by Jaleta Clegg
Paltronis led him through the busy lower halls and through a maze of cross halls into the quieter residential section. "They've put you on the top level," she told him as she stopped by an elevator.
"Do I want to know how you got here?" Lowell asked as they stepped into the elevator. "I expected to have to extract you from Tivor."
She shifted away from him, almost but not quite holding her nose. "We got here in a lot better condition than you did."
"I got the only rides I could find. Viya Station was attacked by pirates several weeks ago. Shortly afterwards, the boundary of the Empire moved a dozen light years or more. I was stuck on the wrong side."
"What about the Patrol base on Viya?"
The door slid open on a dim hallway, deserted and quiet, muffled in thick carpeting. Lowell stepped out and sighed heavily.
"I never thought I'd miss the little luxuries," he said. "I've spent weeks on decrepit freighters, not one of which had a functional shower. There isn't a Patrol base at Viya, not anymore."
"This one," Paltronis said, stopping by a thick door with the number four stenciled on it.
Lowell touched the lockplate. It glowed green and the door swung open. He stepped inside. The room was a suite, with deep upholstered chairs and a real wood table. The door to the bedroom stood open, showing a glimpse of a wide bed covered with a deep blue spread embroidered with the Patrol logo.
"You need me to fetch anything for you?" Paltronis asked.
"Sit down and tell me the outline version of what happened," Lowell told her. The door clicked shut as she stepped into the room. Lowell relaxed into one of the deep chairs. He couldn't help the sigh of pure pleasure that escaped.
Paltronis crossed the room and stood at the window, staring out at the busy port. Lowell waited, wondering how bad it was going to be. Every sign told him Paltronis was close to breaking, something he had never thought she would do.
"We got here three days ago," she said after a long silence. "Tivor—" She stopped to collect her thoughts. "It isn't Empire anymore. It isn't Federation, either, not as far as I know. Maybe in a couple of years, they'll have things sorted out. It was pretty chaotic when we left."
She turned around to face him. The light from the window behind her obscured her face. But Lowell knew her well enough to read her voice. She was upset, deeply and thoroughly.
"There isn't a short version, Lowell. I don't know how to shorten it. Maybe Scholar can."
"I'll get his version later. Give me yours. Please."
She paced across the room, moving restlessly, touching things and putting them back. He waited. He wanted a shower and real sleep in a real bed, but he was willing to wait. This was more important.
"The ship that brought us back to Tivor, after I left to pick up Scholar, defected to the Federation. They dumped us off on an escape pod." She stopped, going still as a predator sensing prey. "Where were you? You were supposed to wait. The Seeker was gone, and so were you."
He looked up at her and realized she didn't know, she had no way to know what he did. "I received a message. It was too important to ignore. That was why I was on Viya Station. Tayvis—"
She sucked in her breath, a hissing sound of surprise and hurt.
"He's alive, Paltronis. We left him on Trythia. Willet Smythe, now of the Federation, rescued him. And gave him some detailed intelligence about a plot to overthrow the Emperor."
"Roderick is still under house arrest," Paltronis said.
"He was a diversion. The real plot is still very much alive, and too high for anyone to touch. Not even me." He watched her a long moment. "I need to tell Dace he's still alive."
"You can try, but I doubt it will do much good."
That got his full attention. He sat up straight, a difficult feat in the soft chair. "What happened?"
"She's Hrissia'noru," Paltronis said. "You ever wonder how she got those genes?"
"I knew, for quite some time now."
Paltronis sank into a chair across from him. She stared unseeing at the table between them. He waited for her to collect her thoughts.
"There were some of them on Tivor," she continued, almost as if she were talking to herself, as if she'd forgotten he was there. He kept still, letting her talk. "We would never have found her, except they brought her to us. They'd done something to her."
Lowell edged forward, wondering where Paltronis was going with her story. She looked up at him, meeting his eyes for the first time since they'd entered the room. He saw the hurt.
"They turned her into some kind of monster. Telepathic and empathic. She almost shredded my shields. Without even trying. She went crazy. Scholar found some herb medicine that blocked it, but it left her in a stupor. They're trying to run tests to see if it left permanent damage." She fell silent, looking away again at the grain of wood in the table.
He waited, sensing her story wasn't finished.
"She got involved in the rebellion against Tivor's government, just like you ordered her to. It almost killed her, Lowell. It would have, if the Hrissia'noru hadn't shown up when they did. Rian shot her, point blank. It was starting to fall apart for her, for Rian, when the colony ship showed up."
Lowell was confused, but he waited. Paltronis was usually concise and very well organized in her reports.
"The Hrissia'noru are gone, thousands of them in that colony ship. They took the ones off Tivor with them. They almost took Dace. They gave her back just before they lifted."
"She didn't have anything to say about it?" Lowell asked, trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work.
"She was in a coma, Lowell. Didn't you hear me? Rian shot her, with a blaster. The Hrissia'noru kept her alive. We brought her here in a stasis capsule. The medics still aren't sure she's going to make it." She dropped her head into her hands.
Lowell stood, taking the few steps necessary to bridge the gap between them. He put his hand on her shoulder. "You did the best you could."
Paltronis shook her head. "I could have stayed, I could have kept her safe. I tried, Lowell. I failed."
"She's still breathing, isn't she?" He patted her shoulder again. "You brought her back. That was all I asked you to do. I'm the one who should take the blame. I sent her there." He stepped away and paused. "She's here, on the base?"
"Hospital complex," Paltronis said.
"Find me a uniform while I clean up, please. Whether it does any good or not, I want to see her."
Half an hour later, freshly scrubbed and feeling much refreshed, Lowell walked into the hospital lounge, Paltronis his shadow behind him. The medic refused to let them in the actual hospital room. Lowell stared through the window into the room beyond. A large box, shaped eerily like a coffin, dominated the room. Tubes snaked in and out. Machines surrounded it, blinking and beeping. The figure in the box was barely discernible through a translucent pink jelly.
"You wanted to see me?" The medic was young. He thumbed through a stack of papers as he talked. He barely waited for Lowell's nod before continuing. "She's got massive internal injuries, complicated by her reactions to the biogel and some of the medications we've been giving her. There are also signs of major brain trauma, although it's unclear exactly what kind of trauma. We've run a few scans, as much as we can with a comatose patient, but they don't give us any readings out of the ordinary range."
"Did you run a psych eval?" Lowell asked. Paltronis glanced at him, picking up on the unspoken question behind his seemingly innocent inquiry.
"We did do a base scan," the medic answered, flipping through his papers. "There didn't seem to be any kind of psychic profile in her records. We ran it to make sure everything was normal."
"May I see it, please?" Lowell asked.
The medic hesitated. Lowell's uniform finally registered with the medic. He snapped a paper out of his clipboard and handed it over.
Lowell scanned down the page. He reached the bottom and frowned. Paltronis moved closer and read over his shoulder. He went through it more slowly.
"Admiral Dace, special operations of the Enforcers," the medic said, just a hint of offense in his tone at the question. "We ran her prints and scans. All of them matched up."
"It's her, Lowell," Paltronis murmured.
"Then this doesn't make sense." He held up the paper. "Telepathy tests are in the range of point seven to one point six. Empathy tests showed nonresponsive, indicative of no innate abilities." He handed the paper to Paltronis. "Both well within normal ranges. She scored a point zero zero three before on the telepathy rating."
Paltronis glanced at the column of figures, frowning. "It doesn't make sense. I was there. I know what she did. She has to rate at least a fifteen."
"She finally managed to lower her shields. But this indicates no innate mental shielding, either."
"We can run the tests again," the medic said with just a touch of exasperation. "But our techs are fully certified. These tests are standardized, have been for over a hundred years. Those test results are hers." He nodded towards the figure in the case through the glass window.
"Their leader said one thing as they were leaving," Paltronis said. "She called us as they were lifting off. She said Dace had to choose to be one or the other and she had chosen. I didn't think about it at the time." She held the paper out to the medic. "Is it possible they removed that part of her?"
"Where the Hrissia'noru are concerned," Lowell said, "I couldn't even begin to guess."
Chapter 52
The music was tasteful and very expensive, as was the food and the mansion and the people at the party. Tayvis stood to one side, trying to avoid the swirling masses of young men and women. He found it hard to be interested in them or their topics of conversation. Somehow, gossip about who was sleeping with whom, even though officially frowned on by parents, wasn't as important to him as it seemed to be with everyone else. Especially not when he considered what was happening out on the borders of the Empire. People were dying, the government was crumbling, and no one at the center of things seemed to even notice.
He took his glass of expensive fruit punch and slipped off the wide patio into the garden. The night air was perfumed by a thousand different blossoms. The sky overhead swirled with bright stars. The air was perfect, balmy and only slightly cool. A stray breeze ruffled his hair. He found a spot near the top of the rise where the house was situated. The garden tumbled down a gentle slope below him.
There were others in the garden. He heard a woman laugh. Soft voices filtered up to him on the errant breeze. He leaned on a retaining wall and stared overhead.
Lowell had promised he would send Dace as soon as he could get her off Tivor. That was a long time ago. Weeks. And not one word, from Dace or Lowell. Dace had no business in the Patrol, especially as an Admiral. Lowell should never have let her work for him, officially or not. But he understood why she had, why Lowell had to send her after the Sessimoniss. But not Tivor.
He considered again, for the thousandth time, going to Tivor himself. He'd gotten so far as to check shipping schedules. Not a single ship was willing to risk the flight, not for any amount of money. He could have gone to Jasyn. She would have gone after Dace without a second thought. He hadn't been able to find her or her ship. The Phoenix was out of reach.
So Malcolm Tayvis attended the parties his mother insisted he attend and spent most of the rest of his time finding ways not to worry about Dace.
"So this is where you disappeared to," his mother said as she joined him at the retaining wall. A spray of blossoms dangled near her hand. She lifted them to her face and breathed in their fragrance. "Your brother was looking for you."
"Which one?" he asked idly fingering his glass. The juice was too sweet for his taste.
"I don't remember which," his mother answered. She shrugged. "They all look alike now that they're grown up. Copies of their father."
Tayvis had been surprised to see his father at the same party as his mother. The Count Visquino had invited both not realizing their past connections. The two of them were stiffly polite to each other. Deena, his mother, had even unbent enough to be polite to his father's second wife. Their children were also in attendance, Tayvis' half brothers and sister. He really didn't know them, any of them. He'd said his hellos and decided he had done as much as polite society dictated.
"So what are you thinking?" his mother asked. "You look so solemn. You don't smile much. Not that you really ever did."
"Why did you insist I come to this party?" he asked instead of answering. "And why all the other parties?"
"Because I want to show off my son." She reached over and tugged his collar straight. "Humor me, Malcolm. Act like you actually like some of the young ladies."
"Even if I can't stand any of them?"
She clucked her tongue. "Being in the Patrol seems to have ruined you for high society. I should never have let your father send you to that military school."
"If I remember, at the time you were filming three vids and didn't have time for me. I was too old to stay in your dressing room."
His mother laughed, soft and low, more of a chuckle. She was still glamorous, still strikingly beautiful. She wore a gown of soft blue that shimmered around her. He couldn't help comparing her to Dace. His mother was tall and graceful, her hands always perfectly manicured. Her hair was copper colored, always smoothly brushed and well set. Dace was short, scruffy, and usually had grease under her nails. He couldn't think of anyone more completely opposite his mother in looks. That wasn't what attracted him to Dace. It was the look in her eyes when she smiled at him. It was her fierce loyalty to her friends. It was her boneheaded stubbornness and determination. He wondered what his mother would say when she met Dace. He smiled imagining Dace's reaction to his mother. He was sure he was wrong, but it still made him smile.
"So who is she?" his mother asked, breaking into his quiet thoughts.
"Who?"
"The woman who finally caught your eye. I've seen that smile before on men's faces. I know what it means."
"You'll meet her. Soon, I hope."
"Tell me about her," his mother invited.
He had no idea where to begin. He stared into his glass of juice, swirling the thick pink liquid.
"Where did you meet her? What's her name?"
A chattering group of people spilled onto the patio, infringing on their privacy. Tayvis' smile faded. He was tired of being polite, tired of pretending. He held out his glass to his mother.
She shook her head. "You aren't getting away that easily. Go mingle, pretend to enjoy the party. You might be surprised to find you are enjoying yourself." She pushed him, nudging him towards the group. Paper crackled in her handbag. "Oh," she said, opening the beaded bag, "I almost forgot. This came for you earlier. It seems to be some kind of code."
She handed him a folded paper. The seal on it had been slit. Tayvis recognized the handwriting. Lowell was contacting him. Probably wanting to know what he'd found out. He tucked the paper, unread, in his pocket. He would have time later. He hadn't made much progress on uncovering the treason plot. So far, Vance Shiropi had been scarce at the parties.
That was the real reason he let his mother talk him into attending. He made himself smile and join the group of revelers. He was here to find out who was behind the attempt on the Emperor's throne. He was there to find out who, if anyone, was pushing the outer systems into the Federation.
The people here, on the Inner Worlds, cradled in their luxury, acted as if nothing was wrong. But it was very wrong. The Empire was crumbling. The disease was here, at the center.
And he was going to find out what. Even if it meant attending parties and pretending to be a wealthy bachelor with nothing better to do with his time. He was officially discharged from the Patrol. No one would suspect he still worked for Lowell.
He promised himself that Lowell was going to live up to his end of the bargain. Or Tayvis would hunt him down and demand to know why he hadn't. Lowell had promi
sed to let Dace go, to send her to Tayvis.
Tayvis would hold him to his promise. Even if it took the rest of his life.
Chapter 53
I knew pain waited for me, eventually, when I chose to live again, to wake up. But for now, I dreamed.
I stood on the top of grassy hill. Sourceless golden light poured around me. The grass waved like a restless sea, its color a match to the light. A breeze stirred my hair. I raised my face to the light, closing my eyes.
Even with my eyes closed, I still could see. The hill around me exploded in a burst of shimmering rainbow colors as birds suddenly took flight from the grass under my feet. They flapped jeweled wings, circling up into the burnished sky.
I lifted my arms and found myself soaring effortlessly through them. I smiled a smile of pure joy. I soared and floated and flew through the golden light, reveling in my freedom. I left the birds far behind, stretching my arms farther and feeling the wind rush past. I flew, effortlessly, through a burnished gold sky.
I was free, truly free, for the first time in my life. At the thought, I felt the last of the heavy shackles of my past falling away. I burst up through the sky and out into space. I flew faster and faster, a burning comet of light streaking through the heavens.
I was free.
As long as the dream lasted.
About the author:
Jaleta Clegg loves to spin tales of adventure, mostly in outer space. She blames it on too many adventure movies when she was younger and too many novels as she grew older. Now she just blames it on too much chocolate.
If you enjoyed this book, please check out the rest of the series at www.altairanempire.com and find more of Jaleta's work at www.jaletac.com
Turn the page to take a sneak peek at book nine: An Indecent Proposal.
An Indecent Proposal: The Fall of the Altairan Empire Book 9