Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty (60 page)

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Authors: Jean Johnson

BOOK: Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty
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MARCH 30, 2492 T.S.
SYSTEM EDGE
GLIESE 226 SYSTEM
. . . NOT TZL 11818
 
The first thing on her mind when she woke up was the nasty taste in her mouth. The second thing was the words that came out of that mouth. “Did you
have
to use that particular drug?”
Heddle, Drek’s medic, shifted to the other bed in the cramped cabin, his attention on the hypospray he picked up from the tray on the counter by the door. “That particular drug can be counteracted quickly. In fact, it wears off naturally after OTL transit, which we have just finished achieving. The shot I gave you should clear your mind. Other choices . . . would have delayed your mission.”
“Could I get a bottle of water, please?” Ia asked, hauling her lethargy-filled body more or less into a sitting position. Her brain was muzzy, and she had to duck to avoid the underside of the bunk over her bed. Fighting off her mental sluggishness, she reached for the timestreams, dipping briefly into her own stream to make sure everything was lined up for the future.
What she saw there made her wince. Betrayal was a high probability. The little addition to their plans would complicate her correction of the problem.
Oh . . . stupid, stupid . . . stupid.
“I am curious about the strange bracelet on your right wrist,” Heddle murmured. “We of course had to leave your military unit behind so you couldn’t be easily traced, but this other thing . . . it has me curious. Particularly as we could find no hinges, catches, or seams.”
“Be curious all you want,” Ia dismissed. She smacked her mouth and grimaced, then lifted her chin at Drek. “How soon until he’s on his feet?”
Still not looking at her, he applied the hypospray to his boss, who was dressed to look like conservative, polite businessman Darroll Rekk-Noth, occasional, casual date of Sergeant Ia of the TUPSF Marines over the last several months. “A minute.”
The bald-headed medic—not quite a doctor—returned the hypo to the tray on the counter near the door and busied himself with some minor tidying. Within moments, Drek groaned softly, and shifted a hand to his head.
“. . . I hate that drug. Water,” he ordered, lifting his hand from the makeshift exam bed.
The medic fetched him a bottle of water from the cooler, but not one for her. That confirmed what Ia had read in the timestreams. The crew already knew.
She needed to clear the drugs from her system, some of which were not the same ones Drek had received. But discreetly. Glancing around, she spotted a power socket at the head of the bunk. Sighing, Ia stretched out, draping her right arm over her head. That conveniently placed the thick, golden-clear bracelet cuffed seamlessly around her right wrist right next to the conduit outlet. “Can’t wait for my head to clear . . .”
“Oh, clarity will be achieved soon,” Heddle murmured, smiling to himself. No doubt he was enjoying the irony of his words. Ia sighed and relaxed into the bedding. But only her body, not her mind.
Her bracelet shifted. The movement was subtle, a thinning of the thick, broad, glass-like substance. The edge nearest the outlet molded into a pseudopod, oozed into the socket, and brightened a little bit. She kept her wrist in the alcove, hoping the medic wouldn’t notice anything, and spooled out more of the bracelet, twisting it into a thin coil.
It had been a while since she had practiced this in any depth. Crysium was near-impossible to bend, break, or shatter. It shrugged off heat, ignored cold, and devoured electricity. But above all, it was still the equivalent of Feyori
shakk
. Energy-infused matter. Biocrystalline, not just crystalline. It wasn’t just a property of the crystalline structure that made it so impervious; it was the life force still lingering inside, the energy feeding it and keeping it whole.
Created from the residue of living energy manipulators, only those who could manipulate energy themselves could reshape it. Using electrokinesis to pull
out
the energy naturally stored in the bracelet meant softening and reducing that impermeability to the point of pliability. Telekinesis—or even plain old physical effort—could then be used to shape and mould the almost plexi-like result. But that was the trick; no one had thought of using psychic abilities on the seemingly impervious stuff. No one else would for another two centuries, either. Except Ia, of course.
While it was a truism that a psi never had just one gift, not all of those gifts were strong enough to be developed beyond the most basic levels of awareness. Of those that did have more than one strong, trainable ability, cross-channeling energy was still often difficult for the majority of them. For Ia, if she didn’t include her precognitive and postcognitive abilities, her ability to manipulate electricity was next-highest on the list; biokinesis, the ability to heal rapidly, consciously, was farther down. But she could transform and channel the energy from electricity down into her other gifts, empowering them.
She did so now. Not just into her biokinetic self-healing abilities, but into her pyrokinetic, heat-inducing ones. Literally burning out the drug he had injected into her.
“Is she asleep yet?” she heard Drek ask.
Heddle moved to the side of her bunk, crouching to lean into the alcove. She had her eyes closed, but she could feel his presence, and his voice was close at her side. “Meioa Ia, are you awake?” His fingers brushed against her cheek. “Odd. She feels feverish.”
“Well, she can’t come down with some sort of deadly plague. They won’t pay nearly as much for a dead gift. Fix her, Heddle. We jump again in twenty minutes. I want to be long gone from anywhere near that ship of hers.”
Ia heard Drek getting up from the other bed, and flicked out her mind. The cabin door did not hiss open. She heard him thump the controls with his fist, then jab the comm button a couple of times.
“What the . . . ?”
Heddle touched her face again. Ia seized his mind and dragged him down into the timestreams. She was not gentle about it, though she wasn’t nearly as brutal as she had been with the Lyebariko assassin. It wasn’t easy, balancing the needs of his sanity versus the purging of her system. Her heartbeat increased, racing uncomfortably, unsteadily if she focused too much on him instead of on her health. Heddle twitched a little, threatening to scream if she focused instead on the toxins in her bloodstream. An awkward balance, keeping herself alive and him silent.
“Heddle, open your comm link and . . . Heddle?” Drek briefly returned to the bed. “Holy . . . She looks
very
feverish— Drek to the crew!” He moved away again. “If you are monitoring us, why the hell did you lock us in here? Several of the rest of you handled her, in bringing us on board! If she’s infected, you are, too!”
There.
The last of the drug was purged. Lifting her hand to capture Heddle’s fingers, keeping him on the timeplains, she sat up on the edge of the bed. Now her attention had to be split between the medic and his employer. Drek turned and looked at her.
“What . . . ?”
“I told you: if you ever betrayed me, I would be prepared.” She still felt feverish, but the flush of heat was something she was now free to channel into other areas. Tipping her head, Ia gave the pirate crimelord a small, cold smile. “I’ll admit the second drug you dumped into my system was low on my list of expected events. But it has now been dealt with, and I will be just fine. You, however . . . are perilously close to making me mad.”
Drek backed up, eyes widening. He glanced again at the kneeling medic. “Heddle?”
Heddle shuddered and sobbed. Ia eased her grip on his mind, gentling his suffering. The trembling man blinked and looked up at her, hazel eyes watering. Ia brushed her fingers over his scalp, stroking the smooth-shaved skin. “Will you serve me?” He nodded, too choked with emotion to speak. Ia nodded as well, giving the medic one more pat. “Then everything will be made right . . .”
She looked up at Drek, who was leaning back against the cabin door, trying to subtly pat down his clothes for a weapon. He fished out a small holdout laser pistol. Ia leveled him a look somewhere between patient and chiding.
“Do you
really
think a one-shot gun is going to stop me, Drek?” Leaving Heddle kneeling by the side of the bed, she rose . . . and found her wrist still tethered to the socket. Wincing in self-disgust, Ia snapped her wrist, flexing her powers. The pseudopod recoiled, absorbing back into her bracelet. Which used to be her sword, hilt and all.
“What the hell is that thing?” he asked, distracted.
The gun dipped a little in his distraction. Ia didn’t lunge for it. She didn’t even move, yet, other than to lower her arm at her side. “What it is, is none of your business.
Your
business was to carry out
my
business,” she chided him. “The only mistake you
didn’t
make was telling them that this was supposed to be a sting . . . but I suppose that was as much to save your own hide as anything. But as far as obeying me goes, you failed.”
He lifted his chin, and the pistol, aiming it again. “I don’t work for
you
!”
Now she moved, lifting her hand. His weapon jerked out of his fingers before he could fire, sailing across the two meters between them. She caught it deftly, no longer lethargic from the second set of soporifics, and studied her wide-eyed, would-be captor. “You know, I really need to figure out an easier way to do this . . . because I
am
only one woman. I cannot be everywhere at once.
“Unfortunately, though I know I do eventually figure it out,
how
is a big blank grey spot I cannot foresee. Yet. In the meantime,” she muttered, tossing the gun on the bed, “I guess I’ll have to do this the hard way. Don’t struggle. I out-muscle you, and I’d really rather not break anything I might need, soon.”
“Heddle—grab her!” Drek ordered. The medic, sniffing hard to clear his nose, pushed back to his feet.
“No.” He fixed his employer with a hard look. “I would rather help her. It’s the only way things can be made right.”
Drek looked between Ia and his formerly loyal crewmember. “What the hell did you do to him?”
Three steps brought her within easy reach. Lifting her hand, she cupped his face, following him as he tried to dodge. “Come find out
why
I need you on my side. Come see all the lives
you
are destroying.”
He froze, stiffening in shock as she plunged him, too, into the timestreams.
This really is getting tedious,
she thought in a private corner of her mind, dragging him through the soul-shaking waters.
I cannot personally take
everyone
into the timestreams over the next three hundred years. Even if they are stubborn, blind, self-centered fools . . .
He begged. He had more presence of mind than Heddle did, enough to think somewhat past what he was seeing. Ia had no mercy. By the time she was done, Drek was pale and sweating, as if he was the one recovering from an inexplicable fever.
“Now,” she stated softly as he wiped a trembling hand over his eyes. “You will go to your crew, and tell them we’re not jumping for a few more minutes. Then you will send each one, one at a time, into this cabin. Make up the excuse that you want to give each of them a chance to mark me up a little or whatever while I’m unconscious. As soon as your bridge crew has seen me, then they will jump us to rendezvous with the
Liu Ji
. . . and the future will proceed
exactly
as I have planned and outlined to you.”
He bowed his head. “Yes . . . I’m sorry, Prophet. I didn’t understand.”
Ia patted his cheek lightly, just enough to sting a little. “Snap out of it. You
are
still Drek the Merciless. Recover that side of your nature. I
need
it. You will return to being every bit of the bastard budding crimelord and businessman as ever. You will just work for
me
now. Think of this as the biggest combination of con and heist of your entire career.”
“Yes, Prophet,” Drek murmured, breathing deeply.
“Drek . . . don’t call me Prophet,” Ia ordered, sighing roughly. “
Particularly
in front of anyone else. Call me Ia, call me bitch, call me a pain-in-the-asteroid or something like that, but not Prophet. Heddle, go with him and fetch that pilot of yours. We need to get back on schedule as soon as possible, and that means Kells has to be on the same page as the rest of us.”
“Yes, Proph—sorry,” Drek apologized. He started to turn toward the door, then looked back at her. “Ah . . . two things. First, did you lock this thing?”
“Of course.” A flick of her hand followed the flick of her mind, unlocking the electronic controls. “And the second thing?”
“If I hadn’t tried to betray you just now . . . for all the wrong reasons, I can see that, now . . . would you have ever considered dating me for real? Not just as a cover for our little business deals?”
Heddle glanced between the two of them, lifted his brows, and quickly turned to the counter by the door, blatantly focusing his attention on his tray of hyposprays and drug vials.
Ia shook her head. “I’m sorry, Drek. No matter how attractive a man may be, I literally do not have time for romance in my life.”

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