Neodymium Betrayal, page 24
Don’t be nervous. Don’t be nervous. Be calm. Be calm.
She slid into the ground like she was slipping into a sleeping bag, shielding her face with her arms in case rocks didn’t care about pheromones. As her head dropped below the surface, to her right she could see the living rock-lump, and to the left a dirt wall.
Jei slid in beside her, motioning for her to move further underground. “Can you get it to move back?” he asked. Mera reached up and right, trying to stay relaxed, totally not afraid that the rock would suddenly sprout a face and bite her hand … Move, she intoned through her peripheral nervous system again.
The living rock began to return, inch by inch; Mera forced herself to retract her hand slowly instead of jerking it away in fear. Relaxation pheromone. Lots of relaxation pheromone. She felt Jei move beside her hip, scootching further into the auxiliary tunnel—she did the same as the turtle’s body began to block off the burrow entrance. It looked for all the world to Mera like a stone closing over a tomb.
Before it could close off all the light and air, Mera reached above her head: stop. It did, leaving a sliver of a breeze for the two humans to breathe.
For several minutes, neither Mera nor Jei said anything. The voices, and engine sounds, drew closer now. Mera concentrated on Jei’s breathing chest against her shoulder blade, his hip against her leg, wondering, as her headache softened, how the galaxy she’d ended up taking a job that required cuddling with her enemies in dirt. It was actually quite pleasant … the dark coolness felt good for her headache, and all sound from outside was muffled. Jei was warm …
Mera found herself remembering every other guy she’d ever felt in this proximity, and couldn’t think of a single one who hadn’t either made some comment about her body, even at the most ridiculous times, or actually groped her. She would almost worry that Jei didn’t like her, except for the tender way he’d picked her up, and the almost admiring way he’d sighed when she told him her ghost theory back in the transport, and—
“You were angry when she was choking me,” Mera murmured, suddenly sleepy.
“I don’t like seeing the strong prey on the—” His low whisper against her ear stopped abruptly.
“Weak,” Mera finished for him.
“I chose not to say it because it’s the wrong word, not because I’m shy,” he answered.
She didn’t have an answer for that—ordinarily, she would quip something about being prettier than the other girl, but she knew somehow that didn’t fit here. It almost felt like what she looked like mattered less to him than what she … thought? Did? Was? Oh my, she was yawning … every muscle relaxed … was she getting high on her own pheromone, she wondered? For the first time she could remember, even though she was in enormous trouble, even though she was underground and her hair was going to end up a disaster, even though she had an enemy combatant lying next to her, Mera felt safe.
So safe, that she fell asleep.
Jei
The search party milled above our subterranean burrow only for a short while before leaving to hunt security footage and polymerwall entry keys instead. It looked like this time, my Draconian trainer’s teaching about turtles might actually pay off.
It was different last time, as an eight-year-old—the dead burrow I’d crawled into had had no turtle to hide behind, and Stygge Bricandor had literally walked over my body and read my mind through the dirt.
I exhaled. My heartrate, while regular, was fast. I didn’t know if that had more to do with the bad memory, or with Mera’s body so close to mine. I was a bit uncomfortable, wedged at an angle with my shoulder under her back and my chest against her shoulder blade, but it wasn’t so bad once I got my right arm under my neck kind of like a pillow. She looked like she needed sleep, and impatience kills when you’re hiding from someone anyway. I hoped Mera wasn’t uncomfortable—I tried to give her as much room as I could, but that didn’t really mean anything in this burrow.
I lay there for a while, staring at the red earth, and the slit out into the sky. It was going to rain soon. We needed to get moving before that.
I sighed.
“Njande, why is all this happening?” I asked.
I heard no answer. Figured. I was getting tired of the cryptic repetitions anyway. He’d mostly left me when Lem defected, I thought. My bursts of power had nothing to do with him, anyway; as I’d said last year, he had other things to do. Nothing had gone right since I’d found Lem under that helmet.
Well—one thing had gone right. I turned my head; I didn’t dare watch Mera sleep, but that one glance before I looked away showed me her lips, parted and down-turned, and a furrowed brow. She seemed so … sad. Perhaps all the smile and sparkle of her waking face was just armor.
It was more pleasant armor than mine.
After some time, Mera stirred; her little mouth yawned as she tried to stretch, and elbowed me in the ribs. I tried to give her more room somehow, but couldn’t; her eyes fluttered open lazily.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi,” said I.
She giggled, and yawned again. “Ohh …” she sighed. “Hey, is it dark yet? It might be easier to hunt in the dark.”
I pointed to the sliver of light.
“Ah. Are the other people gone?”
“I think so.”
“Mm. I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.” She shifted a little, fist on her forehead. “It sounds like they’re gone … I should find Benzaran. Hey, maybe your nerves can amplify my signal, help me find her faster—?” She reached for my hand.
I smiled, but pulled my hand back to avoid the sharp little invisible needles with their subcutaneous thoughts. “I was serious earlier, Mera,” I said gently. “I’m not totally oblivious.”
“What?” She blinked, the picture of an innocent.
“You know what you’re doing,” I said. “I’m not sure exactly how it works, but there’s more to your electromagnetic abilities than just listening. You admitted it earlier with the turtle.”
“Egh, that was an emergency,” she grumbled. “It’s not my fault you think naughty things when you hold my hand.”
“No, it’s not like that, it’s—it feels like you’re trying to get into my brain,” I said.
“That’s all any woman ever wants, Jei.” She batted her eyelashes, deflecting again, with the armor. “Why, is there something in there you’re ashamed of?”
“I know for you it probably just feels like another way to communicate with the world around you.” For whatever reason, the entire fact of it didn’t really bother me, once I figured it out; she hadn’t said anything—evil, or whatever, through her skin—and it didn’t feel invasive after the first prickly moment. “I thought I was imagining it at first. But it makes sense—I kinda figured you had to have some way to talk to the pegasus, earlier. If everyone could do it, probably no one would talk any other way.”
“You … don’t hate it,” Mera’s big chestnut eyes searched my face.
I shook my head. “I don’t hate anything about you. It’s just another part of who you are.”
Her lips pursed with soft surprise, and a little “hm.” She looked away, staring up at the ceiling. I could almost see her brain bubbling with thought.
“But we need ground rules,” I said, closing my hand over her little fist. “Don’t try to hide it any more. Be honest with me. I will listen to you. I’m not like—whoever else you’ve been around. You can be straight with me.”
She took a deep breath, looking back into my eyes again with a vulnerability and wonder that was almost painful to stare into—like a deep reflecting pool that stared back, or peering hard into a searchlight. She put her other hand over mine, and nodded. “Okay,” she said.
I felt the sting again when her fingers slipped between mine—but it was a pleasant sting, quickly followed by a flood of warmth through my palm, my wrist, and then washing over my arm and up into my chest. Everything cooled suddenly with that prickly freshness like right after a good shower, and it was like my skin itself felt at peace. I was awake, with my eyes open, but the dark earth, the burrow, everything around me seemed to fade into the background as my own mind came into focus.
It’s a beautiful place you have here, she seemed to say, waving to my passing memories—to the pearl gardens with my mother on Burbura, to my training with my Draconian master on the rim of the volcano, to the rare, precious moments of joy playing the stick-game in the cage with Diebol as a child. I would love to stay here forever.
You’re welcome to look around, I found myself saying cautiously, even as another part of me begged for her to live here—specifically here, on the imagined future mountain I never dared hope for consciously, with the cottage, the library, and the distant songs of far-off day lizards far below us in the verdant mists. From here in the peaceful cool above the clouds, we could see the lights of Retrack City far, far below, and watch the acrobats through telescope any time we liked, as our fingers entwined. We would practice our powers in the bamboo tea garden, not for war training but for play, to experiment with color, laughter, and energy the way cubs and guppies did, to find the magnetic fields behind ghosts and the electricity within each other, as our signals and patterns and programming melded and separated, melded and separated, over and over in rhythm—
What’s this room? she asked. I want to go in here.
The door no one should enter in anyone else’s mind—the throne room, the seat of self, where Njande lived—rose towering above us, wooden carvings gleaming in the shadows of its thick flowered branches.
I pulled back my hand and tapped out, blinking as the real world came into focus. “That’s mine, okay, Mera?” I said softly. “That’s the one place I’m going to ask you leave alone. You have my consent to explore any other part of the garden, but that room, that tree, belongs to me.”
Her downturned lips trembled. “You don’t trust me?” Her voice cracked; there was a wet shadow to her eyes.
“I’m not rejecting you, Mera,” I said. “Everyone has to have a part of their own self that’s only for them and the interdimensional—it helps us hold who we are.” Afraid, suddenly, that I was offending her, or lecturing her, I bit my lip. “For me, anyway. Just—let me have myself.”
She looked away—she seemed to shrink into the wall.
“Mera, please. I don’t know if anyone has ever—taken part of you without asking—but—”
“I’m not—”
“I’m asking you not to take something. Stay out. That’s mine.” I kept my voice low, trying to be as gentle as possible, but held my jaw firm.
With a deep, disappointed sigh, she agreed.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Diebol
Diebol was in hell. This, this meeting, trapped with simpering bureaucrats eating away his legitimacy, crippled by the secrecy and imbecilic little power plays of his fellow Stygges—he looked the utter fool, with three metaphorical limbs tied behind his back. And that was all the upper crust cared about—not protecting the universe from interdimensionals, not bringing all peoples together into homogeneous peace, just their own self-interested council seats, and because he’d pointed that out for years, they all gloated now at the chance to take him down. This wasn’t the Unification Force he had grown up believing in. This was hell. His fingers squished down his forehead, against his eyes, as he withheld a scream.
“The second woman in that footage is one of our own agents,” he explained for the eighteenth time through his palms. “The first one is a rogue Frelsi operative trying to take out our new favorite weapon. Jei Bereens should be on his way to a detention center with our agent—”
“Detention? When are we just going to kill this guy?”
I don’t know! Diebol’s withheld scream was bulging through his forehead. “Bricandor wants to let—”—Morda, but I can’t say that—“the development team behind Her—experiment on him.”
“Didn’t you already try that?”
Yes! Yes I did! “It’s already been established I don’t have control over the majority of our Stygge assets,” Diebol growled.
“Obviously.”
“And instead of sitting in here explaining this to you, I need to be out there helping our men find these noxious ruinations,” Diebol continued to growl.
“Watch your tone. You ‘need to be’ where the group says you need to be.” Diebol had liked General Johnson so much better as Lem. “Your loyalty is to the Growen first, not your individual interpretation of what that means. You don’t get to decide your missions. We already collectively give you a lot of slack, and—”
“We are doing well,” Diebol hissed through clenched teeth to cut off the wind-bag. “We have taken two entire planets in a week. I think you owe me a little ‘slack.’”
“Correction,” Screlch boomed through his purple beard. “She has taken two planets in a week, and while this unnamed female operative is risking her life against a Frelsi saboteur to protect Her—” His thick finger stabbed the screen, where Lem held Morda in a choke. “You’re talking about bringing her in for questioning. I don’t know what it’s like at your Stygge counsels, if they tolerate that kind of in-fighting, but here among ordinary people one might even call your suggestion treasonous.”
“I have spent the last 48 hours untangling Lem Benzaran’s identities,” Diebol was almost shaking with rage. “Benzaran wouldn’t even be revealing her face for the camera if it weren’t for my team!”
“How like a leader, to take credit for the work of others,” said Cabalero, his white hair and sickly complexion almost gleaming in the lamplight.
The heat was choking Diebol.
Bricandor, Father, why have you forsaken me?
He had to hold it in. He couldn’t just kill them all. He couldn’t. Bricandor would destroy him for the coup. All those careful political favors that had funded and popularized the movement—what would the media say if the up-and-coming young Stygge leader suddenly turned on all these great men to whom he “owed” so much? It’s just narrative, just filking narrative. He’d told them several times already that Morda was enabling Jei, but they claimed, in their apparently infinite knowledge of combatives, that you couldn’t really tell that from the footage.
What could he say? The bean-counters were determined to take him down, and these filking electromagnetics had given them what they needed. He’d seen it before, from the paperwork, to the investigations, to the twisted testimonies that ended in accusations of treason. They could bury a man without touching a shovel.
“Cowards, all of you,” Diebol finally grunted.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Johnson folded his arms across his decorated puffed chest. “You are required to maintain decorum here. There are charges for conduct unbecoming.”
“Erratic and unprofessional behavior,” someone else chimed in. Diebol didn’t even care who at this point. He stood up, and turned away from the table in disgust.
“Wow, what a bunch of filking windbags.”
Lem Benzaran’s sneering voice silenced the room. All heads snapped around to see the young woman in black leather standing by the closed conference room polymerwall as if she’d materialized through it like a ghost, her feet planted shoulder-width apart in shining ebony boots, her hands extended by her sides to grip two huge power-pistols the size of her forearms. One of Diebol’s long weapon coats, studded with pockets and utility belts, hung loose around her solid frame.
She gave Diebol an upward nod of her chin. “Let’s see if decorum’s bulletproof.”
It wasn’t.
The barrels of her giant pistols blazed; the first batch of repeating rounds pummeled two generals at the foot of the table. Decorated chests shuddered in time with the musical snare-tap of emptying magazines as Lem stepped up onto the table. She strode its length like a fashion model on a catwalk, clearing her clips into the scrambling, screaming sycophants on either side with her eyes fixed on Diebol.
He rested on his wrists, leaning on the back of his chair to watch her show with his every muscle relaxed and poised, heart pounding as his enemies slumped across the table, drooped onto the floor, and slammed back in their chairs.
Only Screlch took cover behind a high-backed seat to return fire on Lem; muzzle flares lit up around his purple beard as he roared: “Don’t just scream, you idiots, fight!”
Lem’s mace seemed to spin out of nowhere, blowing open her coat as the glowing staff danced across her wrists. Its forcefield repelled Screlch’s shots, and with a lovely backhand, she split open his skull.
Six more generals to go. She continued up the table, and with a dramatic pause, threw out her chest and hurled back her hands: her coat flew back off her shoulders as knives shot from her sleeves, skewering five necks. The coat pooled by her boots as she knelt on the table right in front of the last man sitting: General Rojam S. Johnson, a frozen statue in the chair just two seats to Diebol’s left.
“I can pay you,” Johnson said coldly. “Double whatever he’s paying,” he nodded toward Diebol, then motioned with his eyes across Lem’s torso. “Plus a better bedroom arrangement.”
“Oh, Rojam,” Lem reached into her shirt, and drew out one more weapon: a standard issue blitzer light pistol. “I’ve already been in your bedroom.” She pointed to a splatter of old blood on the muzzle; Johnson’s eyebrow raised.
The edge of Diebol’s lip twitched almost into a smile. Generals were issued more elegant, hand-fitted weapons—there was no reason for Johnson to have a lowly standard issue light pistol in his room, covered in blood.
“Is this blackmail, then?” Johnson asked.
“No. It’s justice.” With a flick of her thumb Lem charged the weapon. It was quiet enough in the room for all three to hear the nearly-silent hum as the oxidizer cartridge slid into the chamber. “I should have killed you the first time. Banks was a nice guy,” Lem said. The sound of breathing, the rise and fall of everyone’s chests, punctuated her words. “He’d done some terrible things, but there was hope for good somewhere within him. Everyone else here dies for how they treat my people. But you? You die for how you treat yours.”
