door.

  As it opened, Makiee's slender figure appeared silhouetted against the light from the corridor. It was the much larger figure beside him that sent chills through her body.

  * * * *

  "This is safe." The flatness of Alerik's statement conveyed clear skepticism.

  Maegan had opened the tunnel entrance in her office. Her mate eyed the tube pad like it was about to jump out and savage him. The tube felt claustrophobic to her with her slender body. His bulk would be a tighter fit. She had no sympathy to spare. Her upper arm still stung where Makiee had shot the microchip under her flesh.

  "No one has bashed their brains out yet," she said. "But you could always be the first."

  Alerik grunted and turned a cold sapphire gaze on her. "When this is over," he said, "you and I are going to have a long list of things to talk about. Just out of curiosity, how long will it take Corenna and Drakal to recover?"

  "Not long." They were probably flirting with Nimon already, even as they followed the orders Alerik had left with Makiee for them. To which she hadn't been privy.

  For a split nanonan, the air between them simmered with palpable mistrust.

  Alerik bared his teeth. "Let's go."

  Maegan gestured politely. "You first. Just get off when it stops."

  Alerik snorted. "Somewhere in the bowels of the planet? Don't think so. We go together."