Dgarra hesitated. “I thought so at first. But I have seen her fight and kill Kasari and their allies. And during the last battle the Kasari were trying to capture her with net-projectiles. In point of fact, I believe her capture was the primary objective of that attack. That makes no sense if she is Kasari. She is not of them.”
His uncle’s brow furrowed as he rubbed his chin in contemplation.
“Perhaps not.”
Then the emperor stood and smiled down at him.
“Get strong, Nephew. I will have someone check on this slave of yours.”
What should have taken hours had turned into weeks of frustration. For Raul, confined aboard the Rho Ship, that frustration had morphed into a desperate loneliness and then into deep depression. Something was wrong with the subspace velocity and acceleration calculations and he couldn’t figure it out, despite the awesome computing power that augmented his brain. If Jennifer were here to help him, they could solve these problems together. There would be someone whom he could bounce ideas off of, someone to listen to.
Sometimes, as the endless hours ticked away, he thought he heard her voice, as if it echoed into the command bay from somewhere way back in engineering or from the crawlways beneath the main deck. At these times, he would wander through the ship, mindlessly searching every nook and cranny. He could have used the worm-fiber viewers, but he’d begun to distrust what they were showing him, just as he’d come to distrust the neural net’s calculations. What if the ship didn’t want him to find the answers he so desperately needed? What if it was keeping something from him?
A growing fear had come to dominate his thoughts. Each attempt to calibrate the subspace speed and acceleration calculations required a test and each test incurred danger. That danger was made worse by the fact that he seemed to be getting no closer to a solution.
He hadn’t really expected the Rho Ship to react to the subspace drive in a linear fashion. But he needed some clue as to why the acceleration curve would be different every time he tried it, even though he was generating precisely the same subspace-field undulation patterns.
He kept repeating to himself, “Big sky, little stars,” knowing that it was true. There was very little chance that his wild jumps through subspace would land him in the middle of a star or a planet. But that first encounter with the red giant had scared him so badly that he felt like he was playing Russian roulette and that on the next try the hammer would fall on a nonempty cylinder.
Bang . . . you’re dead. Thank you, contestant number one. Better luck next time.
Several times he was tempted to give up on faster-than-light travel through subspace. After all, he could use the Rho Ship’s gravity distortion drives to generate a wormhole, plunge through it, and then shift into subspace to provide the inertial damping he required to survive. But that alone wouldn’t give him the technological edge he would need to evade the Kasari around Scion. And he needed to do that in order to have any chance of getting Jennifer back. Because without her, he would continue his journey through escalating paranoia to insanity.
One day, as he prowled the narrow corridors of the engineering bay, searching for the source of that barely perceived voice, a new idea occurred to Raul.
Why not use the neural net to create a simulation of Jennifer? An avatar.
Yes, he knew that she wouldn’t be real, but he wouldn’t be quite so alone. An avatar based on her observed personality would provide him with a foil for any new thoughts and ideas he might come up with. And it might drown out the voice that was driving him crazy. To keep his head on straight, he could even call her VJ, short for Virtual Jennifer.
With revived hope, Raul immersed himself in this new project, clinging to this lifeline as if his very soul depended on it.
At last. The day had finally come. Jennifer felt an excited tension spread through her body. The overseer and guards seemed distracted, almost at ease. Perhaps it was good news from the battlefront. Maybe it was some sort of Koranthian holiday spirit, but animated conversations sprang up among the guards and the lash fell less often, even on those slaves who struggled to pull their weight. Although she’d gotten much better at empathically interpreting and influencing Koranthian feelings, she still hadn’t gotten comfortable enough with their alien thought patterns to ascertain the precise reason behind their heightened expectations.
Jennifer didn’t care what had excited them. What she did care about was the likelihood that she would soon get her chance for freedom. The steps had to be taken in rapid sequence, one that she mentally rehearsed as she went about her tasks. Kill the overseer with a precise blow to the throat, grab his controller and blaster, release all shock collars, kill the three guards, and hijack the partially loaded train. She would use the train to get as close as possible to the surface, abandoning the vehicle only when forced to do so. After that, she would fight and gain her freedom or she would die in the attempt.
The overseer strolled slowly back and forth along the loading docks and from the corner of her eyes, Jennifer watched him and calculated. By adjusting her pace very slightly as she heaved heavy ammunition cases and bags of provisions onto her shoulders and carried them to the railcars, she would end up passing within six feet of the overseer. Three more round trips delivering her burdens and it would happen.
She focused, letting her mind slip into his, stoking his elevated mood as she relaxed his thoughts. Two more trips. The Koranthian almost looked pleased, which was rare to see in the camp. She tossed another two-hundred-pound load onto the train and returned to the far side of the platform and hefted another of the bags up onto her shoulder. This was it. The last of these loads she would ever deliver.
But when she turned, her whole world twisted inside out.
General Dgarra was still weak, but not such an invalid that they could keep him in the hospital. Nor could they keep him in the palace, or even the capital city. So he sat on a troop transporter, an electric railcar with web seating that faced inward along both sides. On a normal trip the warriors would face each other across a central aisle that was piled high with their individual gear and weapons. Today, except for himself and his captain, the craft was empty.
Word that the Smythe slave had been located had come to him this morning and he’d insisted that he be the one to collect her and return her to ArvaiKheer. At first his uncle had balked at this demand, but when Dgarra refused to see reason, the emperor had finally thrown up his hands and stalked off, muttering something about the thickness of his nephew’s skull leaving little room for brains.
For several hours, the two-car train rumbled along the narrow rails, the headlight spearing the darkness as the clatter echoed through the endless maze of tunnels. Occasionally they passed a train bound in the opposite direction. Nothing unusual. This was his home.
Eventually his captain’s handheld communicator vibrated and the warrior glanced down at it.
“Sir, we’re approaching our destination.”
Dgarra nodded. An unexpected anticipation tensed his body. What was it about this slave that disturbed him so? She had saved him when she had every reason to make a run for freedom during the confusion of the battle. He had released her collar, but she had carried him to safety, and at great personal cost. So many unanswered questions. Was it any wonder that she fascinated him?
The train rumbled into an artificial cavern that formed a major tunnel junction, slowing to a stop at the loading platform. General Dgarra made his way to the door and stepped out. Seeing the general, the slave overseer abandoned what he had been doing and strode rapidly to meet him.
But it was the slave who stood just beyond the scurrying overseer who caught Dgarra’s gaze. Smythe. He had found her.
The overseer saluted and said something that Dgarra didn’t catch. The general ignored him, his weakened stride carrying him toward the human female. The weeks of hard labor had changed her. She was lean and hard, the muscles in her bare arms looking like rolled wire as she turned toward him, her brow
n eyes wide with shock. Dgarra wondered what his own expression looked like. At the moment he couldn’t really feel his face.
Stopping in front of her, his eyes gazed down at her shock collar. Then he turned to face the flustered overseer who had been trailing behind. Everyone, slave and guard alike, had stopped to stare at the general.
“Remove this slave’s collar, immediately.”
The overseer stood gaping as if frozen in place.
“Now!”
The growl in Dgarra’s voice awakened the overseer and he fumbled with the device. The collar popped open and clattered to the platform at Smythe’s feet.
“I don’t understand,” she said, staring up at him. “What . . .”
“Put down the sack. You’re coming with me.”
As he led her back to the railcar, he could feel the astonishment of all the others on the platform. But oddest of all was the way his own pulse pounded his arteries, something he felt only at the height of battle. A very good feeling indeed.
CHAPTER 20
Jack Gregory sat cross-legged near the head of the bed. Janet watched him from a reading chair on the opposite side of the room. He’d accepted that this was necessary, although the memory of the long struggle he’d endured as he fought to regain his self-control didn’t make it any easier. The sight of Janet’s beautiful face watching him did. Her gaze was filled with quiet desperation, and he’d walk into hell itself to put a smile back in those eyes.
Good thing. That was pretty much what he was about to do.
It had been more than a decade since he’d last used the meditation technique that took him into the lucid dreaming state. The Abramson method. As dangerous as it was effective.
Closing his eyes, Jack centered and allowed the familiar meditation to free his mind.
When the dream came, it engulfed him with a suddenness that almost startled him awake, but he let the feeling wash through him without latching onto it. And thus his reality shifted.
A pea soup fog cloaked the street, trying its best to hide the worn paving stones beneath Jack’s feet. He was in London, but it had a distinct nineteenth-century feel—and not in a good way. It didn’t surprise him. The fog concealed what he had come here to find.
He stepped forward, his laced desert combat boots moving through wisps of fog. Long, cool, steady strides. A narrow alley to his left beckoned and he didn’t fight its call. He didn’t look back, but he felt the entrance dwindle behind him as he walked. To either side, an occasional door marred the walls that connected one building to the next, rusty hinges showing just how long it had been since anyone last opened them. It didn’t matter. His interest lay in the dark figure who suddenly blocked his path.
Long ago, Khal Teth had returned Jack from the brink of death but had also come along for the ride. A being capable of seeing all possible timelines, he had driven Jack to the brink of insanity. Janet had helped Jack forge an agreement with Khal Teth that shuttered the Altreian in a secluded part of his mind. Now, the thought of what he was about to undo left Jack cold.
No longer wearing the familiar hooded cloak he’d worn during their first several encounters, Khal Teth stood alone and unmoving, his face handsome and disturbing. His skin was mottled red and black with the hint of what appeared to be gill slits down the sides of his neck, his small ears swept back and pointed. But what stood out most were his eyes. Whereas Jack had always thought them hidden in deep sockets, they were large and black, as if the lenses were all pupil. Within those black orbs, flickers of red and orange danced.
When Khal Teth spoke, his voice was a deep rumble.
“Hello, Jack. I’ve been expecting you for quite some time.”
Jack felt the old anger flare.
“I noticed you made no attempt to warn me of what was about to happen.”
“Does the lie burn your tongue as you speak it? You stopped listening long ago.”
The thought of his unremembered dreams shook Jack with the realization that Khal Teth was telling a truth he didn’t want to hear. For a moment the emotional storm threatened to pull him from this dream that was more than a dream. But he released it, letting the storm blow past as if it were nothing more than a gentle breeze.
“I want to modify our agreement,” Jack said. “Restore our connection.”
A smile that held little mirth spread across Khal Teth’s face, those eyes suddenly glowing more brightly as if they were trying to burn their way into Jack’s soul.
“There is a price to be paid.”
“I agreed to your price a long time ago.”
“Yes. But now the conditions have changed.”
Jack had known this would happen before he began the meditation. Instead of a former member of the Altreian High Council, Khal Teth could have been a Persian rug merchant. Jack began to have some sympathy for those who banished Khal Teth’s mind from his Altreian body all those millennia ago.
“Tell me.”
“There will come a time when, together, we will have a chance to take back that which is mine. You are aware how, millennia ago, the Altreian High Council imprisoned my body in a chrysalis cylinder, robbed me of my memories, and cast my mind into the void. The chrysalis cylinder blocks me from my own body, but it cannot block you. You helped me regain my memories. Soon, there will come a chance to swap your mind from this human body into my body on Altreia. But for that, we will need to recover the Altreian artifact that you once almost had in your grasp.”
The revelation stunned Jack, unleashing the meaning behind all his partially remembered dreams of the Kalasasaya Temple. “The Incan Sun Staff!”
Khal Teth’s chuckle was a deep rumble in his chest. “Once that is done, your mind can use my body to escape from the chrysalis cylinder. And then I will be free to return. Ironic, do you not think? You will become the rider and I the ridden.”
“I agreed to that a decade ago,” said Jack.
“Yes, but only at the moment of your death. I am no longer willing to wait that long.”
Jack hesitated, then countered. “I won’t leave my family and friends to fight what is coming alone.”
“Nor do I expect you to. I assure you that it will be a moment of mutual benefit, a moment of self-sacrifice that you will willingly agree to.”
Jack could almost feel his real body swallow. As he stared into those marvelously active eyes, he slowly nodded his head.
“Then we have an agreement.”
Khal Teth stepped forward and extended his hand, placing his palm in the center of Jack’s forehead. Then, as the dreamscape dissolved around him, the echo of Khal Teth’s deep laugh followed Jack into another dream.
Jack floated disembodied, once again entering into the childhood memory of Eduardo Montenegro, the Colombian assassin also known as El Chupacabra.
The blackness closed in around the boy so thickly it muffled sound. Eduardo sat alone on a crumbling concrete step, hearing a low whimpering sound. His small hand reached out blindly before him. Where was he?
The damp smell of mildew seemed vaguely familiar, as did the whimpering, which had grown louder. His hand touched the wall to his left. Damp mud.
Lima! He was back in his mother’s cellar! But this time he wasn’t alone. There in the darkness, two flaming eyes stared back at him with a demonic hunger that leached the strength from his legs, turning them to rubber. And those eyes were coming closer.
Eduardo suddenly identified the source of the whimpering. The sound was coming from his own throat.
He scrambled backward, his hands thrust out before him, but his foot caught the edge of the step, sending him tumbling to the muddy floor. As he rolled back to his feet, Eduardo’s terrified eyes searched the darkness. Something touched his shoulder.
“Anchanchu!”
The scream escaped his lips as he stumbled away from that touch. As the boy cowered in a corner of the muddy cellar, Jack watched and wondered.
Why had Khal Teth thrust him back into this dream memory? Eduardo was long de
ad. Janet had made very sure of that. She’d been pregnant with Robby when the assassin had caught and tortured her.
Then it hit him. This wasn’t about Eduardo. This was about Robby.
Jack opened his eyes and climbed out of bed. Across the room, Janet rose from the chair, her eyes wide and questioning.
“Get Mark and Heather and gear up. We’re leaving. I’ll let Tall Bear know.”
Janet gasped in relief. “You know where Robby is!”
There should have been some doubt in his mind, but there wasn’t. Jack shrugged into his utility vest and nodded.
“Robby’s in Lima. He’s in trouble.”
Janet was out the door before Jack finished speaking. As he checked his weapon, Jack felt his jaws clench. They were going to get their son.
It was night when Daniil Alkaev exited the private jet and stepped down onto the tarmac of Jorge Chávez International Airport in Callao, Peru, accompanied by Galina Anikin. Armed with diplomatic papers that identified them as consultants from the UFNS Federation Security Service, they were met by Falcón Gutierrez, a member of the Peruvian Ministry of Defense, and whisked away in three waiting vehicles, bypassing customs entirely.
The change in destination from Bolivia to Peru had come late in the day, causing a scramble to make the arrangements for their reception. As usual, Alexandr Prokorov had pulled it off. Few people impressed Daniil, but when it came to pulling the strings of power, Prokorov headed the list. His intelligence sources had come to the conclusion that their targets were on the move in Lima and so that was where Daniil and company would make their play.
When the cars pulled up to the villa where they would be staying, Falcón led them inside and handed over a packet of keys.
“Everything is in order for your stay, my friends,” Falcón said, sweeping a hand in a welcoming gesture. “My people will carry your bags up to your rooms. As for transportation, there are three sedans in the garage. You already have the keys.”
The Kasari Nexus (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 1) Page 24