Broken Vision (11 page)

"Makiee, they don't torture people. They--"

"We were on opposite sides during the Great Conflict, you know. I bet they still have a
score or two to settle against us Bogasills."

Maegan leaned her head against the cool wall and took a deep breath. "You weren't even
born during the Great Conflict. Nor were most of them. Why would they have a score to settle?
And I'm Mariltar too, you realize."

"Half, half. You've got some of that weird, alien Earth blood in you that makes you human
and not so...scary."

"Oh, Makiee." He was so young, so very young and had grown up on the bloody tales and
lore of the Great Conflict. "I'm so sorry. All they want is to ask you about disabling security
systems."

"Heh? Why?"

"Because I sort of...disabled one of theirs."

"Outstanding! You've always been my hero."

In her mind's eye, Maegan could see Makiee strutting around Research and Development,
all concern erased.

"Here's an opportunity for Janas Corporation. This could be really big, Maegan, huge in
fact. Most of their technology is so old and ineffective, we could--"

Maegan laughed. "Makiee, you're such a mercenary. Just don't let them hire you away as a
security consultant or you will see the Mariltar side of me. When do you have to go?"

"Tomorrow, first thing."

"Do you want me to go with you?" She didn't want to. Sleep held much more appeal, but
she had to make the offer. She was also beginning to wonder if the drug she held in her hand was
necessary after all. Perhaps Alerik would return to Pallas Five and not to the habitat. He hadn't
exactly informed her of his schedule.

"Nah. I can handle it. Should be fun." Youth's confidence had returned together with its
sense of indestructibility. And Makiee could handle it, Maegan had no doubt.

As she stepped outside the entrance to the habitat, she pictured Makiee rambling utter
nonsense about the latest in communication technology to the glaze-eyed security team. She almost
pitied them.

A chuckle, about to erupt from her lips, died a sudden death as she stared at the small ID
pad hidden in the outer wall. Chills chased down her spine. Morgon's habitat was the most secure
building on Pallas Four. Only she and Morgon had access, and only she and Morgon could
authorize others to access the building.

How then had Alerik Mariltar gained entrance? Who had authorized his access? And why
hadn't the questions even crossed her mind until now?

Margaine Confluence:/Fifth Rising
Eighth Sector near
Achien

"There are six?"

"Six," the gray-haired relay runner confirmed. "The youngest I've ever seen. Something's
going on. The number of shipments is increasing. There are more packages and they're younger
than ever."

"What's our salvage rate?"

"Can't keep up." The man's voice was heavy with gloom. "We're only capturing one in
seven shipments or so. And those are the ones we know about."

"Do all their shipments still have the same destination?" Maegan accepted the manifest
from the runner and punched in her identification before giving it back.

"Same planet; two different locations. They're splitting the younger ones off."

"Blazing starpits!" Maegan muttered. "How do we get this stopped?"

"Politicos don't seem to care worth a shartung, or believe their precious Treaty could be in
jeopardy. It's easier to preserve an illusion. Doesn't seem to matter it's the children who suffer."

Rage burned a sour hole in Maegan's stomach as she watched the transfer between star
vessels. "They're building a slieking army again, aren't they?"

"Appears so."

"How can the Coalition be so blind?"

"Tell you what I think." The runner hawked and spat. "Taragon sends puppets, who have
political savvy, to the Council and to Treaine, but who don't have a clue what's really going on with
their own home world. It's those blood-hungry priests who are the real power. Annihilate them and
that'll take care of the problem."

The hair rose on her nape and the last of the small bundles disappeared inside her
vessel.

"But what do they want? Surely they don't think they can take on a unified galaxy?"

The runner spat again. "Freak fanatics every last one of them. The Coalition was right to
outlaw them. It's not religion they practice, it's genocide. Blood builds their power base. Doesn't
really matter where it comes from either."

"How--" Maegan stopped herself. Runners didn't ask personal questions. They were
anonymous to each other--no names, lower faces obscured by masks. This man's race was difficult
to determine, but he spoke as if he'd had experience with the once-powerful, and feared, clan of
Taragon priests. Eight times she had met with him to transfer Taragon children, and this was the
most he'd ever spoken.

"Time to move on," the man said abruptly. He turned to his vessel, then swung back.
"Won't be here next time. Was tagged by a Mariltar patrol at Achien. Have to lie low for a while
and get some repairs done. Someone will take my place."

It took Maegan several moments to recover from her shock. "Wait!" she called after him.
"Are you sure it was a Mariltar patrol?"

"No doubt." The man didn't pause and his voice was muffled as he made his way up the
ramp to his ship. "They transmitted the code of the Seventh Fleet. Watch yourself!"

Starpits! What was Alerik's command doing this far out from the Grogon Asteroid Belt?
There had been no sign of them whatsoever on the way here.

Time for her to leave too. The barren landing pad, on an equally barren planetoid, afforded
no cover. Achien wasn't that far away. She had suspected for some time that the relay runner had
been a fighter pilot in his younger days, for which faction during the Great Conflict, she had no
idea, and didn't want to know. At this moment, she would have been far more interested in the
knowledge of how he'd evaded an elite warrior team.

If he had.

Starpits! She hurried up the ramp of the Lady Melia. If she got caught, Alerik Mariltar
would... What would he do to his bonded mate? She shuddered. It didn't bear thinking about.

Inside the vessel's entry compartment, six small faces, one slightly older than the rest,
turned to her. Terror and grief lurked in stifled sobs and huddled forms.

The older child was different. He or she stood straight, swathed in a cloak that covered him
from head to toe as the others were, and slightly in front of them as if protecting them.

Her heart contracted painfully. They should be with loving parents in the safety and
security of their own homes, not on a strange star vessel, half a galaxy away, on the last leg of a
journey to a future with strangers. The worst part was, it was often those loving parents who had
given them up to a far worse future than they now faced.

"Welcome," she said in the universal language, as she secured the door. "No one will harm
you here."

There was not a flicker of reaction. It was always the same. Another Treaty condition
broken. Another piece of the dream lost to the arrogance of nationalistic purity. If Taragon didn't
teach its children to communicate with the rest of the galaxy, how could true unification ever be
achieved?

She swung her arm toward the passenger compartment, visible through one of two inner
doors. "Come," she said. "We must leave. You must put on safety harnesses." Her sense of urgency
was growing. The runner's disclosure had truly disturbed her and the hair on her nape still hadn't
subsided.

She had three of the children, trembling and shrinking away from her, strapped in, when a
small voice said, "Where do you take us?"

She straightened and turned. The older child had helped the other two and now stood,
cloak hood thrown back, small arms folded in a strangely adult gesture of defiance. The long
braided hair was a dead giveaway. Boy, then. Taragon females kept their heads bald.

"How do you know this language?"

"My parents taught it to me. Where do you take us?"

"To safety. To people who will care for you."

Something was definitely not right. Internal alarms were raising a furious clamor in her
head.

The small features twisted. "My parents gave me to a man who would care for me and
teach me important things. His ship was attacked. We were taken from him. You are not
Taragon."

How did she explain to an amazingly articulate and observant child that she was trying to
give him his childhood back, a childhood his parents and his nation were only too willing to
sacrifice? She went on her knees before him, so her face was on a level with his, but didn't try to
touch him.

"I promise you," she said, as she gazed into his amber eyes that seemed strangely
independent of one another and unfocused, "that I will deliver you to a safe place, to people who
will care for you, who will teach you many good things."

He was unconvinced and, for a moment, it looked as if he might argue. He opened his
mouth, but then he glanced at the others who watched with anxious expressions. "May I sit with
you in the front?"

It was an unexpected and surprising request, one she badly wanted to refuse. But what
could it hurt? He was too young to understand the nav charts, and she was too experienced to be
distracted. So she agreed.

She was the third in a relay of four runners. She had a relatively short, but obstacle-filled
stretch between the barren planetoid and Ochmantin, a lightly populated, heavily forested much
larger planet surrounded by quarks, where she would deliver the children to the last runner. The
route was familiar, the obstacles well-known. She had never had to worry about patrols in the area
before. This time she checked her instruments frequently.

But the Lady Melia's sophisticated nav instruments gave no warning of other vessels in her
proximity. The complete lack of traffic in itself was beginning to give her cause for concern when a
large cargo vessel headed in the other direction blipped onto the edge of the chart.

The boy--Nonon, he said his name was--watched her every move with those
disconcertingly unfocused eyes. He didn't chatter, for which she was grateful, didn't even seem
curious about where they were headed. That brief moment of objection earlier seemed to have
given way to a heart-breaking sort of resignation over a future adults not of his kind had decided for
him.

Ochmantin was in sight, but still a distance away, when she turned on the open comm
channel. Two vessels were visible on her nav chart, small craft, planet drifters most likely. There
was some intermittent chatter wafting across the channel and then, suddenly, clearly, "Light winds
at the surface. Light winds at the surface. Clear for landing. Clear for landing."

Without a nanonan's hesitation, her fingers tapped in course corrections that turned the
Lady Melia away from Ochmantin. Heart pounding, focus sharpened by the adrenalin rush through
her blood, she studied the nav charts again. One of the drifters had begun a descent to the planet.
The other had vanished. There was nothing else. No sign at all that a trap had been set. And just for
a moment she doubted herself. But the transmission was a warning. With each mission, with each
approach to this place where she discharged her precious cargo, she had anticipated hearing it. Now
she had. She couldn't afford to question it.

She was far from Ochmantin. The beat of her heart had slowed and the sweaty dampness
had cooled on her skin, when she realized what she had to do. She glanced at the child. He sat alert
and calm beside her, and still watched her every move with those strange eyes.

She had never liked the contingency plan, had hoped to never use it. Now she had no
choice. Their route had been compromised. All communication had gone silent. Until a new plan
could be formed, Morgon's hidden habitat was the only answer.

She set a course for Pallas Four.

The starfighters came out of nowhere and caught her on her descent to the smart dock.

* * * *

Alerik came awake suddenly, wrenched from a deep sleep by a persistent noise.
Disoriented, he stumbled from bed, trying to fight off unusually stubborn dregs of
unconsciousness.

"Yes?" he snapped at the flashing light on the console beside the sleeping platform.

"It's Sharm. I'm outside your front door."

Blood of Cor! Outside, the moon-sun painted Pallas Four in shades of gray. Grogon's two
suns wouldn't make an appearance for a while yet. Nothing good had brought his second all the
way to his door from Pallas Five.

"Be right there," he croaked. What was wrong with him? He felt like he'd been clobbered
hard with a samclub or... Drugged. He tugged on some loose pants. "Lumens."

It had to be something to do with Maegan. Dread rose fierce and hot within him as he
paused outside her door. At least she was safe and sleeping. He had checked on her after returning
to the habitat. Been tempted, in fact, to climb into bed with her as she lay, blonde hair unbound and
shimmering across her pillow, her face smoothed into soft innocence by sleep. Instead he had set
tiny shrieker devices at all the exits to the habitat as well as to her room. If she'd tried to go
anywhere, he and the security team posted around the habitat would have known about it.

He disarmed the shrieker at the front door and released the lock. As soon as the door was
open, Sharm strode past him with barely a glance. Not good.

"Took you long enough," he mumbled. "Have you been popping outers again?"

"Of course not. Why would you think that?" It was strange how everything inside of him
had converged into an intent sort of waiting watchfulness. No doubt about it. Sharm had bad news
to deliver. He was pacing, his gaze everywhere but on Alerik.

Alerik braced his legs and folded his arms. Leadership had taught him patience but, when
it came to Maegan, patience was extremely tough to summon.