Diffraction

by Jess Anastasi

  “Yeah, I’ve felt that. How do you know all this stuff?”

  Ko’en and La’thar shared a look, expressions shifting as though they were having a conversation, which they probably were.

  Finally La’thar looked back at him. “You are not the first of your kind we managed to track down. There was one other, a woman. But she became lost to the darkness.”

  Right. That made him feel so much better. “So you’re telling me that by accessing the Reidar consciousness, I could become like them? A sociopath who likes to invade other galaxies?”

  “It is a risk, yes. But if you are so set on finding Rian Sherron, this is the only option. No one else can access the Reidar consciousness and discover his whereabouts like you can.”

  Something about the way La’thar had said Rian Sherron made him think the Mar’keish knew a little something about the infamous ex–war hero.

  “Why did you come with me? And why are you willing for me to take this risk?”

  “It’s a long story but comes back to the Mar’keish who were able to flee our homeworld before the IPC created the no-fly zone of cold-space. Those who went to ground and let the universe believe the Mar’keish were no more. Even back then, they knew about the Reidar—the first of the aliens who came to this galaxy. We have been fighting them in secret ever since.”

  “And what has that got to do with any of this?” He glanced toward the back of the skimmer, where the remaining members of the Imojenna’s crew were sitting or standing around Nyah while Kira worked to repair her shoulder.

  “Rian Sherron is unique. He was able to break free of the Reidar’s mind hold where no others had been able to. We are beginning to realize that if we want to win the war and rid the galaxy of the parasites, Rian Sherron may be one part of the key. But if the Reidar succeed in turning him back to darkness, all hope may be lost.”

  He scoffed. “So the fate of the universe rests in the hands of one man, and that man is Rian Sherron? How comforting.”

  La’thar gave a quick smile. “It is not so simple as that, but we believe Rian has his role to play.”

  “Have you found anything yet?” Zahli had come over, impatience in every line of her body.

  “Not yet.” Not that he’d been getting anywhere.

  “It’s been twenty-five minutes. We’re getting ready to move Nyah over to the Ebony Winter while Lianna docks both the Imojenna’s skimmers in a long-term berth.”

  “I’ll be able to do it once we’re onboard the Ebony Winter.” There was too much going on here, too many distractions, all of them starting and ending with Kira.

  When they got onboard the larger ship, he could find a quiet room by himself and have more luck. That was after he punched Qaelan Forster in the face.

  Repeatedly.

  “We won’t be coming with you,” Ko’en said as Zahli returned to Nyah’s side.

  He passed a look between the two men, surprised they were leaving.

  “We’re needed elsewhere. But when you have found Rian Sherron, contact us. We can continue helping you on your path to fulfilling your potential.”

  “And to make sure I don’t go dark-side like your last hybrid?”

  La’thar’s smile widened to a grin. “Something like that.”

  The two men bid him good-bye, extending their courtesy to the rest of the crew before departing.

  Varean pushed to his feet as everyone else grabbed the few possessions they’d brought onboard when they’d fled the Imojenna. Kira was overseeing Tannin, who carefully picked up Nyah.

  “Can I help with anything?” Damn it, he didn’t want to sound like a pathetic, overeager puppy looking for approval or attention, but he was pretty sure that’s how he came across. Kira shot him a brief glance—at least she actually looked at him, which he was going to count as an improvement—before handing over several medical bags.

  “No problem. Happy to carry the luggage,” he muttered as she followed after Tannin down the narrow ramp.

  Outside, the Ebony Winter perched two docks over. Though less than half the size of the Imojenna, the Sylph class ship had a definite elegance to it, unlike the Nirali class that had been built to run supplies and withstand war.

  The ghostly image of a woman wearing white was painted on the side of the infamous marauders’ ship, no doubt adding to whatever reputation Qaelan Forster liked to uphold. Didn’t exactly make the ship ideal for stealth. So just how in the heck had Forster managed to land here without bringing every IPC officer and UAFA agent on Forbes running to apprehend him?

  As their little group approached the ship the ramp lowered, the noise of the engines still winding down. Forster stood just inside the atmospheric doors, arms crossed and feet braced wide. The undeniable urge to shoot the bastard swelled in a flooding tide, but he didn’t have a weapon, and shooting the man they’d called for help wouldn’t win him any favors with the crew.

  Forster wasn’t besieged with the same qualms, since he yanked out a razar and a pulse pistol as soon as their gazes clashed.

  “Hold it right there. What the mother of all that is frecked, people? No one mentioned that shag we trussed up on the Swift Brion was still around.”

  Zahli sent him an annoyed look as she continued up the ramp. “He’s helping us find Rian. So if you shoot him, Qae, I’ll have to shoot you.”

  “What do you mean he’s helping us find Rian? What the hell happened since we split up?”

  She stepped in front of Forster and pushed his guns down. “We’ll explain everything on the way. Can we just stow it for now and get off this damn moon?”

  “I’m not letting him on my ship unless he’s cuffed—”

  “Not this again.” Kira expelled a sharp breath. “He’s not the enemy and definitely didn’t deserve the way you treated him. No one is cuffing him or tying him up or restraining him. He came to us with the offer to help find Rian, and we are not repaying that by treating him worse than an animal. Again.”

  Kira standing up for him made him get a moronic case of the warm and fuzzies. If nothing else, he could still count on her, even if she was eager to push him away.

  Scowling at him, Forster holstered his gun. They glared each other down as he walked past, before he went deeper into the cargo bay following Kira, where she was leading Tannin to find Nyah a bed. Lucky he had his hands full of the medical kits or he definitely wouldn’t have made it onto this ship without a few fists being exchanged.

  Kira and Tannin walked into the tiny medbay with a single bed. Tannin set Nyah down gently and then left the room.

  While Kira ran her scanner over Nyah, he inspected a couple of lockers and found somewhere to put the kits. That done, he shoved his hands in his pockets as he turned to focus on Kira. He watched, keeping silent as she fussed over Nyah, finding her a blanket and then strapping her down to the gurney. That done, she went to where he’d stashed her bags, sorting through them, pulling out a few bits and pieces, and leaving them on another shelf for easy access.

  Finally, she turned to him, frustration tightening her features. “Is there something you need?”

  “To talk.”

  The look she shot him said he was all kinds of crazy to expect any kind of conversation.

  “Can we just not? It’ll be easier when you leave again if we don’t complicate things in the meantime. In fact, how about we just avoid seeing each other altogether.” She hurried out of the room before he could so much as take in a breath to answer.

  “Kira, wait.” He followed her out and caught her arm.

  She tugged out of his hold and crossed her arms, avoiding his gaze. But she did stop, and it was probably the best opening he would get.

  “I shouldn’t have been so quick to leave you on Barasa the way I did, not when I knew you weren’t safe. If you’d arrived at that cabin half an hour earlier, it could have been you in the house when—”

  “This is pointless, Varean.” She shifted away from him, closing herself up. “I’ve told you before, I was doing
fine before you came along, and I’ll be able to look after myself when you’ve gone again. I’m not your responsibility; it’s not up to you to keep me safe. I wish you hadn’t come back, and that makes me selfish, because I know you’re our only hope of finding Rian and Ella.”

  The totally logical and true statement hit him like a blow to the gut. Damn it, she wasn’t his responsibility, but christ, did he want her to be. Considering who and what he was, he couldn’t give her anything except danger and death, couldn’t expect her to live a life on the run. And though he’d known all those things on some level, now it really sunk in, like claws digging into his chest, sliding deeper and deeper until he couldn’t deny the reality of it.

  “You’re right. This was pointless. Avoiding each other is probably the smartest idea.”

  Before she could reply, he walked away, following the drift of voices as he headed up into the ship. He emerged in a small kind of common room and galley, to find Lianna, Zahli, Tannin, and Jase chatting with people he assumed were Forster’s crew, plus the marauder captain himself. Silence dropped like a stone when they saw him, the tension in the room spreading like a frost.

  “Are we about ready to launch?” The familiar voice shocked his system, almost sending him to automatic attention from years of military training.

  Captain Admiral Zander Graydon entered through the opposite, wider passageway, which presumably led to the bridge. However, the captain admiral wasn’t wearing an IPC uniform. The matching black shirt and pants did appear to be some kind of uniform, with a red six-pointed star insignia the only decoration, but it wasn’t any military outfit he recognized.

  The captain admiral paused when he saw him. “Donnelly. Can’t say I expected to see you here.”

  “Because you thought I was dead, or that I abandoned my post on the Swift Brion?” The words came out before he’d really thought about them. Once he would never have dared to talk trash to the captain admiral. But by all accounts the man had gone AWOL, and, after everything Varean had been through recently, he was left feeling like he didn’t owe anyone a single damned thing. Especially since Graydon hadn’t tried to intervene when Sherron decided to take him.

  Graydon clasped his hands behind his back, raising a single eyebrow. “To be honest, I hadn’t given it much thought. Your name came up as unaccounted for, but between getting stabbed and stealing a flagship, I hadn’t found the time to follow it up.”

  Some of his indignation drained away. “You mean you didn’t know Sherron and Forster forcibly removed me from the Swift Brion and locked me in the brig of the Imojenna?”

  Graydon shot an incredulous look at the marauder. “They did what?”

  “I reacted to the alien stunner. Sherron wanted to know why.” He couldn’t exactly have stayed pissed off at the man if he hadn’t known anything about it.

  “For the record, I think numbnuts is an alien,” Forster put in, his glare all kinds of suspicious.

  For the first time, he took a tiny flare of enjoyment out of his hybrid DNA as he sent Forster a cutting grin. “Actually, dick-face, you’re only half right.”

  Forster scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Kira ran some blood tests on him,” Lianna interjected. “Turns out he’s the result of some kind of Reidar freak show breeding experiments, and he’s half alien. Not only that, but he’s also half Mar’keish.”

  “You brought a mind-wraith onto my ship? A frecking half alien mind-wraith?”

  It might have been frosty before, but at Forster’s exclamation, the temperature in the room dropped about a thousand degrees.

  He held up his hands, gesturing his surrender. “Don’t get your guns out on my account. I’m not working for the Reidar. Finding out I shared some DNA with them was news to me.”

  Forster took an aggressive step forward, palms on his weapons. “Well, isn’t that frecking convenient—”

  “How about I show you just how convenient I find this whole thing?” He matched Forster’s step forward, nearly putting the bastard within punching range, until Graydon got between them.

  “Stand down!” Graydon used his captain admiral voice, effectively grabbing everyone’s attention. “Donnelly, I understand better than anyone about getting the urge to take a swing or two at Forster. But since we’re currently standing on his ship, it’s probably not going to leave the moron in a helpful mood.”

  “Jezus, Graydon, you make it sound like I’d let my ego get in the way of saving my cousin.”

  Forster and Rian were cousins? Well, that explained a few things.

  The look Graydon shot the captain in return asked wouldn’t you? loud and clear.

  Forster’s glare deepened. “I’ll do anything to get Rian back from those crazy-pants aliens, apparently even let some Mar’keish-Reidar-hybrid freak on my ship. But if he leads us into a trap, I’m going to put a round of ammo into his face.”

  “Already called dibs,” Lianna put in conversationally, as if they were talking about the last slice of cake instead of killing him.

  Forster’s attention sharpened on Lianna, a hint of intrigue in his expression. “Well freck me Friday, woman. What’s a man gotta do to kill people on his own ship? Everyone’s got a price—name yours.”

  “You couldn’t afford it, believe me.” Lianna gave him a patronizing pat on the shoulder as she passed.

  “We’ll see about that,” he muttered as she disappeared. A second later, he clapped his hands, rubbing his palms together. “So, someone have a destination in mind for this circus of death?”

  “That’s why I’m here.” He crossed his arms, not really wanting to explain the whole Reidar-consciousness thing again. “I just need a little time to work out where Rian is.”

  Just as he guessed, Forster went right back to looking unimpressed. “And how are you going to do that?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Zahli said from where she was sitting with Tannin and the rest of Forster’s small crew.

  “What kind of risk are we talking here? It’s not going to clue the aliens into our whereabouts or the fact we’re coming for Rian?”

  And this is where things got even more complicated. “I can’t make any assurances. But if you want Sherron back, this is probably the only option.”

  “Lucky for you, terrible plans are my forte.” The captain swept a glance around the small room. “Let’s at least get off this planet before the authorities work out we’re not really a machinery hauler and our registration papers are forged.”

  Forster sent a nod to Graydon, and the two of them headed up to the bridge while everyone else settled in for launch. Instead of joining them, Varean went back out into the passageway. On a lower level, he found two cabins with multiple uncomfortable-looking fold-down racks—not much better than many troop transports he’d been on during his years with the IPC.

  He took himself into the second cabin and plonked his ass down on the nearest cot. Really, he could have used a combat nap, but everyone was waiting for him to provide the information he’d promised, and he doubted they’d be impressed if someone came looking and found him sleeping. So instead, he got himself into a comfortable upright position and then closed his eyes, following the instructions La’thar and Ko’en had given him to delve deeper into his own mind, access parts of his brain humans never used.

  Without Kira’s distracting presence or the watchful stares of the others, he was able to sink into the stream of higher awareness more easily. La’thar and Ko’en had helped him create a kind of barrier to keep himself from slipping into the Reidar consciousness accidentally, as he apparently had while he’d been sleeping. That was what the hallucinations had been—memories and information literally leaking into his mind. The language he’d heard was Reidar, and now his mind had processed enough that he was able to fully understand it.

  Accessing the Reidar consciousness was almost like having an out-of-body experience. Like his mind had gone to a completely different plane of existence and left his physi
cal form behind, though he was still aware of his body anchoring him to reality.

  Once he brought the barrier down, he could feel the complex pool of energy and knowledge, as though it was brimming at his feet, just waiting for him to dive in. He reached out and touched it, connected, felt himself altering in a way he didn’t understand or have words for, as though he’d become one with something far greater than himself. He could receive small amounts of information by keeping himself separate, but to find what he needed specifically might take too long.

  He hesitated, remembering La’thar and Ko’en’s warning not to fully access the consciousness because the Reidar would become aware of his presence. Not to mention the added bonus of the risk he took in getting lost to the darkness.

  But something good had to come out of this mess, and if that single good was helping Kira put what she considered her family back together, it was the price he’d pay.

  Bracing himself—because he had no idea what this was going to do to him—he fully opened his mind, immersing his entire being into the ethereal energy.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Rian had examined every damned square inch of the hold and found it to be brilliantly seamless. On the bright side, he could now make some improvements to the Imojenna’s brig to make it inescapable. On the downside, Ella and he were totally screwed and not getting out until the frecking Reidar let them out. Which was probably why the bastards hadn’t said a word about him prowling the cage, because without a laser torch or ion blaster, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  From what he could overhear on the bridge, the aliens were getting ready to land on a station, though he didn’t think this was their final destination. They were either swapping transports—which would give him an opportunity to escape—or getting supplies, which made escape a little less likely. Either way, he was calling the break in the trip a win. The only downside to his not-quite-a-plan? His frecking ribs were burning like a white star, his ability to numb the pain not working so well anymore, which told him the wound was worse than he’d thought. Plus, slowly but surely, his lungs strained more and more, as if with each breath, they held a little less oxygen.