As conversations spontaneously broke out, Kaid could feel the group beginning to fragment into its different factions of loyalties. He needed to bring them together now, once and for all.
“Enough!” he said, raising his voice to a command pitch. All conversation stopped, and eyes turned again to him. “There are no Valtegans on Shola now,” he said. “Rezac’s right. They’re gone, and it was the telepaths who did it.” Having gotten their attention, he moderated his tone a little. “The first team were sent to find out what they could from the crashed ship, because we still don’t know where their home world is. The Chemerians controlled access to this sector, we couldn’t come without their consent and they only consented because they wanted the Valtegan craft investigated. Once the first trip was made, matters changed.”
He grinned, a toothy, Human grin that made even Jo shiver, he noticed. “With our visit, we now hold the upper hand. The Chemerians’ duplicity has been proved beyond doubt. They were playing the Free Traders off against the Alliance, keeping knowledge of them and the trading world of Jalna to themselves. Even those Sumaan employed by them were prohibited from talking about Jalna. No longer.”
“I can tell you why they were afraid of you,” said Rezac, sitting back against the bed head. “Racial memory. The survivors would have programmed their descendants to respond to us as a threat.”
“Racial memory?” T’Chebbi spoke for the first time.
“Yes. They never forget anything of importance. They pass it down from generation to generation.”
“How?” asked Kaid. Such unilateral species fear of an enemy such as the Military Forces on Keiss had met in the Valtegans could only really be accounted for by just such a system.
“The females and the drones. They croon over their eggs, licking and handling them until they’re ready to hatch, then they go feral again. If they aren’t separated in time, they’ll destroy the hatchlings as they emerge. I saw it happen once.”
Even with his shields up, Kaid could feel the horror of the memory that Rezac still carried. He glanced at Jo, seeing her get up and move over to the youth’s side, reaching out to touch him comfortingly. Rezac accepted her gesture gratefully, taking hold of her hand. For all his brashness, it seemed his father was learning to cope with needing a female better than he was.
“How?” he asked again.
“In their saliva or something,” Rezac said. “I don’t know for sure, but it’s a fair guess.”
“How do the females get the memories in the first place if they’re kept in breeding areas?” asked Tesha.
“The drones look after them. I presume they’re given the memories by the warrior caste to pass on to the females.”
“Drones? What drones?” asked T’Chebbi before he could.
“They have three sexes. The androgynous drones are the most passive and they fulfill the domestic roles our females do in Sholan society. They’re a light brown, not green like the other two sexes.”
T’Chebbi gave a snort of amusement from her position opposite the door. “You got surprise coming when we get home if females in your time like that!”
Kaid frowned at her before returning his attention to Rezac. “We know nothing of the drones. Tell us more.”
“They were unimportant,” said Rezac with a shrug of indifference. “Asexual servants, general domestics, they looked after the females and were used by the males for sex, not reproduction. They went in with the guards to retrieve the eggs before they hatched.” His ears visibly lowered as he shuddered.
“Why were you shown a hatching?” asked Kaid. He had to probe the memory now, had to learn what he could about their enemy.
Rezac looked up at him, catching his gaze. “They showed us what would happen to us if Zashou ever turned down the Emperor’s advances again,” he said bleakly. “Food for the hatchlings.”
Bright and clear, the scene burned itself into Kaid’s mind, merging with what he’d seen so long ago when under the influence of the Valtegan drug la’quo that Ghezu had given him. Images of ravenous young, clawing and snapping at each other in their desperate hunger, filled his mind. Shutting his eyes, he shook his head to dispel them.
“Enough! I’ve seen them for myself!” he said, his voice raw. “Tell me how you came to be in the cube.”
“Once the rebellion in the palace had begun, they forgot us. We ran, heading for the breeding room to release the females to cause even more confusion, but we took a wrong turn and met a patrol. They chased us into a lab area, and we knew nothing more until Jo, Kris, and Davies awakened us on Jalna.”
“It was a weapons lab. They must have been testing a containment unit or something,” said Zashou.
“We were lucky,” said Rezac, his hand tightening around Jo’s. “Even if we’ve come forward in time to face them again, we were lucky.”
“Jalna and the laalquoi,” said Kaid quietly, aware that there would be many more nightmares for Rezac and Zashou to relive before they were done. “What’s the connection?”
“They use the plant as a dietary staple, the hardened resin and a narcotic made from the plant to control the females as well as several of the slave races,” said Rezac. “They were beginning to farm it on Shola when we were taken. They must have done the same on Jalna.”
“For the Jalnians even now to have one stone for each person is massive farming,” said T’Chebbi. “More like they used world as farm.”
“Jalna is lightly populated when compared to most colony worlds,” said Kaid. “Could the plant have been native there?”
“No, it’s a Valtegan plant,” said Rezac. “About the only vegetation they do eat. It gives them chemicals and stuff they can’t produce themselves. They must have introduced it to Jalna. They had four worlds of their own, Kaid, plus the Gods know how many slave worlds. We saw at least two other species on K’oish’ik.”
Kaid repeated the word. “K’oish’ik.” At last they had a name for the world that had spawned the Valtegans. He caught Rezac’s gaze this time. “Any like these?” he asked, visualizing first a Chemerian, then a Touiban. “Or this?” Lastly, a Sumaan.
Rezac blinked and sat back abruptly in shock, banging his head on the wall behind him. Jo gave a small cry of pain and put her hands to her temples.
“You shouldn’t be able to do that! No one can get through my shielding!” exclaimed Rezac, shocked.
“Were there any like them?” Kaid wasn’t interested in Rezac’s bruised ego: the shields had been almost nonexistent as far as he was concerned. He needed to know if the other Alliance species had ever been part of the Valtegans’ empire. An ability to force a mental contact had its uses.
“None,” Rezac growled angrily. “Nor any like the Jalnians or Humans! But you’ve no right to force a contact on me like that. Dammit, you could have asked! It affected Jo as well!”
“I hope you don’t intend to do the same to the rest of us,” said Taynar stiffly. “Brotherhood member or not, you’re breaking the laws in violating the mental privacy of another being.”
Kaid could hear the quaver of fear in the lad’s voice and regretted his hastiness in dealing with Rezac. “You did the same to Tirak,” he reminded Taynar.
“War breaks rules,” said T’Chebbi. “Know from experience, need to catch you when memory fresh. If asked, you start thinking, memory fades.”
As Rezac subsided, Kaid glanced past him at her, twitching the tip of an ear in recognition that he owed her.
“It’s not something I do often,” said Kaid.
“Four worlds of Valtegans!” said Jeran quietly. “The odds are almost impossible. We saw the fleet that came to our world, Kaid. It was massive. How can we possibly defend ourselves against them even if we have gained another three allies? Rezac and those like him may have done it once, but there’s so few high level telepaths, and we’ve lost all those on Khyaal and Szurtha!”
“They did it with fewer in Rezac’s time,” said Kaid automatically.
“They weren’t afra
id of us then,” said Zashou, the beads in her many braids chiming as she pushed them back.
Kaid hardly heard her as Vartra’s words echoed in his mind. To beat the Valtegans, you’ll need to make a pact with the Liege of Hell Himself. He looked at T’Chebbi, wondering again if he’d already committed Shola and themselves to just such a pact by signing the interim treaties with Tirak and Annuur. Then he saw her move her hand fractionally, signaling a negative. She might not yet know the details of the treaty, but she knew danger, and was letting him know that she still sensed nothing concrete.
He pushed aside his unease. Hardly begun, this journey was already too full of portents and visions and feelings of danger. The world of awakened psychic senses was still too new to him; he wished he’d had longer to come to terms with it. Suddenly, acutely, he missed Carrie; he longed for the presence of her mind, calming and reassuring. And Kusac, who’d become the brother he’d never had—he, who’d needed no one for so long, felt more isolated than he had in Ghezu’s prison. Instinctively, his hand reached for the crystal at his neck as he pushed the loneliness aside. There was work to do, he must focus on that.
Taking a breath to steady himself, he looked at the small group of survivors from the massacre. “Jeran, despite what they did at Khyaal and Szurtha, I believe the Valtegans are not after us,” he said. “In the past, they were driven from Shola, as you say. But in our time, they were driven from Keiss by us and the Humans, and with no reprisals. They left Jalna, too, perhaps before they originally came to Shola. Something more important to them than us or empire building seems to have their full attention for the moment.”
“And when they look elsewhere?” demanded Tallis, his narrow face looking more pinched than usual as he frowned. “What then, Kaid?”
“Then we will meet them with a force made up of not only the Alliance, but the Free Traders,” said Kaid calmly. “Remember that they still call in at Jalna. The Free Traders may one day have as much reason to fear them as we do. Rezac, Jo, why do you think they left Jalna?”
“Same reason we had to, I assume,” said Rezac. “They poisoned the soil, turned the natives too violent to handle. They might even have been affected by it themselves.”
“Perhaps we can fashion some of that plant from Jalna into a Valtegan specific weapon—a chemical weapon,” said Kate.
“Weapons of that type should be banned by all our worlds,” objected Zashou. “To use something like that would be barbaric!”
Around his shoulders, Jeran’s sand-colored hair began to rise. “So is destroying all life on two worlds. When facing an enemy so dedicated to eradicating us as a species, I’m sorry, but I’ll use anything that comes to hand!”
“The decision wouldn’t be ours anyway,” said Kaid. A thought occurred to him. “Kate, Taynar, how many of your ship’s navigation charts did the Valtegan officer who kidnapped you see?”
“Some,” Taynar said. “Jeezah, our pilot, managed to wipe the majority of the charts before he realized what she was doing, but we did use one of the outer sector ones showing the jump points. He was definitely heading for a friendly base.”
“Then we know a Valtegan base is reachable from the Chemerian homeworld,” said Kaid quietly. “Rezac, did you ever see star charts, either yourself or through one of your telepathic contacts?”
“No. We weren’t interested in the location of craft or worlds except for wanting to know where the rest of the fleet was. Our people took over the bridges and used the craft as weapons within the fleet to destroy them, get them fighting against each other.”
“You did a commendable job. Then unless they’ve been collecting the salvage, there should be graveyards of dead ships floating around. And as far as we’re aware, no Alliance member has ever come across them,” murmured Kaid, thinking of the four Brotherhood outposts and the craft found there two hundred and fifty years ago.
“What about the Free Traders?” asked T’Chebbi. “Maybe they find what we haven’t.”
“Worth asking Tirak,” agreed Kaid. “But the Chemerians might be more useful. Since they’ve kept this,” he indicated the whole ship with a sweep of his arm, “from us, what else have they concealed? Tirak said his people are only allowed to approach Tuushu Station on one, specific, guarded route. They don’t have free access to the Chemerian system. They’re just as secretive with the Free Traders as they are with us.”
“I want to know why the Valtegans visit Jalna every fifty years to take soil and plant samples,” said Jeran.
“To see when it’s free of poison,” said T’Chebbi. “Then they can come back.”
Rezac shifted uneasily. “But why leave the other species alone, let them trade there? It doesn’t make sense. They have to control and dominate wherever they go. This is so unlike them.”
“They had four worlds. Perhaps these ones from another world,” said T’Chebbi. “Perhaps still fighting each other.”
“Or the original slave worlds,” suggested Zashou.
“Could be either,” said Kaid. “If they lost their tech level as we did, perhaps their Empire was split. They could have just rediscovered each other and be fighting among themselves for dominance. It would explain the lack of interest in finding our home world.”
“But why destroy our two colonies?” asked Tesha.
“The best theory so far is that they formed part of a corridor in space that ends at Keiss,” said Kaid. “Unfortunately, projecting it in the opposite direction hasn’t led to anything interesting. When you look at a holo map of those sectors of space, it becomes more obvious. Khyaal and Szurtha were just in their way, nothing more.”
“Figures,” growled Rezac. “It’s the kind of thing they would do. Destroy what they couldn’t use in case it was a threat to them.”
“Doesn’t explain Jalna, though,” said T’Chebbi.
Kaid’s attention began to drift. They could speculate all they wanted, but the hard fact was none of them knew anything for sure. He scratched unconsciously at his throat: he felt uncomfortable, itchy. The longer pelt was beginning to irritate him more now than before, but the lab’s potions would remain effective for several weeks yet, both in his black coloring and the length of his pelt. Showers were fine, but what he needed was a good brushing to get rid of some of the denser, inner fur. It had been well over a week since either he or T’Chebbi had had time for such luxuries.
* * *
Carrie slept the sleep of winter, her body, like the ground, lying rimed with frost, her thoughts stopped between one impulse and the next. No one dreams in cryo.
Slowly, slowly, the images began to form within her calm world, taking on harder edges, emerging from the frozen mists that seemed to surround her. She saw a patchwork of forests and plains, leading toward the coast, a coast she knew well. Wait. There was a patch, a stain on the land: a greenness too bright for grass or forest. Almost iridescent, it crept away from the Taykui Hills, migrating toward the forest that surrounded her home. In her mind, she frowned, brows furrowing as she watched and tried to remember where she’d seen such a color before. But thoughts came slowly in this world of cold mists.
The stain inched forward toward the tree line that marked the boundary of their estate and there it stopped for the moment while she fought against the insidious chill, trying to remember. When it began to move again, the memory flooded back. It was as green as the drug la’quo that Kezule had used to travel through time!
She could hear the sound of her cub crying. Kashini! She’d left her daughter alone! Hard on its heels came the memory of her own mother in cryo on the outward trip to Keiss, the trip that had cost so many lives.
“Mother! Don’t leave me!” she’d cried out to the silence of the sleeping ship.
She’d tried to move, to scream—anything to draw attention to herself, let them know her mother needed their help as she relived her first cryo nightmare. Terror flooded through her as she realized she was just as powerless, just as trapped as before—and just as aware of the threat
to her daughter as she’d been of the danger to her mother those many years ago.
Pain lanced through her, burning, searing pain in her right side as she became aware of the distant sound of a klaxon. The realization she was in a cryo chamber came to her then, shocking and terrifying her more if it were possible. Then common sense took over: they must be waking her, how else could she feel the pain of her wound? Let them be quick, she prayed as she pushed the fear back. They had to know that Kezule was loose and heading for her daughter!
* * *
The klaxon roused Mrowbay from his desk. Leaping to his feet, he ran for the cryo units, yelling out a command for the alarm to cease, demanding a report from the medical computer.
“Life signs of patient in unit one fluctuating above acceptable limit,” the electronic voice intoned. “Recommend increasing anaesthetic and coolant levels.”
“Implement,” snapped the medic, punching a sequence out on the control panel of Carrie’s unit to review the errant readings.
* * *
Perception blurred and slowed as the frozen mists began to rise around her again. Not waking her at all, they were making her sleep! In desperation, she reached out with her mind for Kaid. He was her Third, mentally Linked to her and Kusac, he’d sense what was happening and intervene to help her!
* * *
Moments before the klaxon sounded, Kaid stiffened, reaching for the crystal at his throat—not the large one that linked him with Carrie, but the smaller one in the center of his Triad pendant. He knew instantly something was wrong with her.
“T’Chebbi, take over,” he said, rising to his feet and walking to the door. “I have to attend to something.”
In the passageway, he broke into a run. Mrowbay looked up from Carrie’s unit as he entered the sick bay, claws skidding on the floor as he came to an abrupt stop beside him.
“What’s up?” Kaid demanded of the large U’Churian without preamble as he peered through the transparent cover at the sleeping Human. “And don’t tell me, nothing, I know better. I sensed her.” He put his hand on the unit, spreading his fingers, willing himself to feel her mind once more within his.
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