Theirs Not to Reason Why 5: Damnation (20 page)

(
The two of them are in charge of your efforts in my absence, but
do not
think my absence means my lack of awareness. I can reach into the future, and I can reach into the past, and from
any
point in time, I can and will chastise you. There is no counterfaction, there is no neutral, and there is no refusal anymore. Now. Do you understand the tasks to which you have just been assigned?
)

Consent came. It came from them in staggered clumps, some of it willing, some of it reluctant, but it came, and she gained it even from the one named Selula. Pulling out of the link, Ia swirled back, opened herself to a few more shots from Santori’s stunner rifle, and dropped back into her physical body. She staggered, still not nearly as graceful as a full-blooded and much more practiced Meddler would be, but she stayed on her feet. “Those staying on the ship will follow Sergeant Santori to the bow cargo hold, where Commander Harper’s assembly team awaits.

“The rest of you, depart with my father to the far side of the planet, where the absence of so many crysium sprays will not be easily noted. Dismissed.”

She didn’t wait to see if they complied; her younger self from about nine hours back, before a solid bout of sleep, had taken an hour’s worth of real time to watch over the Feyori for the next twenty-one hours. This side of the coming troubles would not be affected either way by the cascading chain of unpleasant, low probabilities down in the capital of her birthworld. They would comply or they would be punished, and they knew it. Knowing they would get the job done, Ia headed for the nearest lift. Helstead’s team was down twelve decks, in the auditorium-sized boardroom below the core of the main gun.

Spyder was right where he’d promised to be, inside the lift, a crate of light armor opened and ready. She was already clad in her camouflage grays, colors suitable for infiltrating an urban base. As the doors slid shut, and the lift started down, Spyder crouched and snapped the legging plates into place down each thigh, while she slung on the half jacket that would protect her chest, back, and upper arms. The base material was capable of stopping bullets, though the impacts would still bruise; the polished-pewter plates were ceristeel, capable of absorbing and deflecting laserfire.

Stunners, thankfully, would not be a problem on her homeworld, or she would have had to order the team to go fully clad in mech to reduce the chance of being rendered unconscious. They had been banned long ago, leaving only the more lethal weapons at her fellow Sanctuarians’ disposal. Dropping a reflection-coated helmet onto her head, Spyder waited until she fixed the chinstrap, then smacked it on the top, checking to make sure it wouldn’t fall off.

“Ready check!” he barked, as if she were a raw private fresh out of Basic, and he still a Squad Sergeant in Ferrar’s Fighters.

A wiggle in place as the lift car swayed to a stop let her know all the straps and snaps were secure. “Lieutenant, checked and ready, sir!”

Spyder grinned and smacked her on the back of the helmet this time. “’Ave fun killin’ a few of ’em, for me,” he ordered, pushing her forward through the opening doors. “But no more’n y’ need to, eh?”

“No
shakk
, Lieutenant; that would be counterproductive,” Ia muttered, striding down the hall. Stepping into the boardroom via the side door she usually used, she spotted the others clustered around the head table. Helstead had her hands braced on the tabletop, her eyes closed and her brow furrowed in concentration. Several bags and boxes of belongings had been stacked on the table. Straps dangled down the edges, showing they had been properly Locked and Webbed while they were in transit. Several more crates sat on the platform floor, still mostly webbed, though the two privates, Rhian O’Taicher and Iglesias Yarrin, were busy unstrapping them.

Kardos, grim-faced and silver-armored, with the visor of his helm pushed up, stood at Attention, laser rifle cradled in his arms and a pair of scimitars strapped to his hips, their golden, faintly glowing hilts spiral-wrapped with leather thongs to provide him the best possible grip.

Most of the belongings on the table were his. Most of the crates on the floor were the last of the Rings of Truth she had made to guide her homeworld in the coming centuries, boxes of blood-blended beads to allow her to craft a few more while down there, suits of armor plating on ballistic cloth—the plates were crysium, not ceristeel—and ninety-eight blades of varying styles with matching, crysium-lined sheaths she had made from the last of the sprays shipped off to the
Damnation
months ago. The last two were slung on the sergeant’s hips, making for a total of one hundred if one didn’t count the bracer on their leader’s right wrist, waiting patiently under her uniform.

Her attention was not on the weapons, however, but rather on the crates holding them. “Lieutenant Commander. Those crates are still here.”

Helstead shook her head. “I’m getting interference. It’s not like it was on Dulshvwl. It’s like . . . trying to push through a force-field-style fog. Whatever it is, it keeps spitting energy at me, and I lose my grasp of the drop zone.”

Sighing roughly, Ia stepped up behind the other woman and wrapped her fingers around the back of Helstead’s neck. Energy, memory, and telepathy poured into her. (
You know the coordinates; the fog is there for you to siphon up and
lean
upon, soldier.
)

Under the press of her energies and Helstead’s abilities, the crates started
bamfing
out of existence, startling Yarrin and O’Taicher. They hurried to get out of the way as Helstead ported out the ones under webbing, then the ones that had been freed. Within seconds the ones on the table began vanishing as well, cluster by cluster.

Ia held out her other hand as Helstead paused for breath and to refocus her target zone. “E-clip!”

Yarrin quickly yanked one out of his ammo loop and tossed it at her. Catching it, Ia slipped her fingers into the contact points and drained the energy cell dry. That revived her energies. She tossed it back for him to stow as the last bag vanished. “The moment you land, orient yourselves, find and flank the door, and set up an ambush. We will have less than a minute before they drag in the prisoner.
Her
life is worth more than either of yours, Yarrin, O’Taicher,” Ia warned them grimly. “So is the Sergeant’s, here . . . and if you want to get off-world again, you keep Helstead alive as well. Is that clear?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” both men snapped, coming to Attention.

Ia nodded, acknowledging the sobriety in their eyes. “I am sorry, but that’s the truth in this fight. There’s a fifteen percent chance one or both of you might get hurt, but better you than one of them. Helstead, are you ready?”

“No, sir. But you feed me some more KI, we’ll be on our way,” she promised.

“You have twenty seconds—we’ll have half a minute, down there,” she warned the others. Helstead pushed away from the table, stepping back and breathing deeply, then flicked on her bracer light. Ia moved with Delia, shifting her hand from the redhead’s nape to her wrist. “Grab her arms, and center your thoughts on arriving safely. Then hold yourselves still.”

O’Taicher came around and grasped Helstead by the upper arm. Yarrin did the same on the right. Kardos sighed roughly, but clasped the petite woman’s hand. Ia continued to feed her energies until her second officer whispered,
“. . . Three . . . two . . . one . . .”

There was a pressure differential as the universe slammed away and came back. Lungs abruptly full, then just as abruptly compressed, Ia coughed and staggered. She wasn’t the only one, and not just because they came into place two centimeters off the floor. Yarrin dropped to his knees with a grunt and O’Taicher slumped against Helstead, making her stagger against Kardos and Ia. Bracing her soldiers, Ia waited three seconds for her own disorientation to pass, then used her telekinesis to haul the fallen private back onto his feet.

“Anchor your minds, support your weight, and fan out,” she murmured, pushing Helstead away from the door and off to the side.

The redhead nodded and moved into the corner, pressing her back to the whitewashed wall. Everything in the unlit chamber was white: walls, floor, ceiling. There were no right angles other than the rectangular seam of the door, and what should have been the eight corners of the cube-like chamber were rounded and dimpled with glazed white domes projecting subtly into the room. Projection nodes, barely visible as glossy, reflective curves in the glow of Helstead’s bracer light.

Yarrin and O’Taicher braced themselves next to her, with O’Taicher as the stronger telekinetic standing next to the tired, sagging officer, loaning her a little psychic lift against the hard pull of Sanctuary’s 3.21Gs. If they slouched, it would be noticed as something unusual. Ceristeel light armor could be found through various military and peacekeeper surplus companies. Weapons were weapons, and there would always be a thriving market for such things, legal or otherwise.

Dressed as they were, they could easily be mistaken for local mercenaries. Gravity weaves and slumping postures, however, screamed off-worlder. That was something Ia did not care to shout to the loyalist troops of the Church.

Helstead had to come because she alone could get them in and out without having to fight their way through too many security layers. But though she was from Eiaven, and the
Damnation
’s gravity had been played with a little, she was no telekinetic. Yarrin and O’Taicher both were.

Ia put her own back to the wall, the door to her immediate right; Yarrin stood on the other side, of course, and Kardos took up a spot past her right elbow. A mere second later, the machinery buried in the node-bulges flared to life, projecting an illusion of a doorway leading onto an open-air platform overlooking a thronging mass of people, all of whom were shouting and screaming about “Flay the traitor!” and “Absolve her of her sins!” plus “Mercy for the repentant!” and “Why won’t you recant?” sobbed in an especially emotional voice from a petite Asian woman Ia recognized: Rabbit’s mother.

Quickly snapping to attention, Ia watched as her companions did the same. Helstead shut off her bracer light; two seconds after, the door swung open into the corridor. The crowd noise swelled, and guards in ceristeel-plated light armor not too dissimilar from their own quickly moved into position along the walls. Projections only, and the computer controlling them quickly compensated for their own presence, assuming in its thankfully blind way that they were to be part of the scenario.

“. . . You hear
that
?” one of the approaching men demanded.

Ia didn’t have to look to know he was the chief interrogator, nor that he had a fistful of Rabbit’s hair, tilting her head up as she was dragged by her shoulders between the two briefly paused guards in the corridor. She didn’t have to look because she had seen this moment more than once in the timestreams. Seen that pretty, moon-shaped face, bloodied at the mouth and the nose, bruised from several blows as the “Re-Education Squad” tried to break her will.

“
Do
you hear it?” the man demanded

“Hear . . . what?” Rabbit asked.

“Your friends. Your family! They’re
concerned
for you, Elizabeth. They fear for your
soul
,” the interrogator coaxed, utterly earnest in his concern for the woman’s spiritual welfare. “Why, Mrs. Cheung, your dear, kindhearted mother, is red-eyed and trembling, nearly prostrate with her grief! With good cause, too, since if you don’t recant, we’re going to have to burn you alive as a warning to all others.

“Will you recant? Please, Elizabeth?”

“. . . Huh?” was their captive’s eloquent reply.

A disgusted noise escaped the interrogator. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?
Tell
us who the leaders are, and your sins and your pains will be forgiven!”

“Sorry,” Rabbit mumbled. “Th’ music’s . . . rather loud.”

“. . . Music? What music?”

“Music . . . in m’ head . . .”

Another disgusted sigh, and the sound of hiking boots being dragged over the rubbery flooring everyone used on this world. They pulled her into the room—and Ia and Yarrin both struck; Ia, with her crysium bracer-turned-blade, and Yarrin with a service knife fetched from his boot. Both struck true, in the narrow gap between ballistics jacket and ceristeel helm. Both guards staggered, gasping in shock and pain . . . and dropped not only Rabbit’s shoulders, but themselves as well. Ia yanked her target back by his shoulder and stepped over his falling body.

Crystal melted and wrapped around her fist, turning into a very brick-solid version of a boxing glove. The blow struck the interrogator and spun the neatly suited man around. He staggered, then slump-rolled to the ground, last-gasp reflexes taking over, as all Sanctuarians trained their bodies to do from early childhood onward. The rubbery plexi surface of the white-painted floor helped cushion his fall, as it had the prisoner’s.

“E-clip,” Ia ordered over the noise of the still-chanting projections, and held out her hand. Kardos pressed one into it. She slotted her fingers under the spring clip, against the electrodes, stripping it of energy even as she crouched over her childhood friend. Her gifts were many, and though her biokinetic skills worked best on herself, with effort she could bend it to healing others. She did so now, focusing first on the cocktail of drugs that had been pumped into the other woman’s stocky, short frame. As soon as that clip was drained, she tossed it back. “Another!”

Yarrin gave her the next. That one cleared up the deeper and more painful of bruises, slaps, pinches, and even a flogging. Rabbit groaned and rolled over. Her skin still showed the mottling of her contusions, but they were reddish with fresh blood ferrying in nutrients for repairs, the capillaries fixed so they could carry out the older fluids from each hematoma. Ia still didn’t know how to fix anyone else’s body Feyori-style. Her crew knew she couldn’t fix anything truly complicated in others, unlike her own eye, but that was alright; bruises, she had learned to heal long ago on herself and her brothers. And on her childhood friend, who pried open her eyes, squinted, then frowned.