Sea of Stars (4 page)

“I knew your father. I couldn’t save him from your mother. I will not make the same mistake again,” Telek promises.

“What mistake?”

“Pan was the brightest officer in my arsenal. He was like a son to me. He had a brilliant mind—intuitive with defensive strategy. Your mother ruined him.”

“How’d she do that?”

“It was after the Terrible War. He discovered her while on patrol near the border of our territory. She planned to escape the Brotherhood by disappearing into the masses on Earth—or so she claimed. Pan helped her seek asylum in Rafe, and then they chose to violate our laws by deserting to Earth together. She manipulated him into protecting her, much like you’ve done with the Cavar sent to retrieve you, and again with our Regent. We managed to avoid another war with her. That won’t be the case with you.” He’s laying all the blame for my being here upon me.

“I didn’t ask to come here,” I point out. “You brought me here.”

His fury bubbles to the surface again. “
I
did not bring you here! If
I
had ordered the mission, it would’ve been extermination, not an extraction. The mission to remand you was ordered by Minister Vallen and the Regent.”

“To what end?”

“It doesn’t matter. One is dead and the other is very near to it.”

“You don’t know,” I goad him to see if he’ll give me a better answer. “You don’t know why they went looking for me.”

“Minister Vallen believed that your mother had the gift of prophecy,” he says with disgust. “He was foolish enough to hope that she’d come back and help him see if the aggression we were witnessing on the borders of Peney were the Alameeda mobilizing for war. He didn’t understand that the only gift your mother possessed was the one for manipulating men.”

“You don’t believe my mother could see the future?” I ask.

“No more than I believe that you can,” he says honestly. “You’re just like her: a charlatan—a spy. You use your femininity to deceive.”

He thinks I’m with the Alameeda!
I snort with derision and ask, “How did you come to that conclusion?”

“If you’re not a spy, then explain how you became Haut Manus’s most trusted adviser in such a short time after arriving here from Earth? Was it your stunning grasp of Etharian politics or just the fact that you are stunning?”

I blanch. I don’t want to reveal to him my ability to divine lies. I make up a plausible excuse. “Maybe Manus was hoping ambassadors from Peney and Wurthem would open up to me because of my mixed heritage? Maybe I appear neutral to those in power?” I suggest as I get a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“It’s quite interesting to me that when Minister Vallen sent a team to look for you, so too did the Alameeda. Don’t you find that an odd coincidence?”

“No. They have priestesses. One of their genetically gifted priestesses could’ve alerted the Alameeda Brotherhood to Rafe’s plan.”

“Ahh, psychically, right?” he asks with sarcasm. “You still think I believe that?”

“You should.”

He brushes aside my comment. “If you’re not with the Alameeda, why did you run from the Rafe team when it made contact with you?”

I look at him as if he’s mental. “They scared me. I believed I was human. Running was a natural response to fear.”

Minister Telek pushes out his bottom lip and shrugs. “It could be. Or, you could’ve been running to meet with Kyon Ensin, your Alameeda handler, in order to brief him on having made contact and receive instructions. You are, after all, his intended consort, as decreed by the Alameeda Brotherhood.”

“I don’t care what the Alameeda Brotherhood decreed. Your grasp of events is wrong. I attempted to kill Kyon just a few parts ago. You have misread the situation, Minister. The only thing that lies between Haut Kyon and me is malice.”

“As an agent of the Alameeda, you needed to plan exactly how to infiltrate our ranks. The alleged hostility between you is feigned.”

“You’re implying that the knife I left embedded in his chest was just a little friendly banter between friends?”

“You had to make it look like you were fighting back. You didn’t deliver a death blow, choosing instead not to strike at his heart.”

I feel sick, remembering the twinkling sound of empty shell casings tumbling down the staircase. The smell of acrid smoke hanging in the air from the barrels of the Alameeda mini-Gatling-like mechanized weapons; it mingled with the alpha-male scent of Kyon as my knife first nicked his bony chest plate before it slid around it and into him. “If I’m a spy, as you say, why would I try to warn Haut Manus about the attack last night? I told Ustus Hassek, the head of the Regent’s police, as well.”

“Manus is in a coma and Ustus is conveniently dead,” Minister Telek points out. “There are witnesses who saw you kiss Kyon last night.”

“
He
kissed
me
! To him, I’m a possession—he thinks he owns me.”

“Does he?”

“No.” I’m falling fast, faster than I ever expected. “I’m not your enemy! Review the incident of the previous Alameeda attack—”

“I have.”

“So you know then. You know I saw that Alameeda attack before it happened—the one to extract Kyon.”

“That’s not what I saw,” Minister Telek replies. Something horrible is growing in me; it’s an ache in the back of my throat. “You were privy to the Alameedas’ presence—you met with Kyon that evening and you had access to many of Alameeda’s allies at the swank you attended that evening. The Alameeda staged the fake extraction attempt in order to manipulate the Regent, Manus, into believing that a feeble Etharian”—he gestures to me with a look meant to discredit—“possesses foresight.”

I’m in my own dark ages
, I think,
except in reverse—I can’t prove that I’m a priestess
. “I’m not the enemy.”

“But you are. You killed Minister Vallen.” He takes another deep draw on the silver cig-a-like, and the scent of brown sugar envelopes me.

“How could I have done that?” My voice is feeble. “I’ve only just arrived here. I don’t even know what he looks like.”

“You had ample time last night to do it. You convinced Gennet Allairis to help you. He’s in love with you—anyone can see it by watching your kiss in the station. You convinced him to help you. You promised him sanctuary in Alameeda—a promise I doubt that you intended to keep.”

I crush the silky znou petals in my hand. “You’re an amazing storyteller, Minister Telek, but that’s all it is: a story. You don’t even believe it yourself. You know it’s a lie.”

He looks intrigued that I’m calling him on his complete fabrication of facts. His smile is worrisome to me. Setting down his cig-a-like on the table between us, he says, “Minister Vallen’s death I mark as your doing. And you’re going to confess to it.”

My mouth opens in disbelief for a moment as I prepare to defend myself from such a ruthless accusation, but I close it after a moment. Something occurs to me. “
You
killed Minister Vallen,” I murmur in understanding.

His eyes narrow, as if in affront. “You’re accusing
me
! No one would believe it! I’m a well-respected officer. I have no motive,” he lies, “whereas you will be implicated in the attempted assassination of the Regent as well. I’ll show everyone that you can no more predict the future than you can save yourself—or the Cavar you seduced. But it won’t come to that, because you’re going to confess to the crime. ”

“I don’t think I’ll be confessing to your crime.”

“My crime? You have the motive—he was your enemy. You were sent by the Alameeda to kill him.”

“Your motive is better, Minister Telek: You killed him for power—a seat on Skye Council—total control over the Declaration of War you signed this morning. How very Machiavellian of you.” His eyes widen. “Oh, you’re surprised I figured out it was you?” I flick my hand at him. “I can’t understand why that would shock you, since
I
know
I
didn’t do it and I’m positive that Trey didn’t do it. That. Leaves. You.”

“Had you never returned to Ethar, there would’ve been no need to end Minister Vallen’s life. I mark his death your doing.”

It takes me less than a second to realize he just confessed to killing Minister Vallen. “So you’re going to try to pin it on me anyway by making me look like a spy,” I breathe.

“You
are
a spy,” he says honestly, believing the worst of me without any proof.

“I’m not, nor am I a murderer.”

He ignores me, looking away as he turns on the watery-blue light of Manus’s med-tank again. Then he says, “After you confess to killing Minister Vallen with your accomplice Trey Allairis, I’ll make it a painless death for you both. You can simply go to sleep and never awake. But if you refuse, I’ll have to torture a confession from you both . . . and you will confess.”

My throat aches with my struggle to hold back tears. I open my clenched fist. What he’s saying is true, at least in my case. I will probably confess, even though I didn’t do it—with a long enough time line, I wouldn’t be strong enough to endure pain forever. “You don’t know Trey,” I say with a tight voice. “He’d never confess to anything he didn’t do, and I’d never condemn him in that way to avoid pain. I won’t be euthanized like some unwanted pet at the pound.”

He looks at me again and shrugs as only a powerful man can. Reaching for the kafcan pot again, he pours out another cup of it for himself. “Either way you die. A part of me is delighted that you’d choose pain. Nothing will bring me more pleasure than to see you die horribly: a fitting end for an Alameeda priestess.”

My eyes fix his. He gives me a checkmate smile, and then he takes a sip of his kafcan, swallowing it like it’s the best he’s had in his life. I watch him savor it.

“I changed my mind. I do have something to confess,” I murmur.

He’s amused. “Ah, so you aren’t as tough as you wanted me to believe. The threat of pain already has you agreeing to confess to the murder of the defense minister?”

“Umm . . . no. I’ll confess to the
poisoning
of the defense minister.”

“That won’t work. The defense minister’s throat was cut.”

“No, it wasn’t. He was poisoned, and if he doesn’t get an antidote for znou axicote,” I reply, opening the lid of the kafcan pot so that he can see the znou petals floating on the surface of it, “he’ll be dead by the end of the rotation.”

Minister Telek’s eyes snap open wide as he rises to his feet, the kafcan cup slipping from his hand to shatter on the floor in front of his Regent-souvenir. He puts his fingers in his mouth, gagging himself so that he vomits. Wiping his wrist over his mouth, it leaves a blood trail on his sleeve. He turns away from me and stumbles toward his desk on the other side of the room.

I rise from the enormous chair and follow him on shaky legs. “I was never interested in botany when I lived in Chicago,” I explain conversationally as I trail him. “There was never any need for it. But here, it seems like a useful thing to know, don’t you think?”

Minister Telek bumps into the table in the center of the room, knocking the vase of znous off it. The flowers scatter as the vase splinters into a thousand pieces. I step on the flowers as we move across the room. “I found it interesting that most of those who had turbine worms drill into them didn’t die from that—they died from the poison the worms ingested after eating the petals of the flower. I only steeped two petals into your kafcan—I had six. They’ll want to know that when they come for you. I don’t think two will be enough to kill you, but you’ll begin to feel the poison eating through your stomach soon. There are several cures available if they act fast: Abersuctonal, Hesterfastok, or Lamb’s Bottom—I like the sound of that one, Lamb’s Bottom—it just sounds sweet. You should ask for Lamb’s Bottom. But they’re probably still going to have to repair part of your bowel; it’s a very caustic poison. And painful.” I fake a cringe. “Ooph, it’s supposed to be one of the worst.”

He makes it to his desk, leaning on it heavily. “Console on,” he moans. “Geteron, I need you!” He collapses into his chair, unbuttoning his collar as he pants and writhes.

“Don’t look so shocked,” I say, sitting on the corner of his desk as I study him. I hold my hands in my lap so that he can’t see how they tremble in fear. “I’m my father’s daughter. I, too, have a mind for defensive strategy. But I’m nothing like you. I’m not a coldblooded murderer. This is your only warning, Minister: Don’t mess with me. And if you try to hurt Trey, I’ll kill you.”

The overup’s doors open and several uniformed soldiers enter the room with weapons drawn. I don’t move as they swarm in around us. A couple of soldiers haul me off the edge of the desk and restrain me. As they do, I murmur, “Think about what I said. You need me to bring the future back to you.”

C
HAPTER 3

B
EYOND THESE WALLS

T
he Brigadet next to me in the overup has a brand new matte black harbinger in his hand. Judging by the way he’s holding the pistol-like weapon on me, he’d feel tough if he got to use it. It’s a bit of overkill, though; they’ve already shackled my hands with spray foam and locked a collar restraint on my neck. It’d take only one press of the remote button to make the collar tighten around my throat and have me on my knees fighting for air.

The overup continues to descend as if it were taking us to the Underworld. The five soldiers surrounding me obscure its soft bench seats. I hate the look in their eyes, so I keep mine on the sparkling crystal in the chandelier as it sways with the motion of the rectangular car.

I scan my mind for what I could’ve done differently with Minister Telek. I can’t find a solution that would’ve gotten me out of the torture I was sure to face with him in charge.
I should’ve killed him. He’ll murder us for sure now—with or without a confession.
My only consolation is that what I just did to him will buy us some time; he would’ve extorted a false confession out of me right away. Now, he has a corroded bowel to contend with before he can address my supposed crimes. He’ll wait until he can watch my interrogation. I’ve kicked him in the crotch, metaphorically speaking; he’ll want to be around when it’s time to return the favor. I have only a small window to figure out my next move.

They should have some sort of elevator music
, I think, as the awkward silence in the compartment grows. I clear my throat. “I hope someone remembers to feed Manus while Minister Telek is away. It’d be a shame to find him floating on top of the tank.”

The soldiers scowl at me.

“What?” I return with a weary sigh. “That happened to a goldfish I once had. I had to flush him.”

“Quiet!” the one with the itchy trigger finger barks at me. His voice is loud in the confined space.

I begin to shiver. I’m the kind of cold where it seems I’ll never know warmth again. My chest feels tight and I find it hard to breathe. I look around the compartment—there isn’t a way out until the doors open.
Why don’t they open?
With growing panic, I pull at my restrained hands; they’re immobile, locked in amber like some Stone Age mosquito that drowned in sap. I feel claustrophobic; the walls are closing in.
They’re going to kill me
, my mind whispers, and even when I want to deny it, I can’t. I swallow hard, trying to contain my freak-out. I hope for a drop in air pressure, for the lift to crash, anything so that this silence ends.

From behind me, I hear a masculine voice ask, “Did you really stab a member of the Brotherhood with a dinner knife?” There’s something familiar about the voice, but I can’t discern why that is. I begin to turn around, but the voice barks, “Face forward and answer the question.”

The hair on my arms prickles. My head hurts, and I feel as if I couldn’t turn it if I wanted to. “Yes. He was murdering everyone,” I answer.

“He wasn’t killing you,” he points out.

“No,” I agree. “He wasn’t killing me.”

“Why didn’t he kill you?”

“He thinks I’m his.”

“Are you?”

“Not if I can help it.”

There’s silence for a moment. I try to see him in the smoky mirrors, but I can get only an impression of him. He’s not Rafian—his hair isn’t black. “What are your talents?” he asks.

I moisten my lips. “I can rub my stomach and pat my head at the same time, but you’ll have to free my hands if you wanna see.”

The soldier holding the harbinger on me looks suspiciously over my shoulder at one of the soldiers behind me. “Who are you? What unit are you with?”

“I’m a Comantre conscript from Westway,” he lies. His speech is very lovely, refined in a way that would suggest some sort of upper class. He’s not Comantre and I doubt he’s ever even been to Westway.

“Then shut your mouth! You’re not here to interrogate our prisoner.”

The man behind me replies, “Don’t interrupt me.” He moves closer to my ear, as he asks, “When will they attack next?”

“I don’t know,” I reply.

The Brigadet in front of me scowls at the poseur Comantre conscript behind me. “What did you say to me?” The Brigadet shifts the barrel of his harbinger. All the other soldiers on the overup do the same, pointing their weapons away from me and in the direction of the soldier behind me.

A heavy sigh comes from the Comantre impostor. “I told you not to interrupt,” he replies. The air in the chamber becomes supercharged. The harbinger is torn from the Brigadet soldiers’ hand. His eyes widen in surprise as the gunlike weapon floats in the air before him, its barrel pointed at him. All the other soldier’s harbingers follow suit, each doing a one-eighty in the air to levitate in front of its soldier. Even as the shock wears off, no one moves at all.

The soldier claiming to be from Westway says to the Brigadets, “If you speak again without my permission, your harbingers will shoot you. Now, stop the overup.”

“Halt overup, authorization five-nine-alpha-wastern-urtza,” the Brigadet soldier responds with a tight voice.

“Thank you,” the one behind me says politely. “Now, Kricket—”

He knows my name

“—tell me when and where the Alameeda will attack again.”

“You move things with your mind,” I say, slack-jawed.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me. Where will the Alameeda strike next?” the man asks with a low snarl.

“Who are you?” I’m breathless.

He lifts my arms behind me in such a way that I think for a second that he intends to break them. I’m forced to bend away from him so that they don’t snap. Driven to my knees, I bend forward more with my face going to the floor. I pant in pain, but bite my lips so that I don’t cry out.

“I’ll ask you again. When’s the next attack? Where? How will they come?”

With my cheek to the floor, I punctuate my answer: “I. Don’t. Know!”

“Then you’re going to have to find out, aren’t you? Open your chakras, meditate—get in touch with your spirit animal,” he says condescendingly, “whatever it is you need to do to find out—do it!” He lifts my arms again and I grind my teeth.

“What are chakras? I don’t do any of those things! I—” I stop speaking when he pulls me up from the floor to my knees again. He kneels down behind me and places one hand on my throat while the other holds a harbinger to my temple. Near my ear he whispers, “Countdown to death commences in three-two-one—”

I breathe the words, “I wish I knew—” As I exhale, my breath curls into the air in a cold, smoky plume from the chill in my lungs. My eyes roll up to the ceiling. The poseur soldier’s hand slides from my neck to my ribs, holding me against him so that I don’t slip to the floor.

I’m violently ripped out of my body to hover above all of them, near the sparkling, teardrop crystals of the chandelier. The man beneath me claiming to be a Comantre soldier is the same one from the gallery balustrade at the rail station. He raises his shamrock-colored eyes to my spirit floating above him, as if he can see me. I realize then that he’s the one who slapped me in my waking dream—or he will slap me in the future, depending on how you look at it. “Hurry, Kricket,” he orders, “before I decide to kill you.” His hand shifts back to my throat, gripping it like he’ll strangle me.

I hope he can see my spirit finger as I flip him off.

The next moment compares to a solar flare or the heat of a thousand stars as I blast out of the chamber, thrown back up the elevatorlike shaft. The galvanized steel beams that construct the maze of overup channels fall away. I eject from the top of the skyscape and into the sea of clouds. And then . . . the real fun begins. I flash-forward; the trap of ordinary things that one gets used to slips away too, by an explosion of time. The fabric of matter is different here: soothing as it is disturbing, with the sense of being whole and complete but not content—cleverly striving for the suggestion of perfection. Somehow, I know that if I twist, if I move in another infinite direction, the fabric will fold in around me and I’ll arrive somewhere else.

Before I realize it, I’m in the stratosphere, climbing higher and higher. The blue sky fades in the absence of air and is replaced by the darkness of space. A gleaming white mass grows larger as I approach it, becoming discernible as a space station. Shaped like a capital
I
, the station tumbles end over end in its orbit of Inium, the smallest of Ethar’s moons. This moon is a favorite of mine; it glows blue and it’s so near to Ethar that I imagine it has heard all the wishes I’ve made on it.

I pass through the side of the space station either because it doesn’t exist in this space yet or I don’t or both. Thinking about it is likely to fry my brain. Instead, I concentrate on a silver transport trift landing in the open bay of the capital-I station. When the enormous bay doors close with a heavy thump, sealing the area like a tomb, the doors of the elegant falconlike trift open just below the wing. Free-floating steps emerge from the craft to form a convenient walkway to the causeway.

I’m surprised when three females alight from the trift, pausing on the gangway. They’re each taller than me by just a few inches, with longer white-blond hair than mine and varying shades of blue eyes, but otherwise, in form and in feature, their likeness to me is undeniable.

A very masculine-looking blond male appears behind them. He’s a golden god of a man—heaven-faced, cut from stone, and maybe just as lovable. He leans near to one of them, saying something to her in a low tone before he nuzzles her cheek. She doesn’t turn her lips to his or respond to his affection. She’s cold and distant. Her demeanor bothers him; he frowns at her, but takes her arm solicitously and leads her ahead, helping her navigate the steps.

She reminds me of a queen bee. Her pale blond hair is piled high on her head with a mass of intricate braids down her back. Her elaborate dress has to weigh a ton. It’s not the least bit practical, with a flowing train of rich brocade silk and a corsetlike rib breaker. The neckline plunges in a deep vee, lined with sharp points that could be the stingers of drones she’s killed. The dress has to hurt like hell, but she carries it as if it were her skin.

As I watch the pair together, I wonder,
Is that her Brotherhood consort? Her cult-master who simultaneously owns and worships her?
She seems so very important to him: owned by the drones and unable to fly away without them following her—forever. I can’t imagine a worse fate than to be a queen-slave.

The other two priestesses follow closely behind her arm in arm. They each have similar style dresses as the Bee, but only one has an exaggerated collar of stiff, swanlike feathers: the Bird. The other has a high, round orchid-colored collar: the Flower. Two more handsome, chisel-cut blond males trail them, engaging in sedate conversation like old friends.

I have no choice but to follow them. I thrust forward, joining their party as they converge in a solemn chamber filled with several embryonic vessels. It’s not hard to ascertain that this is a medical room and these steely pods are the equivalent of Manus’s shark tank back on Ethar. Uniformed personnel stand far back from them, almost in reverence at their presence.

A small discussion commences about which one
he’s
in. A stuttering worker shows them to a particular unit. The six figures gather around this unit. The Flower breaks away from her friend, the Bird, and lays her hand on the lid. The coffinlike capsule opens, emitting a pressurized hiss. I ghost-move around the open lid so that I can see who is in it, but a part of me already knows.

It’s Kyon. Unconscious. Naked.
Damn my eyes!

The beautiful flowerlike woman with the full, petal-pink lips places her hand on Kyon’s broad chest. She covers the angry red stab wound I gave him. His masculine, steam-shovel jaw tenses. Blood raises the color in his cheeks. Readouts on the lid of his pod go ballistic. His eyes open wide, the irises of which shine pure silver. When his mouth falls open, that same silver light emits from deep within him, gray embers from a blast furnace.

When she removes her hand, there is a thin silver scar in place of the angry wound. The Flower glances behind her with a radiant smile to one of the granite-cut men she arrived with, but that stone won’t notice her. She loses some of her smile.

The Bee flutters forward, helping Kyon to sit up. He does so awkwardly, which is very uncharacteristic of him. He rubs his blue eyes, trying to clear his head. His blond hair is pulled back from his face and tied so that it doesn’t fall into his eyes when he slumps forward.
He’s weak
, I think, but I don’t have a moment of guilt about it.

“How do you feel?” the Bee asks. Her fingers rest on his shoulder, covering the dark military tattoo that interconnects to form circles there. The tattoo spans his neck, chest, and abdomen, stopping where his hip forms one angle of a dramatic vee.

Kyon ignores her, choosing instead to gaze over her shoulder at the Bee’s consort. “Chandrum, was Kricket brought to Alameeda? Is she here?”

Chandrum shakes his head. “She’s still with them. The extraction was a failure.”

Kyon growls. “What’s being done?”

“There is a new plan,” Chandrum offers as he watches the Bee wring her hands.

“Tell me,” Kyon insists.

“In due course,” he says before looking over his shoulder and snapping his fingers. A medical attendant rushes forward with a blanket, forcing the Bee to step back from her post.

The Bird looks in my direction, piercing me with her eyes. She sniffs the air and says, “She listens now. Your Kricket.”

“I feel her too,” the Bee agrees.

A slow smile spreads over Kyon’s lips. “Kricket,” he says with a rough voice of someone who has been unconscious for a few days. I startle, not expecting him to say my name, let alone speak to me. “Must I wait for you to catch up to my time?” It’s a rare joke, since in my time he’s still in the pod, stabbed and unconscious, but here, he’s maybe a day or so ahead of me, unconscious as I am in the overup.