Rystani Warrior 04 - The Quest (29 page)
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Authors: Susan Kearney
Kirek’s arms held her but were ready to let her go free—if freedom was what would make her happy. Because his was not the kind of love that stifled, but a love that accepted her for who she was. That he could open himself to a love so mighty, when he fully knew that she might very well walk away, awed and humbled her.
Angel didn’t have that kind of courage. She didn’t think she could love so broadly, so deeply, or allow herself to want someone else so completely. Totally impressed, yet petrified and reeling, she hugged Kirek, hoping and praying she wouldn’t disappoint him, but unable to stop the tears from brimming over her eyes.
“Is it the pain?” he asked, tenderly stroking her hair.
“I’ll be all right. Give me a second.” But she really needed years. Knowing how much he loved her scared her to the bone. She could only cope with her roiling stomach and her roller-coaster emotions by building a wall around them, partitioning off her feelings until she had time to deal with them.
“The shield?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Your psi is giving me energy. Now that I don’t have to surround you in the shield, I don’t have to extend so much.” His psi was also boosting her confidence, evening out her surging emotions, steadying her from the shock. From the revelations.
“Good. Because we have to jump off this moving tram. Can you manage?”
“I guess we’ll find out.” She had to maintain the shield around her, jump from the tram, and adjust their null grav, all at the same time. But with Kirek’s psi merged with hers, she had extraordinary power and focus, allowing her to make the necessary adjustments as they stood on the tram’s roof and prepared to leap. She finally understood how Kirek employed such perfect timing. His psi could break time into the most minute increments. Each second had many, many beats, and she reacted to the smallest change in balance, correcting so quickly they landed lightly and safely on a platform between two cargo pallets.
With no hesitation, Kirek pulled her along the platform to a doorway and pushed hard on the door, bracing his feet and throwing his entire body into the effort. She would have added her meager strength to his, but there wasn’t room for them both. Alone, she would have never have been able to budge the thick metal door.
With a grunt, Kirek finally opened the door, and she stepped through, keeping close to him in case of sudden attack. She expected a room or a hallway. Instead she saw a long chute that descended so far into the darkness that she couldn’t see the end. The tunnel’s diameter equaled Kirek’s body length plus about three feet. If he intended to travel through the tunnel, their only means to slow their plummet was to employ their psi.
“What is this place?”
“A garbage chute.”
“You take me to the nicest places.” She crinkled her nose, but even when she breathed in some air, she didn’t smell anything foul, except the faint scent of fuel. “What’s at the bottom?”
“An oil lake, but we aren’t going down that far.”
“Good.” Unwilling to risk falling and leaving him behind without psi, she slipped one leg over the lip and waited for him to do the same.
He joined her and she took his hand. Then they both slipped over the edge. Angel used null grav to keep them from descending too rapidly as well as
to prevent them from crashing into the sides of the chute. “How long did it take you to figure out a way past the Zin defenses?’
“I stayed almost a year. Even though the wormhole blast had badly damaged the Zin and this world’s security had been temporarily burned out, they knew I was here and observing them. They worked feverishly on their systems to lock me out. But as they worked, I built in the back door. Luckily for us, they never plugged my hole in their security.”
The year had been long and lonely and agonizing for the man who’d caused such destruction. Yet, with his psi in her mind, she knew he’d never entertained the idea of leaving before he’d taken full advantage of the opportunity. While she admired his determination, she couldn’t help wondering how he’d eventually reconcile his warlike actions with his peaceful beliefs.
“Stop there.” Kirek pointed below them to a hatch in the chute. “That’s where we exit.”
Angel made the adjustments and kept them hovering in midair while he removed a tool from his suit and drilled out four bolts. Then he lifted the lid and crawled through the opening. She hoped they weren’t in another narrow tunnel, and after she followed, was relieved to find herself standing in a room full of machinery. And Zin.
Her pulse raced. But the Zin took no notice of them. She employed private mode on her suit and adjusted his as well. “I thought they would be paying more attention to us down here.”
“The Zin are extremely specialized.”
She watched them sort parts and bring them to other machines, not one motion wasted. “That’s why they’re so efficient.”
“If we encounter a Zin security specialist, we’ll be in trouble. But these Zin are trained only to run the factories.”
“The chute took us past security?” she asked, starting to relax.
Kirek frowned. “We’ve bypassed where they placed their security eight years ago.”
At his words, her muscles tightened again. “What’s wrong?”
He nudged his chin at a towering crane. “Where that crane is sitting, there’s supposed to be another tram. I’d planned for us to ride the tram down five more levels.”
She didn’t bother asking if there was another route or if he could have misjudged. He’d spent a year here, planning to return. His memory was excellent, and if he knew of another route, he likely wouldn’t be hesitating.
So she remained silent and observed. The crane unloaded finished products onto a moving beltway that would pass a wiring station and a
plastic capping station. She didn’t recognize the merchandise. “Maybe they rerouted the tram. When the product is done, it has to go somewhere
…
”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Let’s see where these supplies are going.”
“All right.” Despite what Kirek had told her about Zin specialization, when he led them right through the Zin workers with boldness, her mouth dried and her palms sweated. All around them Zin of varying shapes and sizes worked on the assembly line. She finally decided that the sole purpose of this factory was to make more Zin.
When they passed the neuro tanks, filled with growing brain cells, she shivered. It was easier to think of the Zin as programmed machines. But they weren’t. They were alive.
They could reproduce by the billions. In fact, she was beginning to think that this entire world’s purpose was to create more Zin.
If they succeeded, the
Raven
would need several years to complete a salvage of this magnitude. The electronics alone, never mind the metals, would make her and her crew wealthy—no, more than wealthy: they would be fabulously rich. Yet, she also was beginning to understand Kirek’s loathing of killing. These efficient creatures were very much live beings, and for the first time, profiting from their deaths bothered her. Reminding herself that the Zin had wiped out Zenon Prime and had ruthlessly killed billions, she shoved aside her conscience. They had to find a way to descend several more levels to get to where the Zin were vulnerable.
They never found the end of the assembly line. Some of the Zin parts, perhaps the rejects, were placed on a chain-belted, ramp-like escalator that descended at a constant speed. Kirek moved several spare parts aside and cleared a place for them to ride between the rejected components.
They leaped off the belt before they ended up dumped in a vat of melted metal the size of a small lake. To her, all that metal was like finding a treasure. But she had to keep her mind on the main goal. Using Kirek’s psi, she knew they only had to proceed down one more level before winding through a complex maze that he’d memorized.
“Look for a floor vent,” he instructed. This level was dark, and although the rejected parts had no life to them, she had to stop from shuddering every time a Zin reject splashed into the metal vat and melted down. Her reaction was odd. She should be glad of every Zin death that added more metal to the lake, and she wondered if Kirek’s psi could be influencing her emotions.
“How much longer until I can give you back your psi?’ she asked, watching her steps. “There.” She pointed to a vent. “Is that it?”
“Yes, and I don’t want you to transfer my psi back until we reach the end of the maze.” He used the drill to open the floor vent. “Is the shield—”
“It’s fine.”
He watched her face with obvious concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be better once your morality is out of my head.”
He winced. “Sorry.”
“I always wondered why you refused to shoot the Kraj back on Dakmar. I didn’t understand that a Rystani warrior could be so squeamish about
…
killing.”
His tone hardened. “Don’t worry. My beliefs won’t stop me from completing the mission. I’m not weak.”
“Sorry.
Squeamish
was the wrong word. I should have said that I didn’t understand your morals.” She placed a hand on his tense shoulder. “You are the strongest man I’ve ever known. I just wish you didn’t have to—”
“Kill billions.” He gestured to the vent. “The Zin have given me no choice. They are destroying worlds and billions of innocent lives are at stake. Come on. Now is not the time for an ethical discussion.”
“Right.” She slipped through the vent and dropped through the ceiling into a very strange room. About the size of her quarters on the old Raven, the room had no light, no windows, no doors. In fact she was about to tell Kirek they’d stumbled into a dead end when he dropped down beside her with catlike grace.
He strode to the corner, found a spot halfway between the ceiling and floor, and pressed his palm against the wall. A secret panel slid open and a burst of laser light shot at them.
She extended her shield around Kirek. The laser burst reflected back onto the weapon that had fired it, melting the metal into hot slag. “Next time, you might want to warn me before you trigger—”
“The laser weapon wasn’t here eight years ago. They’ve set traps in the maze.”
Terrific.
“Can we bypass the maze?”
Kirek shook his head. “To program a Zin to install the hatch and the floor vent to allow us to enter took me four months. To erase the memory of the hatch’s existence from their systems took two more. Since their new systems are now up and running, even if I could cut the time, I can’t use my psi from behind your shield, or they’ll recognize me.”
“So we go on?”
Before he could answer, the walls of the room began to glow a bright yellow-orange. Searing heat approached their suits’ meltdown temperature.
With her psi, Angel grabbed Kirek and propelled them both directly toward the melted laser.
THEY LANDED IN a tumbling heap. Angel had barely managed to maintain the shield and keep them alive. Shaky, she called on Kirek’s psi to help her shove to her feet to look around. Kirek was already standing, and after he saw she was unhurt, he immediately began to survey their surroundings.
The heat had incinerated the room they’d just escaped, leaving charred walls and the stench of burnt metal. Before them metal bars blocked their route. The entire floor suddenly shook, rattling her teeth.
“Now what?” she asked, tamping down her adrenaline rush. There was no place to run forward, and they weren’t going back until they’d accomplished their mission.
“I’m worried the laser may have warned them we are here.” Kirek pulled his blaster and shot a hole in the ceiling.
“If they are aware of us, let me give back your psi.”
“No. We need to disappear and hope the fire will have cleaned out the evidence of our presence. If we’re lucky, they’ll believe a faulty circuit triggered the laser. Or that we were incinerated.” He reholstered his blaster. “Let’s go.”
Angel used null grav to lift them out. “Surely if they investigate they’ll realize this hole was blasted?”
“Let’s hope they don’t find it right away.”
“Come on.” Kirek was already way ahead of her. Once they reached the next chamber, full of spare parts and crates, he shoved them into the hole, blocking and hopefully hiding their exit. Taking her hand, they ran through the warehouse.
“We may be able to bypass most of the maze and the traps if we stay on this level,” Kirek spoke as they ran past several forklifts.
Their footsteps echoed in the huge warehouse, but no Zin worked here, and Angel was grateful. His pace was brutal and a stitch formed in her side, but she ignored it, worrying that the Zin might be closing in.
The warehouse must have taken up several square miles. Despite the overhead lights, she couldn’t see walls or a roof, and her breath began to come in gasps. Worse, her physical weariness began to tax her mental abilities, making the shield more difficult to hold. “How
…
much
…
farther?”
“Almost there.”
Kirek redoubled his efforts, pulling her along. Her feet barely skimmed the floor before she was airborne. She would have used her psi to help her muscles, but she couldn’t spare the brain power. Her mind ached. Her lungs burned, and the stitch in her side began to slide down into her thighs, cramping her muscles.
As if sensing her distress, Kirek suddenly slowed. “Wait here.”
Grateful at stopping, Angel bent forward, gasping for air and taking huge gulps. Kirek had leapt onto one of the many forklifts and now powered it up and drove it straight toward the wall, using the machine’s two steel prongs as a battering ram.
She barely had the strength to lift her head and watch him smash into metal plating and then slam through the wall. Then he revved the engine and backed the forklift against the wall, tipping the forks downward. With a jarring shift, he jammed his foot on the fuel and stabbed the floor with the two prongs.
The metal beneath her own feet quivered. The floor buckled. The entire machine and Kirek fell to the level below. She was too far away to use her psi to lift him to safety.
Horrified at watching Kirek and the machine disappear in a roaring cloud of dust, Angel ran to the edge. She peered down to see Kirek hanging onto an exposed beam with one hand. He must have leapt to safety at the very last moment.
With a gentle psi thrust of null grav, she lowered both of them to the undamaged floor, far from where he’d crashed the forklift. “That was crazy.”
“Necessary.” He again took her hand and pulled her forward and to the right down a hallway.
“You should have taken me with you. I couldn’t use my psi from that far away.”
“You were too tired, and I need you rested for what’s to come next.”
She wasn’t sure she was up for any more running. Or null grav. Her head was pounding. Maintaining the shield was making her sweat, even with the use of Kirek’s psi. “I might need
…
more rest.”
“Can you hold on two more minutes?”
She nodded. “If I don’t have to do anything but walk.”
He scooped her into his arms. “You don’t even have to walk. Now rest.”
After all their running and then his wild leap onto the machine, he wasn’t even breathing hard. His arms held her as if she weighed nothing. Automatic weapons came alive, turning and aiming at them from the ceilings and walls.
“I’m too weak to employ the reflective shield.” She was barely keeping the shield around his psi.
The weapons fired.
Kirek weaved and ducked between them. Obviously without his psi, he couldn’t outrun a laser. He must have memorized the pattern.
She closed her eyes and focused on breathing, trusting Kirek to get them through the laser blasts. Oddly, even as lasers fired around them, she did trust him. If she had to be in the Zin stronghold, there was no one she’d rather be there with than Kirek.
He might have issues with killing, but he’d do everything possible to keep them alive. So she focused on relaxing her muscles, breathing and tuning out what was happening around her. Very soon, he would need her strength, and she damn sure wanted to be able to do what he asked.
Kirek zigged and zagged in a crouching run for at least a minute before he gently stopped and set her down. His movements remained soothing, a smooth rocking motion.
When he stopped, she opened her eyes to find him watching her with concern. “Are you—”
“I’m better now.” She refrained from mentioning her trembling legs, her aching chest, or the muscles that had barely stopped cramping. If she had enough air in her lungs, she could think clearly, and mental energy was what he needed from her.
“This is the core of the Zin brain. We have to find an access panel.”
He’d brought them to the clear window of a control center.
Inside, the medium-sized control center was filled with dials, buttons, knobs, and blinking lights. No vidscreens. No Zin either. The place looked fully automated and empty of life. The clear doors that guarded the only entrance were at least one foot thick. Shooting their way inside didn’t appear to be an option, and she saw no handles or manual locks to pick, either.
But as alarms sounded, she pulled her blaster, and her gaze shot straight to Kirek. “Now what?”
“IT’S TIME TO transfer my psi.” Kirek ignored the blinking red-and-orange swirling alarm lights, the shrieking whistles, and the ominous metal shutters descending from the ceiling to prevent them from seeing through the clear glass doors.
“What should I do?”
“Let me inside your shield. Then push my psi out of your head. Try not to drop the shielding until I’m all back.”
He spoke as casually as
if he was telling her how to drive a flitter into a garage. Although she understood her goal, the exact process by which she was supposed to follow his directions eluded her. Between the flashing lights and the whistles, her awareness of how much was at stake—including their lives, and her fear of failing, panic started to creep in.
She clamped her hands over her ears and closed her eyes—not even bothering to use her suit. Angel could only use her psi for so many things, and the shield was critical. So was giving Kirek back his psi.
Steady.
First she spread the shield around him. In her weakened state, accomplishing the task was more difficult than when she’d first raised it hours ago, but she managed. “The shield is covering you, but not as strongly as before. I’m not certain how long I can—”
“Do your best.”
Easy for him to say. “I’ll try.”
Angel figured if she expanded her own psi, it might push his out of where it had lodged in her mind. So she gathered her psi from where it had merged with his then tried to unfurl his, hoping his psi would expand toward him.
Slashing pain ripped through her head.
Gasping, she staggered to her knees.
Kirek grabbed her and stopped her from toppling to the floor. “Angel!”
Gnashing her teeth, she squeezed down hard on her psi. The pain eased, leaving her with a throbbing headache and a great reluctance to try again. But the alarm, now once again loud in her ears, reminded her of the urgency. She didn’t have the luxury of time to recover.
Zin might show up at any time. So she tried building a force field around Kirek’s psi, then gave it a gentle nudge. Nothing happened, but she didn’t feel any pain either. So she pushed a little harder. And it gave way.
“It’s moving,” she panted.
“Good.” Kirek’s tone was gentle and encouraging, as if she had all the time in the universe.
Angel shoved his psi with more force, directing it toward Kirek. For some reason, his psi resisted. She pushed harder, and when it didn’t hurt, she pushed as much as she could, but his psi seemed snagged and stuck. Sweat poured from her body and trickled over her flesh, which the suit cleaned up, but her energy was failing.
“We’re halfway there.” Kirek held her steady as if he feared she’d collapse. “I can feel my psi pulsing.”
“Take it.” She had no more strength left. If she used any more, the shield would snap.
“Just a few more seconds, sweetheart.”
Kirek pulled and his psi zapped from her and into him. With relief and glee, her own psi expanded into her entire mind, but the effort had left her weak and drained.
God
…
the shield. She had to hold the shield. She braced, but she had no more strength. Without Kirek’s psi to help, she couldn’t hold on. And gasped. “I’m losing it.”
“It’s okay. You can let go.”
Exhausted, Angel wearily opened her eyes to find herself sitting on the floor, her back against a panel where Kirek must have lowered her.
Kirek stood in front of the barred glass, his palms flat on the metal, his face rigid with determination. She heard a creaking groan. Somehow, Kirek bent the metal and pried opened the doors.
He must have used his psi—although she had no idea how.
“Come on.” He leaned down, tugged her hand, but when her weary muscles failed to gather her feet under her, he again scooped her up and set her down inside the control booth.
Then the doors shut behind them.
Had the Zin trapped them? Or had Kirek closed the doors to protect them? Angel didn’t know. But several seconds later the blasted alarms stopped ringing, and she took a few reviving swigs of water from a supply packet.
Angel didn’t bother Kirek with questions. Knowing he had only a short amount of time to insert his psi into the Zin core and take them out, she didn’t want to distract him.
Kirek strode to the middle of the controls. He placed his hands on a screen and spoke under his breath, concentrating on his task. With his shoulders squared and his jaw thrust forward, he looked every inch the proud warrior going into battle. Only his battle would be one of the mind—pitting his psi against the entire Zin home world, a planet made up of billions.
She prayed Kirek’s psi was powerful enough to do the job. And wished she could do something to help, wondered how long the mental battle would take.
Because the Zin had found them.
Angel stared in horror as machines crawled, scooted, and flew into the metal and glass, pounding and congregating around the doors. Kirek didn’t move, and she wondered if he was even aware of them. He appeared to be in a trance.
Outside the control center, Zin dropped from the ceiling, rolled, stepped, and careened down the corridors, even drilled upward from the floors, their movements quick and coordinated. Some Zin were so tiny she barely could make out their shapes, and those tried to squeeze in through cracks, attempting an attack from every angle to protect the core.
Angel fingered her blaster. One huge Zin began to drill between the bars. Others tried a variety of weapons from torches to cutting lasers. None seemed effective.
Yet, the Zin did not give up.
They tried acids, gases, and concoctions she didn’t recognize. They bombarded them with sound, electromagnetic waves, and sonar. They tried searing heat and frigid cold.
But their own system prevented them from getting inside.
If Angel had had the energy, she would have paced. Instead, she broke into her rations and ate an energy bar as she watched the Zin’s lack of progress.
As busily as the Zin attacked the control center’s perimeter, Kirek remained still and silent by the controls. What was taking him so long?
Had the Zin booby-trapped their core—like they had the labyrinth? Were they overpowering Kirek? As he stood there as
still as a
mountain, were they attacking his mind?
She wished there was something she could do besides wait and looked around for other weapons—but saw none. However, the big Zin with the drill seemed to be bearing down hard. White smoke from the drill bit curled into the air outside.
How long would it take the Zin to break through?
At the sound of heavy-duty glass cracking, Angel wearily pushed to her feet and aimed the blaster. To prevent the drill from melting, the Zin had poured cooling fluid over the bit. The combination of heat and cold was cracking the thick glass. Tiny spiderwebs now extended out from the center.
