Rebel Alliances (Targon Tales Book 3) Page 4

“Yes, no distortion. He’s sending the sample paragraphs. Still has a weird mechanical feel to it. No inflection, really.”

  He reached up to adjust something on the scanner suspended over her head. “Remember that you’re talking through a processor. The machines, no doubt, have considerable trouble relaying your and Captain Luce’s, ah, verbal idiosyncrasies.”

  Shit.

  What?

  Nothing. Testing idiosyncrasies.

  Stick to the script, Luce.

  “Switch languages. Try Centauri,” she was instructed.

  “We have been, Doctor.”

  He peered at his screen. “Hmm, pattern is the same. Delphian?”

  My Delphian is an embarrassment compared to yours, Luce admitted, using a Feydan dialect. How’s this?

  “He doesn’t speak Delphian. Using Feyd.”

  “Fine.” The doctor and his colleagues tinkered with their equipment and conversed quietly as if Nova was no more significant than one of the rodents in their lab.

  While Luce continued to talk about nothing, Nova’s eyes wandered to the Shantir standing apart from the others. Like his brethren, he wore the traditional blue vest and gathered trousers preferred by the senior members of his sect. His hair was nearly black, hinting at an advanced age that his face did not. The Delphian was observing her without expression and the unblinking gaze from his blue eyes was beginning to unnerve her.

  You’re not in my head, are you? she tried.

  What? Luce returned. Of course I am.

  Not you. There’s a Shantir staring at me. Creepy. I keep thinking he’s hearing what we’re saying.

  Did he touch your interface?

  No.

  Then don’t worry about it. You’d know if he was in your head, wouldn’t you?

  Yeah. But the Shantirs aren’t exactly like your average Delphian.

  Well, you’d know better than any of us. Luce sent a mental shrug but also an implied, rather lewd suggestion regarding her contact with the average Delphian.

  Watch it, you.

  “All right,” another technician switched to a different and no less complex-looking apparatus. “One more test beyond surface communication.”

  “What do you mean?” Nova asked the Caspian that had spoken.

  Sao Lok turned his sleek, alien face toward her. His lab coat gaped to reveal a body covered in short hair much like that of the Terran horses bred on Feyd. It was richly patterned in shades ranging from blond to deep brown and so fine and dense on his face that it was barely visible. The intricate markings flanked his long nose and spread out over his forehead and elongated skull. His people disliked to wear clothes at all and did so only when among other species, as here on Dannakor. Lok had chosen a plain kilt for modesty. Nothing covered the outsized three-toed Caspian feet complete with barbaric claws. His hands, in contrast, were small, nimble and endowed with an additional thumb.

  He turned off the com link to the distant cruiser so that they could not be overheard. “Try to look past Captain Luce’s verbal communication to see if you can pick up anything that he’s thinking.”

  “Isn’t that kind of rude?” Nova said. Even her telepathic exchanges with Tychon did not ever exceed the boundaries of what they wished to exchange. Her thoughts were her own and neither of them ever pried beyond ‘surface communication’.

  “That opinion depends on whose brain you’re prying into,” he said dryly. “I’m sure Captain Luce doesn’t mind sharing his thoughts.”

  Nova returned his smile. Sao Lok’s presence on the project had offered welcome and surprising relief from the tedium here. She had come to know the Caspian over the past few days as their casual chats had turned into long conversations about their vastly different worlds. His wry humor was considerably broader than his colleagues’ and she enjoyed the conspiracy that had sprung up between them to eke out a little fun among the tests and experiments. He knew well that she was eager to complete the work here and return home to put the new device into practice.

  “But we do want to ensure that you can’t do it,” he added.

  Nova shrugged. “I’ll try.”

  The doctor reactivated the interface.

  You there, Luce?

  Talking to myself, apparently.

  Nova sent a smile. Keep talking.

  As the captain launched into a detailed and rather inappropriate story involving his co-pilot, Nova tried to peer beyond what he was saying and into his deeper thoughts. She had to hold back a grin when she wondered what deep thoughts might hover in the back of the young officer’s mind.

  After a while she shook her head. “Nothing. Just words and some visual cues. Can’t get past verbal communication. No abstracts, no emotion, nothing that isn’t part of what he’s saying and intends to send. And he’s not saying anything interesting, believe me.”

  “Try again,” Doctor Unwin said.

  She did. Over again. And again. Nothing.

  “Enough!” she exclaimed finally. “I’m getting nothing. And you damn well know this isn’t new to me. I’m tired. And done with this.”

  The doctors exchanged glances, clearly offended by their test subject. But Unwin signaled to a technician to remove the sensors attached to Nova’s body and to terminate the interface with the processors. Relieved, Nova slid out of her chair and retied her thick ponytail.

  “Think you can beat me tonight?” she asked Sao Lok. “You’re twenty points behind now.”

  “Surely you realize I’m letting you win, Captain,” he replied without taking his yellow eyes from his displays. “Being crushed by a superior opponent would no doubt affect your performance during these trials.” He looked past her to the door. “I believe Shan Tuain wants a word with you. Besides, I am going to be hours yet analyzing Captain Luce’s peculiar thought processes.”

  She turned to see that the Delphian was, indeed, waiting by the door.

  “Captain,” Tuain finally spoke. “Come with me, please.”

  She frowned, disinclined to take orders from a civilian and a Shantir in particular but she slipped into her uniform jacket and followed him out of the lab with a quick wave back at Sao Lok. Tuain left the clinic to turn into the hall leading to the recreational area of the complex. She hurried to keep up with his long strides, as did the two guards following them.

  He finally slowed when the wall to their left was replaced by a metal railing and they overlooked a pleasant, open area on the ground floor. The designers of the clinic’s central hub had created an oasis within the harsh environment outside the dome using greenery and the illusion of natural materials. Real plants and fake nature sounds sought to offer a small reprieve from the metal, stone and plastic found everywhere else here.

  The Shantir stopped to look down at a few people relaxing near a fountain. Others were scattered here and there with their work on portable screens.

  “Are you comfortable?” Shan Tuain finally said.

  “Comfortable?” Nova repeated. “Here?”

  “With that device in your head.”

  “I’ve had a neural appliance for thirteen years. Of course I’m comfortable with it.”

  He leaned forward to prop his elbows onto the low railing and gaze down on the little park below. His blue-black braid slipped forward and hung over the wall. “It makes you a better pilot,” he said. “And now a telepath.”

  “Not without a whole lot of clunky machinery.”

  “Unless you’re linked to a Delphian.”

  “Look, if you want to talk about Shan Tychon, this is probably not the right place or time.”

  “Shan Tychon left us a long time ago. He’s barely had any contact with the Shantir enclave.”

  Nova turned to wave her guards out of hearing distance. “With good reason. You’ve caused him a lot of harm.”

  “So we did. And now his daughter will suffer because of his disdain for us.” He continued to show her his profile, as angular and sharp as Tychon’s.

  Nova frowned. “What do you mean?”<
br />
  “The child is only half Delphian. She will need us if she is ever going to find what, if any, Delphian mental traits she possesses. He knows this. You know this.”

  She gazed thoughtfully into the unceasing motion of the fountain below them. “I do. She’s just a baby. It will be a long time before we can even consider an interface for her.”

  “She may not need one, unless she follows your example and becomes a pilot. But if he refuses to allow her into the enclave we will never know. She will need a mentor.”

  “Is this what you wanted to talk about? Our child rearing methods?”

  A faint smile twitched the corner of his pale lips. “No, forgive the digression. You would be surprised how often she is discussed among us. We are merely curious about the... interbreeding.”

  “Which you consider an abomination.”

  This time he actually smiled. “We do not. We are fascinated by it. It’s our Clan Council, a circle of elders that would rather not ever have to deal with outsiders, that considers her, and you, an abomination.” He paused to regard her for a few moments. “No, the only abomination here is that thing in your brain.”

  She touched the metal node at her temple. “It bothers you that telepathy is now also possible among our species?”

  “We are all the same species, Captain; call it religion if you must. We prefer to point to the science so evident in our DNA.” He waved a hand in dismissal of the old argument. “No, we don’t care even slightly what you do with your technology as long as it doesn’t affect us. Even as you continue to use it to destroy yourselves.”

  “Shan Tuain, if there is something you are trying to say to me...”

  “Tell me, Captain: what else is giving this upgrade such tremendous value?”

  She frowned, puzzled. “Well, it will immensely improve our ability to penetrate a keyhole, of course. It’s designed to enable us to communicate even through an uncharted breach, if the trials are successful. And if we can communicate for such a distance, it’ll also mean that some of us will reach as far as Delphians can to complete the span. And of course once that span is complete, we can jump through it.”

  “Indeed. It will take you from a simple chartjumper, using other people’s maps and calculations, to a fully qualified spanner. No charting required. No following the breadcrumb trails of those who went before. Just open a keyhole and slip through. To just about anywhere.”

  She smiled. “Yes, I hope so.”

  “At this time, one in tens of thousands has such ability. And almost all are Delphian. I don’t have to tell you that Delphi has a very small population.”

  “And so...?”

  “Since Delphians don’t, on principle, deal with rebels, you have a clear advantage in this war. You only need a keyhole to turn an insignificant breach in space into a gateway for your fleet.”

  “It’s what keeps us in power. We cannot continue to rely on Delphi to supply us with spanners. If you, your Clan Council, forbade it, few of your people would disobey. We must find a way of keeping our advantage if that day comes.”

  “And you propose that creating thousands more spanners, all with the ability to open a jumpsite from any keyhole to anywhere is a good idea? For you and, I will add, your rebel enemy. None of us have the planetary defense systems in place to prevent such unannounced visits. Do you think this technology can be contained? Restricted to a few elite pilots like yourself?”

  “Surely this has occurred to the developers.”

  “Surely they don’t care! Their heads are filled with making telepathy possible. They think jumpsites are there to ship ore and tourists from one place to another and that keyholes are of interest only to explorers and scientists. Shan Nova, no one is stopping it! Azon Corp is a private agency standing to gain a great deal of wealth by supplying this device to Air Command.”

  “We’re years away from making this thing available. We’ve barely started preliminary tests. By the time this is ready for use, we’ll have the means to detect breach terminals far more accurately. We will have defenses in place.”

  “Years? Captain, do you really think you can keep this technology to yourself?”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  He turned to look down onto the commons area and toward the air lock entrances to the right. Several cruisers could be seen through the gracefully curving transparency of the dome, one of them the plane returning Captain Luce and his crew. Nova saw him enter the open space but he did not look up to where she stood with the Delphian. More cruisers lined the locks to the left side of the dome. Absently, Nova wondered if some special event had brought so many planes here today.

  “Because your government will not listen,” Tuain said. “They seek our help and we give it. But they don’t heed our warnings. It is true that Delphi cares nothing about what happens to any of you. But a technology like this cannot be contained, no matter how much your Union ambassadors try to assure us. It will escalate your pitiful strife in ways that will no longer leave us unaffected.” He thoughtfully fingered his braid before continuing. “Delphi has much to lose if your enemies came to our shores. The only thing worse than your Union with this technology is if your enemies get it first.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Captain Anders Devaughn, Union ambassador on Delphi, is your friend. He is brother-friend to Tychon. His father is a prominent general. He knows about what’s being tested here on Dannakor, does he not?”

  Nova nodded. “Of course he does. He got you access to this place.”

  “Then seek his help in stopping this experiment before it is too late. He has done much to improve the relationship between Delphi and your Union. We trust him. And Clan Council would concede more if that’s what it takes to end this madness.” He smiled ruefully. “Just don’t tell them I said that.”

  “Don’t worry. The Council and I don’t have much to chat about.”

  Tuain straightened up from his casual slouch over the railing and peered into the distance, his head cocked as if listening for something.

  “What is it?”

  “There is tremendous tension building among those people. I felt it earlier, but it’s never easy to taste the mood of a new place. But these people are not at rest.”

  Nova looked down over the commons. “The uniforms? Or the civilians?”

  He pointed a long finger toward the airlocks to the left without taking his hand from the railing. “Those Union soldiers there,” he said, “are not Union soldiers.”

  “What?” She squinted into the direction he had indicated. Three uniformed men and a woman loitered by the locks, still where she had seen them only minutes ago.

  “And those.” He nodded toward three Centauri by the concourse leading to the base residentials.

  “How do you know this?”

  “You know so little of the Shantirate, Captain. I can feel them.” He lifted a hand toward the people below as if testing the heat of a fire. “Many more in the airlocks right now. I feel their apprehension and their common goal. Their tension and resolve is mounting and I know we are only moments from chaos.”

  She scrutinized them more closely. He was right. She saw boots that were not standard issue, hands held nervously near gun belts, furtive exchanges of glances. “Rebels!” she gasped, feeling an immediate and powerful surge of adrenaline pump into her system.

  “Yes. Ready to infiltrate the clinic and capture your beautiful new technology for themselves. This did not take years, Captain.”

  “And you said nothing?” Nova looked around for a commanding officer to raise an alarm, too aware that she was not even carrying a gun today. Who else was disguised as Air Command? She beckoned to her guards.

  “I knew nothing of it until we came to this spot. But now I’m certain. You are outnumbered.”

  “Captain?” The two Union soldiers assigned to her had strolled over to where she stood with Tuain.

  Nova looked both of them over, trying to find some hint tha
t these two might not be what they appeared to be. “We are under attack,” she said. “Raise the alarm immediately. Those planes at the lower locks are carrying rebels.”

  The two guards exchanged puzzled glances.

  “That’s an order, soldier,” Nova snapped.

  One of them, still looking doubtful, activated the communicator on his forearm.

  “Give me a gun,” she said to the other one.

  “Captain, you are not allowed weapons for the duration of the project,” she reminded Nova and placed her hand on her holster. “Security protocol states—”

  Nova could almost feel Tuain’s grim amusement and fought her urge to physically disarm the guard. “Go, inform base command immediately!” She scanned the commons for some sign that anyone else had noticed the imminent raid. Luce loitered near the fountain, chatting up an attractive junior officer. More uniforms entered from the left bank of locks. In fact, all five gates there were opening to admit more of the disguised rebels. She leaned over the railing. “Luce!”

  A furtive movement among the foliage caught her eye and then she saw a small, white-haired woman hurrying through the trees, angling purposefully toward the captain.

  Nova grasped the railing and vaulted it, dropping some distance before landing on a narrow ledge, and from there jumped to the ground. She heard Tuain call to her but she continued to race along a cobbled path among the planters until she caught up with the Bellac.

  Acie cried out in surprise when Nova grasped her arm to whip her around. “What the hell are you doing here?” Nova snapped.

  “Nova! You have to get out of here! You’re in terrible danger!”

  “I know that. Are you here with these rebels?” Nova shook the woman, furious over being surprised and unarmed, surrounded and completely without any idea of who was who now. “Spill it!”

  “No!” Acie exclaimed. “Gods, no. Well... yes. I wanted to send a message but I couldn’t. So I came along to warn you. You have to leave this place! Please!”

  Nova threw the little Bellac to the ground when a volley of laser fire sliced through the air over their heads. Shouts and screams reached their ears as utter confusion broke out among the people using the central hub. She dragged Acie behind the corner of a raised planter. “Get on one of those cruisers right now, Acie.”