"It happens," Tobi said with a shrug. "How many you get on Oshun?"
"None."
His face contorting into a rictus of fury, Tobi cried, "What!? I thought the 'deaths' that the Ori-Inu reported were ones your people covered up!"
"No, they just were going on a killing spree—Ori-Inu and civilians!"
The two started moving toward each other. Abeje was nervous, in part because she could feel the tension between them, but mostly because she couldn't feel anything of their minds. Tobi was as closed to her as Oranmiyan was.
"You've been messing with me from the start, haven't you, War Chief?" Oranmiyan's eyes had gone wild, and spittle was flying out of his mouth as he yelled. "Shango-oti can't do most of what you told me it does, can it?"
"I've never lied to you," Tobi said. "Shango-oti does exactly what I said it would: enhance a person's telepathy and make them better and stronger." He looked at Abeje. "Isn't that right?"
"Uhm..." Abeje really didn't want to get between those two, and now may not have been the best time to voice her second thoughts. However, that glower from the war chief was hard to resist. "Well, yes, it has done that. But I also saw what it did to Akanke."
Tobi shrugged. "Some people can't handle it. People are at a certain level for a reason—maybe for some people, having it go too high makes them insane. Whatever, it doesn't matter—are we gonna just stand here yelling at each other, or are we going to actually accomplish something?"
Hembadoon was brought in shackles through the corridors of L'owuro to the docking bay, and thence through several corridors hewn out of natural rock toward a sterile-looking room that had a small operating table, onto which he was placed and put into restraints.
The two cavalry who had escorted him left, and then two other people entered whom he knew very well—but only one of whom was supposed to still be alive.
"Oranmiyan—I don't know whether to hug you or punch you. These shackles solve my dilemma, of course. Still, I could have sworn I led a memorial service for you."
"I'm glad you did, Orisha." Oranmiyan was sneering at him. This was not the polite, eager young man he'd found in the slums of Benin and trained until his—alleged—death. "It meant my deception worked."
"You'll have to tell me about that some time." He turned to Abeje. "As for you, I have to confess to being quite impressed with myself."
Abeje stared at him incredulously. "How so?"
"After everything I've been through the last week, I have at last completed my mission. How many Orisha do you know who can bring it home after living through an explosion, being gassed twice, and then being led in irons to a secret mobile facility disguised as an asteroid?"
Oranmiyan frowned. "Tobi told you all of that?"
"Actually, I worked it out on my own. That's why the Hegemony pays me so well, though Tobi did confirm it after he gassed me and Folami."
"That idiot!" Oranmiyan slammed a fist into the metal wall. To Hembadoon's surprise—and fear—it left a small dent in the wall, which was strong enough to keep an entire asteroid from caving in on the room.
He was never this strong before. Nor this temperamental. What happened to him?
"Oranmiyan, calm down," Abeje said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
Hembadoon watched the dynamic of his former pupils, who had been lovers in a previous life. Abeje obviously still had deep feelings for Oranmiyan. But the Orisha wasn't sure if those feelings were returned.
"The whole thing's completely messed up," Oranmiyan said. "Shango-oti is supposed to make us free!"
"Free, eh?" Hembadoon said. "Free to do what, precisely? Commit mass murder? Or were all those bodies on Oshun merely the cost of doing business?"
"Shut up!" Oranmiyan stomped over to Hembadoon and shoved a finger in his face. "You don't know what you're talking about."
But Hembadoon saw Abeje shrinking away from Oranmiyan, and saw her react to what the Orisha had said. "That wasn't part of the plan, was it, Oranmiyan? It was just to be a smash and grab. But they smashed too much, yes? I'm guessing that Shango-oti does more than hype up your mental capacity. I'm thinking it also makes you a little crazy."
"I said shut up!" Oranmiyan backhanded Hembadoon. He winced with the impact, and felt a burning on his left cheek.
"You weren't like this before, Oranmiyan. You were always the calm voice of reason. Now you're ready to explode. If it's not the Shango-oti, what is it?"
"Oranmiyan," Abeje said gently, "maybe he's right. I remember what Akanke was like before."
"Of course I'm right," Hembadoon said insistently. "When was I ever wrong?"
"You don't understand," Oranmiyan said, looking as if he was trying to get his breathing under control. "Shango-oti is the key. We can stop being puppets of the Oba! We can be free!"
"You keep saying that," Abeje said, "but how are we free, exactly? We're hiding in an asteroid, half of us are going crazy, and for what? So that buruku can take over from Isembi and start it all over again?"
"Shut up!" Oranmiyan cried. "That is not the plan!" His attempts to get his breathing under control were failing.
"That's not what he told Folami and me," Hembadoon said. "Told us he wanted to take over from Isembi, and that he'd be using the Nide to do it. Just another set of tools, he said. Looks to me like you're trading in one oppressor for another."
Abeje walked up to him and put her small arm in his big one. "He's right, Oranmiyan. This isn't what you told me it was going to be."
We're getting through to him, Hembadoon thought, grateful that he had Abeje on his side, at least.
Then Oranmiyan threw his head back, roared, and cried, "NO!"
He flexed his arms, and Abeje went flying toward the wall, hitting it with a sickening crunch.
"You don't understand!" Oranmiyan yelled at her crumpled form. "We will be free! We'll get Folami back and then we'll all be back together and it'll be like it was supposed to be! We'll save the universe from the bad guys, just like we were saying we'd be doing! Don't you get it, Abeje? Don't you?"
Hembadoon's hopes had all been dashed with one gesture, because Abeje wasn't responding to Oranmiyan's imploring.
Having been an Orisha for most of his adult life, Hembadoon had seen plenty of dead bodies. He quickly learned to tell the difference between the living and the dead, and the primary one was that dead bodies were completely still. The living shuddered or shivered or twitched or blinked or moved in some way. But the dead didn't move at all.
And right now, Abeje wasn't moving at all.
"She's dead."
Oranmiyan's face fell. "No. She can't..." He bent down and turned her body over, only to reveal her head at an impossible angle in relation to her neck.
Tears were now streaming down Oranmiyan's cheeks. "No... Abeje, you can't die. That wasn't the plan..."
That went on for several seconds—Oranmiyan kneeling over Abeje's body and muttering to himself, tears flowing freely. Hembadoon lay on the surgical table, tugging uselessly against his unbreakable restraints, and wondering what what was going to happen next.
He didn't have to wonder for long. Oranmiyan sprang to his feet, and started screaming incoherently, storming out of the room.
Hembadoon lay on the surgical table, alone with the corpse of one of his prize pupils, whose only crime was to tell another of his prize pupils that things were going badly. And he had no idea where his third prize pupil was now.
This isn't exactly going the way I'd hoped, he thought angrily. Instead of having two Nide on his side, he now had one dead and another descending further into madness.
And he was still strapped to a surgical table.
I hope you're coming back soon, Folami, Hembadoon thought.
TWELVE
Ebun
Folami waited until she was sure that Ebun was out of what would be L'owuro's scanning range were her scanners working before she brought the engines to a halt, left the ship drifting, and then broke down crying.
Up until n
ow, her training had kept her going, allowed her to get information, allowed her to make her escape.
But now that that was done, she needed a release.
She'd been hoping to get that from Cavalry Chief Adejola, but his was merely the latest in a long line of betrayals that started with her mother allowing Olorun to use her as an incubator for a telepath, went on to Oranmiyan making everyone think he was dead, and ending with Adejola gassing her.
Could be worse, I suppose, she thought, he could've had sex with me and then gassed me.
After a moment, that thought made her burst out laughing, even as the tears continued to stream down her face. Her halting sobs mixed with laughs and led to a coughing fit.
A full minute passed before she was able to wipe her eyes dry with the sleeve of her hospital gown and get her breathing under control.
She also realized that she was hungry.
Bereft of armor to interface with Ebun's computer, she instead used her Ori-Inu priority to re-set it to accept voice commands.
"Computer, provisions."
A screen lit up with a list of available foodstuffs and a location: an orange, a bunch of grapes, and a pair of cocoa cookies, all in a refrigerator located under the console; a bottle of wine in a cabinet in the ceiling; and water from a spigot next to her.
"Computer, commode?"
A control on the console lit up. Touching it released a catheter.
"Wonderful."
She allowed herself five minutes to get some food in her system and relieve herself. Ideally, she would have liked a few hours' sleep, but that wasn't going to be possible. Still, she was mindful of one of this ship's owner's many aphorisms: "The human body's like a ship. You don't put fuel in it, it ain't goin' anywhere."
After cleaning out Hembadoon's entire supply of fruit and cookies, washing it down with some refreshingly cold water (some of which she also splashed on her face), she finally went ahead and contacted Ife.
It took ten minutes for her to work her way through various functionaries and for said functionaries to find the Oba before Isembi's face appeared before her.
Part of why Folami had delayed the call until after she ate something was to settle her stomach, because the idea of facing this man made her want to throw up. For all that he called her a hero after she destroyed Yemoja, the mindwipe meant that he could take all the credit for it.
Not that she particularly wanted to claim responsibility, but the glee with which Oba Isembi had added "destroyer of Yemoja" to his many titles sickened her, all the more because he didn't actually do it.
She was also grateful that she had not told Isembi about her remembering things, because at least one of those unburied memories involved actions taken by the Oba that he would definitely not want made public. Out of self-preservation as much as anything, she needed to keep that from him.
However, she was still a loyal Ori-Inu, and she also needed backup in order to bring Ojiji down.
As soon as he saw Folami, Isembi's face fell. "Folami, what happened?"
"Quite a bit," she said.
Concisely, but leaving out no details save that of her own reawakening memories (and of her visiting Cavalry Chief Adejola's quarters, since that wasn't germane to the report, not to mention being horribly embarrassing), she informed Isembi of the events since their last report.
"Tobi a traitor? Amazing." Isembi shook his head. "I would never have thought—" He let out a quick breath. "But of course he would not have gotten this far if I suspected him. And from the sounds of it, this particular plan is many years in the making."
"My Oba—" She said that phrase out of rote habit, but calling Isembi "her" Oba made her nauseous. "—I only left L'owuro to regroup and to summon reinforcements, something I couldn't do as long as I was in Tobi's scan range. As soon as you can send me a cadre of Ori-Inu, we can take Olokun Station and bring Ojiji down."
"I'm afraid it's more complicated than that. I sent all the available proximate Ori-Inu to Oshun already. Of the remaining Ori-Inu, they're all either in the midst of missions that they can't be removed from, or are sufficiently far away that they won't arrive for another week or more."
"Mogbe," Folami muttered, before remembering who she was talking to. "Apologies, my Oba, but it's been very trying."
"I understand," Isembi said with uncharacteristic gentleness.
Folami didn't believe his sincerity for a second, but that was only because of what she now remembered.
"My Oba—we can't wait a week. We can't even wait another day. Tobi knows that he's been exposed. He'll go to ground, and he can take this station anywhere in the system. If he brings it to the main asteroid field where—where Yemoja used to be before—before you destroyed it, we'll never find it." She hoped that Isembi assumed her hesitation to be due to stress at the situation.
Isembi hesitated. "Folami, I can't ask you to do that. It'll be suicide. You against who knows how many of these Nide—and without your body armor!"
"The suit's just a tool, my Oba. And there's no choice. The safety of the Hegemony is at stake."
In truth, Folami didn't give a damn about the safety of the Hegemony right now. What she wanted was revenge on Tobi and Oranmiyan and everyone else who made her remember what she'd worked so hard to forget.
She'd get that revenge, or die trying. Either way was fine with her at this point.
Isembi regarded her for several seconds.
Finally, he said, "Part of me is tempted to order you to return to Ife. The risks are too great for you to even attempt such a mission by yourself, especially without your armor—and for all that it's a tool, it's a vital one." Isembi leaned back, stroking his beard. "However, the risks are even greater if Ojiji is allowed to continue to operate. I hereby approve your mission, Folami. Good luck."
Folami was grateful that he'd given the order to go on the mission, as it saved her the trouble of disobeying an order not to. "Thank you, my Oba."
As soon as Isembi's face faded, the yawn that Folami had been stifling practically split her face in half. "Computer," she said when she was done, "medical supplies."
The screen lit up with a list of Ebun's impressive pharmacopeia. She pocketed two stimulants.
Setting a course back to Olokun at Ebun's minimum speed, she started cogitating on possible strategies. Her scan of Olugbanma had revealed that there were about a half-dozen Nide on Olokun, plus Tobi and his crew, plus additional support staff. And the station itself was embedded in a big rock, which made a direct approach difficult.
So she'd have to take an indirect approach. An Ori-Inu's best skill was the ability to move without being noticed. Without her armor, she couldn't engage in a formal stealth mode, but that didn't preclude her ability to move undetected.
"Computer, emergency supplies list."
As expected, Ebun had an EVA suit, with a two-hour air supply. Checking the size, she breathed a sigh of relief that she was unusually tall for her sex—and that Hembadoon was only of average height. The suit would fit her.
"Computer, portable armament."
That list was shorter than she'd been hoping, but Orisha didn't generally need much more than a sidearm. Luckily, he kept a spare Bayo pistol and lots of spare ammunition on board, plus Folami had the two Ayokas she'd liberated from Iwohu and Juhoke. There were also two grenades, which might prove handy.
After checking their ETA to Olokun's expected position, she said, "Computer, wake me in forty-seven minutes." Ebun would be in scanning range of Olokun in fifty-seven minutes, and Folami figured she wouldn't need more than ten minutes to get her plan ready.
Laying back in the pilot seat, she closed her eyes and hoped she could doze without nightmares.
THIRTEEN
L'owuro
Tobi sat in his cabin and sipped from a wide round glass filled with brandy. Tobi's choices in drinks always varied depending on his mood. If he was happy, he went for mead. If he was pensive, then he drank wine. If he was celebrating, he drank beer, simply becaus
e he liked to celebrate for a long time and beer had less of a deleterious effect on him. Tobi liked drinking, but didn't like to get drunk. Too much alcohol, and you lost control.
Tobi's survival depended on complete control.
When he was in a bad mood, that was when he opened the bottle of brandy. And his mood was particularly foul right now.
He stared at the wall filled with weapons he'd collected over the decades. It was an affectation, the gun collecting, one he'd begun not due to any great desire to collect hand weapons, but a desire to provide himself with a quirk, something to distract people from his true self.
In truth, the ritualized drinking was part of that as well. If people knew that he chose his alcohol based on mood, if they knew that he obsessively tracked down hand weapons, then they labored under the delusion that they knew who he was.
Of course, they had no idea.
He'd spent so many years building up War Chief Tobi that there were times that he almost forgot his true self.
That was why he kept Olokun Station mobile. This way it was always within reach, and he could remind himself who he really was.
He touched the intercom, which soon prompted the response: "Flight deck."
"Status report, Cavalryman."
"Consoles for navigation, tactical, and all scanning systems are fully repaired. Secondary consoles still under repair."
"Any sign of the Orisha ship?"
"Not as yet, sir."
Tobi snarled.
"Sir?"
"Nothing, Cavalryman. Out."
He stabbed the intercom control dolefully.
Damned Ori-Inu. Everything had been going so well until Folami was assigned to L'owuro.
At first, Tobi had been thrilled. Folami was a prime candidate for becoming a Nide, both because of her obscenely high telepathy level and because she was Isembi's pride and joy, his finest agent. By recruiting her to Ojiji, he would at once improve his own position and weaken his enemy's. Oranmiyan had also spoken highly of her, based on their time training together, and thought that he would be able to work with her to bring her over to their side.
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