Jin-Bennu

by Vivienne Savage

  It was a sadistic and twisted place to hide a weapon meant to destroy that unity. Worse, there was absolutely no way to disarm the bomb nestled within.

  The colorful sculpture stood in the atrium where the empress would soon arrive for the official opening ceremony. Already, people were seated in the neatly arranged chairs, reporters set up with their cameras all around the room. It was a momentous occasion, and one that would end in all-out war if she couldn't stop it in time.

  Mind still prickling from Alexander’s retaliation, she touched his hand gently and wore her apology openly. Now wasn’t the time to needle her only ally. We need to take both women out at the same time, Veryn whispered into her companion’s mind.

  I see Heshra near the refreshments. I’ll get her. You go find Gillian. We can bring them to the empty auditorium we passed by earlier. No one was guarding that door.

  All right. I’ll get her there. Be careful.

  Veryn wound her way through the gathering crowd, recognizing admirals, dignitaries, and even the man who would have taken the throne if she refused the position. Vittorio Vega chatted with a Lexar woman who looked ready to squash the man. Not far away, Ambassador Thalia sat with Ambassador Gantu.

  I have to save them. I have to warn them.

  Yet she could not. Any disturbance could result in an early detonation. She needed to find Gillian first.

  Thankfully, it didn’t take long. Gillian stood outside the atrium, gaze focused on the same fountain where they had seen Massui earlier. Now, the Lexar was nowhere in sight.

  “C’mon, Gillian, you shouldn’t be out here. I have a place we can sit and wait,” Veryn coaxed, gently circling one arm around the woman’s shoulders. Gillian didn’t resist, led as easily as a lamb to slaughter, her mind a quiet buzz that made Veryn nauseous. Someone had wiped the girl too hard, leaving nothing but her one instruction—press the button when the music starts.

  Alexander already had Heshra securely tied to a chair in the front row of the auditorium. Like Gillian, her mind was blank aside from instructions to stand and shout when the music began. To say that humans would suffer Lexar supremacy no longer.

  “Gillian has it. Help me look.”

  The detonator could be anything. They did everything but strip the woman’s clothes off, and she didn’t say a word until Veryn went to slide off her ring.

  “No, I need that,” Gillian said, desperation replacing her numbness.

  “I’ll hold onto it for you.”

  “But I need it. I need it! I need it!”

  Alexander crumpled the woman with one swift right hook. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped in her seat, clenched fist relaxing.

  Veryn quickly and carefully pulled off the ring. “You didn’t have to hit her.”

  “She would have drawn—” His gaze snapped toward the doorway, the final word falling from his lips slowly. “—attention.”

  “So she did. My, my, my. What naughty little pets we have.”

  The sound of Jin-Nassi’s voice sent trickles of ice down her spine. Immediately, her gaze searched for his twin, but Jin-Navi was nowhere in sight. Thank goodness for small favors. Veryn knew she stood no chance against the two of them together.

  The Lexar moved slowly, Massui not far behind him, coming down the other aisle. Two Lexar against two humans weren’t great odds—especially when she had no weapons.

  Then again, neither did they.

  Rather than wait, she opted to charge, grimly satisfied by the way Nassi’s eyes widened in surprise. He hadn’t expected resistance. Certainly not an attack. Using that to her advantage, she ducked beneath his swing, rolled through his legs, and as she came up behind him, she kicked out with one foot and sent him stumbling forward.

  “The bitch has claws,” he snarled, turning around to face her.

  Nassi’s gifts were a wrecking ball in psionic form, granting her copious forewarning to raise her own barriers. The mental attack still hit with tremendous force. His blow shoved her backward, scraping the heels of her pumps across the floor and tearing divots through the carpet. The moment the power dissipated to acceptable levels, she dropped her shields and retaliated. Her shockwave tore down the aisle, ripping the closest seats from their bases and reducing the wooden frames to splinters and upholstery. The Lexar grunted and stumbled back. Shards of wood protruded from his chest, but none appeared deep enough to slow him down.

  Motion at the edge of her vision told her Alexander and the women still lived. All she could do was pray he had the sense to run.

  “You have no hope against me.” Another blast obliterated Veryn’s shields and flipped her through the air. She tumbled helplessly end-over-end as psionic force subjected her to death by a thousand cuts. Hundreds of little agonies ignited across her skin, but no blood flowed from the imaginary wounds.

  Alexander called out her name, his call sounding miles away. Pain watered her eyes, and through blurred vision, she saw him charge the psychic only to wind up slammed against the wall.

  “Two pets put down. Two worthless dogs not worth the air they breathe.”

  Help him. She pressed the words at Massui as she struggled to her feet. If you care about him at all, save him!

  The hulking Lexar turned his gaze to her, jawline tight and eyes hard. No longer confined by the need to conceal her identity and power, she tore into his thoughts. A hotbed of self-disgust and resentment greeted her, emotional toxicity choking her within seconds.

  Massui didn’t agree with Vashta’s methods. He didn’t think of Alexander as inferior.

  He did not want his empress to die.

  Help the man who cares for you.

  Massui stepped behind Nassi, towering more than a foot over the smaller psychic. In a move that startled even Veryn, Massui twisted the other Lexar’s head in a full circle. Released from the psionic hold, Alexander fell to the floor choking and gasping in desperate gulps of air.

  “Go,” Massui growled. “I will get him to safety. Save the empress before Shavri and Vashta go through with their fool plan.”

  Veryn only hoped there was still time.

  Bennu watched from a cafe across the street as the human protesters grew in numbers. For the most part, it was peaceful, albeit loud, protest. Most ignored them, but security kept a quiet, wary watch on the group. Somehow, Jin-Navi had been smuggled into their ranks while his twin was nowhere to be seen. Bennu prayed to the gods that the other psychic wasn’t inside where he would be a threat to Veryn.

  A howl pierced the air, swinging Bennu’s attention away from the swelling crowd to Jin-Navi. Face tilted toward the sky, the Lexar held his head in both hands and bellowed a primal cry of rage. Psionic ripples ebbed off him in a wild, visual display.

  The crowd parted. Those who fled were blown forward. Bystanders frozen to the spot, disintegrated into red mist. The first guard to reach him snapped in half, torn apart by tidal forces he had no protection against.

  “Fuck.”

  He could think of only one thing that would set the Lexar off in so brutal a fashion.

  Without waiting, Bennu raced across the street, pushing through the crowd, and summoned the widest barrier he could, just in time to intercept a blast that would have decimated nearly half the group in the blink of an eye. Screams erupted, chaos ensued, and a stampede of bodies slammed against Bennu on both sides as the crowd dispersed in a wild panic. He held firm, weathering the forceful assaults, and when Navi let off, he channeled the force of his shield and slammed the other psychic into the pavement.

  A shot rang out, and one of the embassy guards fell. Santini walked forward with a blaster pistol in hand, his blank face and hyper-focused expression indicative of mental conditioning. The attack must have been his trigger, which meant Carin and Phillip would be next. Bennu was one man; he couldn’t protect everyone, and Navi was picking himself up off the ground.

  “Don’t kill him!” Bennu shouted to the guards arriving from the Embassy. “He’s been compelled. Get back now!�
��

  They had no reason to trust or listen to him, fear evident on their faces. The chaos behind him was a nightmare and exactly what Vashta wanted.

  “Bennu!” Navi roared. He was pain and fury incarnate, a tornado of twisted, dark emotions tortured by grief. Blue energy warped around his body from head to toe. He stomped a foot hard against the ground, followed by a thrust of his fist. The pavement beneath Bennu’s feet buckled, the road rippling like waves in the ocean.

  Humans were tossed from their feet, screaming and wailing in pain, too slow to outrun the attack. Bennu planted himself and held firm as Navi charged forward, faster than a male his size should be, steps enhanced by his psionic abilities. As they had on the ship before, they clashed together with fists and minds. His opponent was frenzied, completely out of control. Each time security tried to assist, Jin-Navi blew them back.

  Their fight brought them closer and closer to the embassy, until the next blast carried Navi through the glass walls into the foyer. Navi hit the ground, rolled, and leapt back to his feet without slowing. Alarms blared all around them.

  Bennu sensed an incoming blow from behind in time to avoid it, but the shift in his movements gave Navi an opening. A force-powered first slammed into Bennu’s jaw. Brilliant light wheeled behind his eyes, and he fought against unconsciousness.

  He came to full awareness a split second before Vashta’s khopesh was due to remove his head from his shoulders. Still mentally winded from the psychic beating he sustained, he jerked to the side in time to take a shallow nick to the neck. One inch off, and it would have cut clean through his jugular.

  Fuck.

  Get a hold of yourself.

  His first mistake had been underestimating the fury of a Lexar mourning his twin. The second error had been failing to notice Vashta closing in on him.

  Vashta’s fist came at his face, followed by a swing of her khopesh. Bennu’s rising forearm caught the blade against his vambrace. His other hand warped energy around his fist with enough power to send Navi crashing into the ceiling headfirst.

  It wouldn’t keep the Lexar down long, but it gave him a little breathing room to handle Vashta.

  “I should have known you were a plant. You lack the will to do what’s necessary,” Vashta spat. Her khopesh swung at his head, sparks flying off their blades as they met. She hit like a wyvern, hard and fast, no quarter given. His only advantage lay in his psionic abilities, but even those were next to worthless in close quarters against the disruptive field emanating from her weapon.

  “You have to stop this madness, Vashta. This is not the path of honor for our people. It is going backward.”

  “We were stronger then. The Zacaedy would never have gained so much ground if we hadn’t bowed to the human invaders.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “Were it not for the emperor and empress nurturing these ingrates, we could have destroyed the Zaecady. We would have won.”

  His enemy was beyond reason. Zealots could not be swayed, a fact he’d known from the beginning when he first embarked on the mission.

  Jin-Navi rejoined the fight, forcing Bennu to take the defensive against their combined forces. The echoing din of weapons fire penetrated the embassy from the streets beyond, security occupied with the chaos.

  Bennu wondered how many would die.

  How much fear and resentment would the loss of innocent lives inspire?

  It had to end here.

  He had not attained his place as Alpha without reason. He weaved in and out of their attacks, landing several of his own in a vicious dance of fending off physical strikes that whittled away at his psionic barriers. All he could do was keep them at bay until help arrived.

  As if answering his call, Veryn’s mind brushed his thoughts, her assurance gentler than an Eloran summer breeze.

  The moment she stepped into the fray, his heart stopped, not in fear but in awe of a simple realization. While Bennu was raw force and brutal power, Veryn’s talent manifested with complementary finesse. From the corner of his vision, he saw her tear the ground asunder and surround herself with pieces of tile and marble, creating a makeshift shield to ferociously hurl at her enemy.

  No longer trapped in a deadly game of Keepaway, Bennu redirected his focus. Vashta’s weapon shimmered past him in another close call, but he stole the opportunity to drive his fist into her midsection at the cost of scraping past her guard. Sparks flew and glinted blue as pricey Nova Force technology met armor. His vambrace shattered.

  Unwilling to waste the opportunity, he followed it with a combination punch. It rocked her backward off her feet, taking her entirely by surprise.

  Apparently, she’d been unprepared for Bennu to meet her with physical force.

  He capitalized on her failure by delivering a sharp elbow to Vashta’s face. Her guard dropped on the subsequent throat punch, allowing him to hurl her skyward and off balance. Telekinetic force launched her fallen weapon away.

  Finally.

  Vashta extended her gauntlet toward him and depressed a concealed button. Nearly a dozen spikes launched from it, tips glistening with a black substance. All but one pinged off the hasty shield, but one was enough. Within a second of penetrating his now bare forearm, the limb fell uselessly to his side.

  A coward’s move. A weapon for those who did not fight with honor.

  The anesthetizing agent spread down his arm, locking his elbow and finally freezing his fingers. Vashta grabbed him by that arm and hurled him across the room. He tumbled and landed in a heap.

  “You will die, and your name will forever be dishonored as a coward and traitor to your people.” She pulled a pistol from her armored vest and aimed.

  “No!” Veryn threw herself between them. Power erupted from her in a psionic shield so strong it nearly blinded him with its intensity. The blast from the pistol ricocheted off the barrier and struck Navi in the face. Soft tissue, bone, and cartilage exploded into a spray of blood and exposed brain matter.

  Fury contorted Vashta’s features as the remaining twin fell lifeless to the ground. She pounded against Veryn’s shield, forcing the human to her knees.

  “No,” Bennu said as he rose.

  Psionic powers were a versatile gift. With them, a psychic could lift a space shuttle. They could ward off a barrage of bullets. They could even heal the dying and stabilize their systems.

  And they could remove poison. This gift exploded through Bennu with his rising fury, obliterating the poison and sending sensation coursing through his arm once more. “You will not harm her.”

  Summoning all his mental strength, Bennu struck with another blast, the energy gaining strength as it passed through Veryn’s shields, as if her power enhanced his own. Vashta’s eyes flew wide as she hurtled across the room, striking a pillar with a wet snap of shattering bone. Unwilling to risk her recovery, he cracked her skull against it a second time for good measure.

  Veryn dropped her shield and knelt beside him. “Bloody hell. Bennu, are you all right?”

  “I will be fine, but this is not over. Not yet. Where is the empress? Nassi and the others?”

  “Nassi is dead, killed by Massui.”

  “And Khepri?”

  “Haven’t seen him or Shavri.”

  “Then we do not have a second to lose.”

  15

  Embassy lockdown procedures sealed attendees within the central atrium as standard protocol whenever alarms went off on government property. Bennu didn’t bother trying to find security to open the doors. He shredded them like tinfoil and walked through the new opening.

  Veryn hurried after him, barely able to keep up with his hastened stride. She had a brief second to assess the situation, to sweep her gaze over the diplomats and attendees cowering behind a handful of armed guards, before Bennu leapt over them and planted himself between Exarch Shavri and the empress, Vashta’s khopesh raised to the former’s throat.

  “It is over, Shavri. Vashta is dead. The twins are dead. Your plot is
dead.”

  “Alpha Jin-Bennu, explain yourself!” Empress Tal-Jin Maat demanded.

  “Forgive me, Empress, but the exarch is part of the plot against you. She came here this day to assassinate you with many others who have since been slain.”

  “How dare you?” Shavri hissed. “You have no right to accuse me.”

  Tension filled the room; too many guns trained on Bennu for Veryn’s comfort. Without taking her eyes from the spectacle in the center of the room, she maneuvered closer to Ambassador Thalia.

  “Call the guards off Alpha Jin-Bennu, Thalia, please.”

  “Under whose authority?”

  “Mine, Princess Veryn Barclay, authorization code seven-Zulu-three-five-Sierra-niner-Sierra-one-niner-Juliet-whiskey-foxtrot.”

  Thalia’s eyes widened. “Guards, lower your weapons and stand by.”

  “But ma’am—”

  “Do it!” she snapped.

  The empress looked over, a bastion of tranquility in the otherwise tense room.

  “I demand an explanation and proof. You accuse an exarch, a most serious charge.”

  “He would say anything to save his own skin,” Shavri said. “We have irrefutable proof that he is the one who freed Jin-Navi and Jin-Nassi from their imprisonment. There is nothing to tie me to this attack.”

  “But there is,” Veryn spoke up, “and I can prove it.”

  With a psionic blast, she hurled the priceless unity sculpture from its pedestal and sent it crashing to the floor, a tightly held shield preventing any shards from travelling any farther than two feet. There, amidst the shattered quartz, lay the spherical bomb.

  “Empress, isn’t it true that Exarch Shavri delivered this sculpture personally as a gift for the embassy?” Veryn had gleaned that tidbit during her earlier tour of the building, listening to the various conversations in the room.