The Spider and the Fly Read online

  ***

  “There,” Henri said as he held up the small neural implant and leaned back from the medical table. “Cute little bugger. Maybe one of the techs can figure out how to copy it.”

  “Or you could just shove it right back into her,” Grier growled. “You should have left her to rot, Coveri. I’m not sure what you expect us to do with her.”

  “I expect you to treat her decently,” Markus said as he rubbed tiredly at his temple. He looked awful; his eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark circles. “If we want to gain her as an ally, we need to prove that the Convectorate propaganda about us is wrong.”

  Grier snorted. “I don’t give a damn what she thinks, and we definitely don’t need her help. In case you hadn’t noticed, she’s a fucking Spider. She could threaten our entire operation.”

  “So was I, once” he reminded her, “and to be blunt, the Mire never would have recovered after Mirador if not for me. We just need to give her some time and she’ll come around.”

  The woman’s eyes flashed with rage and she took a menacing step forward—

  “That’s enough,” Foln said softly. “Markus is right. Another trained psychic would be a huge asset.”

  For a moment it looked like Grier might press the point, but instead she sighed and leaned back against the wall. Henri just shook his head.

  “It’s been so dull without the two of you on the ship together,” he quipped. “I think we’ve all been spoiled by the quiet.”

  Foln took one last look at the growing field of debris outside the infirmary’s lone viewport and then let out a slow, tired breath. Many men in his position would have been furious. They might have even taken it out on their underlings, even though realistically there was nothing any of them could have done to prevent the destruction of the Damadus. But while Foln’s blood still boiled at the thought of the Dowd wretches wiping out yet another piece of human history, he had long since evolved past the need for pointless, rage-fueled tantrums. Besides, as much as he yearned to walk the corridors of a real Dominion ship like his ancestors—as much as he wanted to feel the telepathic thrum of a true psionic power core in his mind—this wasn’t a failure. He had seen enough of those in his lifetime to know what they looked like. This was an opportunity, pure and simple, and one he had every intention of taking.

  “You mentioned earlier that you’d retrieved all the data crystals,” he said. “How certain of that are you?”

  “We didn’t get a chance to study the whole ship, but I’m reasonably sure we got the important ones,” Markus told him.

  Foln nodded. “It may take some time to get through all of them. You’ll need to get started the moment we’re back on New Keledon.”

  “You really think it’s wise to take her there?” Grier asked. “The Council won’t be happy about it.”

  “When was the last time the Council was happy about anything?” Henri muttered as he ran the dermal regenerator over Markus’s raw skin. “Those spoiled little aliens don’t realize how good they have it.”

  “That’s the point—if we bring a Spider into the city, they’ll scream bloody murder. It might even start a riot.”

  “They accepted me,” Markus pointed out. “They’ll learn to accept her the same way eventually, and showing her how our people live is the best way to convince her to help us. She and Thexyl will come around once they see the rest of our allies.”

  “Allies,” Grier nearly spat. “You’ve obviously been away so long you’ve forgotten what the Council is like.”

  “Forget the Council,” Foln said. “The sight of New Keledon by itself will go a long way towards convincing her to join us.”

  She turned towards him and blinked. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Do you recall your own reaction when you first looked upon it?”

  “Yes, but awe fades quickly. Once she realizes how things actually work there, she’ll—”

  “It will be enough,” Foln said, putting a touch of finality into his voice. “And if it’s not, I’d rather know sooner rather than later. Vale could be a tremendous asset to us, but I’m not going to waste resources over a lost cause. New Keledon is also the only place in the galaxy where we can be sure the other Spiders won’t find her.”

  “It might still be best to keep some of this information to ourselves,” Henri suggested. “If we tell the Council about Vale, perhaps we shouldn’t mention the Damadus or the crystals. You never know, one of the aliens might try to tamper with our research.”

  “Agreed—we should tell them as little as possible,” Grier said.

  Foln shook his head. “They’ll find out sooner or later, and if they believe we were holding out on them, their reaction will be even worse. Our best option will be to simply tell them everything up front and force them to acclimate.”

  Grier opened her mouth as if to protest again, but she clamped it shut before anything else came out. Neither she nor Henri were happy about it, naturally, but as always they would do what they were told. Foln understood perfectly how much they hated the Council and the aliens that sat upon it, but neither of them had a fraction of his political experience. He knew how to manipulate the councilors just as easily as if they’d been human, and in this case being forthright would be the best approach in the long run.

  As for Vale, everyone here understood how much of a boon a second trained psychic would be to their cause, but they also understood how dangerous she could be as an enemy if they couldn’t control her. The Council had ultimately accepted Markus, but Foln knew they wouldn’t be nearly as welcoming to a captive Spider. It was a risk, certainly, but one he was willing to take. For the moment, anyway.

  Grier finally sighed and folded her arms. “So what are your orders, my lord?”

  “We’ll be heading out soon,” Foln said. “I’ll also send out a missive to the astral buoy. It would be best to give our allies a little warning before we drop all of this on them.”

  “You really think that’s going to appease them?”

  He shrugged. “It will give Selaris and Zalix some time to placate the others before we arrive. Though I’ll keep Vale’s identity a secret until we’re there to explain it in person. Digesting the discovery of the Damadus will be enough for them, I imagine.” He turned to the doctor. “How long until Vale is conscious, Henri?”

  “I can wake her anytime,” the doctor said. “She has all the same ‘upgrades’ as Markus—her body has almost completely healed already. As long as she avoids getting her head bashed again for a few days she’ll be fine.”

  “Then there’s no reason to wait. Bring her companion up here, Tayla. And then get a shuttle ready.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Once she was gone, Foln glanced back over to the med-table. “You did well. I thought we might have lost you for good.”

  “So did I,” Markus said as he leaned up and rubbed at the reddish skin where the chip had been taken out. “I figured the odds they’d have an agent around Briton Chalo were almost nonexistent. I guess I was wrong.”

  “I’m surprised Vale didn’t simply kill you. Or return you for interrogation.”

  “I’m sure she would have if the decision was left up to her. Honestly, I got lucky. If there’d been another Tarreen ship anywhere close to the Damadus, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation.”

  Foln nodded. “I only wish we could have saved her from the Dowd. What was it like being on an actual psi-ship?”

  Markus stood and smiled faintly. “I don’t think you would have known what to do with yourself. Everything was just so…perfect. It’s hard to accept how far we’ve fallen.”

  “We will rebuild,” Foln assured him, placing a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “With the data crystals, anything is possible.”

  “Assuming the crew really did find a cure. Something about the way they died…it just didn’t seem right to me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Markus whisper
ed, glancing out the viewport to the expanding debris field outside. “I’m not exactly sure what I’d expected to find on board, but a bunch of broken bodies wasn’t it. I always assumed the crew had eventually succumbed to the Koro Effect or maybe just run out of supplies, but it almost seemed like they were attacked.”

  “By whom? And then why wasn’t the ship destroyed?”

  “I have no idea. All I know is that something didn’t feel right. We found a man on the bridge holding this violet crystal—I think it might have been your ancestor, Krucius. He’d been shot in the back, presumably by one of the other crew members.”

  Foln froze in place. “My grandfather? You found his body?”

  “I can’t know that for certain, but he certainly looked like the few ancient holos I’ve seen.”

  “Did you take any scans?” Henri asked. “I could run a DNA comparison.”

  “Yes, I grabbed the memory chip out of my vac suit before we left. You can find everything there.”

  “Krucius Foln,” Foln whispered, clasping onto his crimson pendant as a fresh surge of anger welled up inside him. The body of his ancestor, the last Foln not to be crippled by the Pandrophage, and the Dowd had taken it away from him…

  “I’m assuming the crystal was a personal log,” Markus said. “If so, we might be able to get some answers as to what happened.”

  “Yes,” Foln nodded absently. “He would have succeeded in his mission no matter what happened. The cure must be here.”

  “I hope so. I’ll get started on them as soon as we get back to New Keledon. No sense taking any risks in the Spiders finding us while we’re out here in deep space.”

  “In the meantime I guess we’ll need to convince your former associate here to cooperate,” Henri said. “Our means of control isn’t quite as elegant as theirs, but it should still work well enough. It might leave a nasty rash, though.”

  Markus glanced down to the suppression collar the doctor had wrapped around Vale’s neck. “She won’t try to escape, at least not right away. But it’s going to take a lot of work to get her to see things our way…and I suppose there’s a fair chance she never will.”

  Foln cocked an inquisitive eyebrow and forced his mind back to the current conversation. “That’s not how you described her a few years ago. You said she was on the verge of coming with you.”

  “Four years is a long time. And frankly, I might not have been thinking clearly back then.”

  “Well, she had you in custody for almost a week and didn’t kill or seriously hurt you,” Henri pointed out. “I’d say that makes her a lot more amenable than any other Spider we’ve ever met.”

  “Maybe,” Markus whispered, his brow creased in thought. Foln didn’t need to be a telepath to recognize the face of a young man in pain. Clearly he cared for this woman, or at least he had at one point. Hopefully that wouldn’t get in the way of his better judgment; they really couldn’t afford to have their only fully-trained psychic suddenly become unreliable.

  “Regardless, we’ll give her a chance,” Foln said as he turned and walked over to the window. “With the cure in our hands, however, having another Spider won’t be nearly as vital. We’ll soon be able to train our own.”

  “What will you do if she doesn’t play along? Kill her?” Markus asked.

  “Only if necessary. Hopefully she’ll support us willingly, but if not…”

  Foln shrugged and gazed out the window at the uncountable stars rushing past outside. The uncountable stars…and the numerous worlds floating around them. Worlds whose people had once lived and died at the whim of humans.

  And who soon would again.

  “I’m sure we can find plenty of uses for a young and capable psionic mind,” he said. “Willing…or otherwise.”

  Chapter Nine

  Jenavian’s eyes fluttered open, and a pair of brown ones were staring right back at her. Her first thought was that Markus had finally jumped her, and she reflexively lashed out with her mind—

  The jolt of pain started in her neck and quickly spasmed through her spine. Instinctively, she tried to reach her hands up to her face, but they were locked firmly in place. Her eyes flicked about, desperately searching for anything she could use against him…

  “I feel like we’ve been here before,” Markus said with a lopsided grin. “Our technology isn’t quite as refined as yours, but it gets the job done.”

  Jenavian stopped herself and glared at him, and in that split second the flood of memories rushed back over her. The Dowd arrival, the destruction of the Damadus, the Manticore lurching as a torpedo hit them…

  And of course, the Mire ship that had magically shown up just beforehand. The one she must have been aboard right now.

  “No one here is going to hurt you,” Markus soothed. He’d cleaned up and changed clothing, but judging by the circles under his eyes he still hadn’t slept any. That must have meant she hadn’t been out for long. “We just put on the collar to prevent you from hurting anyone—and to keep you from summoning reinforcements, of course.”

  “Where’s Thexyl?” she asked with a croak.

  “I am here,” the Kali said from somewhere off to her left. She craned her neck to the side and saw him standing just a few meters away. He appeared unharmed; they hadn’t even slapped manacles on him that she could see.

  “As I said, no one is going to get hurt,” Markus told her. “I’ll release your restraints, but you have to promise not to sit up too quickly. You suffered a pretty nasty concussion.”

  Jenavian clenched her jaw and tried to center herself. She knew she wasn’t in any real danger. Markus was still deluded enough to believe she’d eventually join with him, and he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that. All she had to do was stay calm and wait for the right opportunity to get out of here.

  The restraints binding her arms and waist released with a soft hiss, and she slowly sat up. They were inside an infirmary, albeit a relatively primitive one, with three other empty med-tables and a diagnostic console that looked at least twenty years obsolete. To her left were Markus and Thexyl, and to her right was an elderly human man with a bushy moustache and a rough approximation of a medical robe. The only other person in the room was an almond-skinned woman her age skulking in the shadows near the doorway.

  “Everything appears normal,” the doctor said as he glanced down to his instruments and then back to her. “You’re lucky you weren’t leaning about three centimeters to the left when that bulkhead ruptured or that pretty little skull of yours would have been split in half.”

  “This is Doctor Henri Varm, the man who saved your life,” Markus explained. “The woman over by the door is Tayla Grier. And this is—”

  “Foln,” another voice said from behind her. She twisted around to see a second elderly man, this one with a trim white beard and regal bearing about him. “Lord Soren Foln. I’m quite pleased we were able to rescue you.”

  Jenavian’s eyes narrowed. “I’d heard you were dead.”

  “Convectorate Intelligence would like to think so,” the man replied mildly. “But as it turns out, I’m remarkably hard to kill.”

  “Too bad the same couldn’t be said for your ancestor,” she chided. “We found his corpse back on the ship. Took a nice shot in the back from one of his own people.”

  “I’m hoping the information you recovered will tell us more about him,” Foln replied coolly, not taking the bait. “Among other things.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Jenavian murmured, glancing back to Markus. “You realize you’ve doomed everyone here, right? The Convectorate won’t stop hunting for me.”

  “You mean like how they’ve been hunting for Markus for the last four years?” Grier asked with a snort. “You’ll forgive us for not being impressed.”

  “What my associate means to say,” Foln said as he tossed the woman a warning glare, “is that we’re quite used to being hunted. The Convectorate won’t find you, and I don’t mean that in an ominous way. Quite the cont
rary, in fact—you are finally free of your oppressors, whether you realize it yet or not.”

  “You people are just walking advertisements, aren’t you?” Jenavian grumbled, swinging her legs over the edge of the table. Other than a mild headache she actually felt fine, a fact she attributed more to her psychogenetically enhanced body than the skill of this backwater physician of theirs. “So what do you want from me?”

  “Right now, nothing,” Foln said. “We’ll be traveling here in the Golem for the rest of the day, but afterwards we’ll be transferring to a shuttle before heading to our main base. Once we’re there, I’d like to introduce you to our allies. I believe that after you’ve met the people we work with, you’ll begin to understand why we aren’t the monsters your masters have made us out to be.”

  Jenavian resisted the urge to roll her eyes. They were probably planning on dragging her through a refugee camp or maybe a medical ward full of sick children—something carefully designed to manipulate her emotions. If so, they were in for some serious disappointment.

  But they didn’t have to know that yet. For the moment it was in her best interests to let them believe she was going to cooperate, and that meant only putting up a token amount of resistance. Once she had a chance to confer more with Thexyl, they could start working on a long-term plan.

  “Fine,” she said, standing. “So what do we do until then?”

  “We’re prepared quarters for here while you’re on the ship,” Foln told her. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a great deal of extra space, and the two of you will have to share accommodations.”

  “We’ll live. Let’s just get this over with.”

  “This way,” Markus prompted.

  She and Thexyl followed him out of the infirmary, and he led them down the corridor to one of the crew quarters. He tapped the keypad on the wall and the door obediently slid open.

  “It isn’t much, but it’s better than a cold deck plate and an energy barrier,” Markus said wryly as he gestured inside.

  Jenavian peered around the corner. Other than a few pieces of furniture, a lavatory, and a food processor, the room was empty. “You’re not even going to shock me out of spite a few times?”

  “Maybe later. In the meantime, you might as well settle in and get some rest. We’ll be transferring to the shuttle in about seven hours.”

  “I can’t wait. I’m sure once I see all the smiling faces of the men and women who murdered a thousand Praxian miners I’ll come around.”

  When he didn’t take the bait after a few seconds, she turned around to face him. He was staring right back at her, his expression unreadable.

  “We’ll see,” Markus said.

  The door snapped shut, and she and Thexyl were alone.

  “Well, I guess it’s better than a cell,” Jenavian murmured as she flopped down into one of the room’s musty chairs. “Or being vaporized.”

  “I’m not detecting any listening devices,” Thexyl said as he checked the small scanner on his wrist.

  “Of course not—it would be rude to spy on your guests,” she replied dryly. “I’m surprised they actually let you keep that thing.”

  “Other than confiscating my weapon, they’ve been exceedingly cordial, actually.”

  “I’m sure they have. Just don’t believe for an instant that any of it is genuine.”

  His scales rippled blue as he continued to scan. “I don’t intend to.”

  “How accurate is that thing, anyway?”

  “I highly doubt they could afford anything that would slip past it.”

  “A day ago I doubted they’d be able to afford the parts to make a ship like this,” Jenavian countered.

  “An excellent point,” Thexyl conceded. “Still, I believe it is relatively safe to speak here. As a whole they seem more or less earnest in their desire to convert us rather than imprison us.”

  She grunted. “Other than the fact they never intend to let us go, you mean.”

  “Yes,” he said, finally taking a seat for himself. The chairs were obviously designed for human physiology, and it was clear his wasn’t particularly comfortable. “What I meant was that we should be able to use their sympathy against them. For whatever reason, Coveri sincerely believes you’ll eventually join him. And the others seem to have accepted his judgment.”

  “Most of them, anyway. I get the impression that they weren’t necessarily expecting him to bring us along.”

  A subtle ripple of yellow shimmered down his body. “You are a powerful psychic and a trained operative—your potential value to them is obvious, and I don’t believe they’d risk hurting you. Me, on the other hand…”

  “I’ll just have to make it clear to them that if they hurt you, they forfeit any chance they might have had of getting me on their side.”

  “I hope that’s enough,” Thexyl said softly.

  It was an uncharacteristic display of emotion for a Kali, but it wasn’t like she could blame him. If even a quarter of the things they’d read about the Mire’s abuses of nonhumans were true, then he could be in serious danger.

  Jenavian frowned at the thought. If. What did she mean, “if?” She had seen the Mire’s transgressions first-hand, from the massacre at Ceruan Station to the tram bombings on Alagar. She knew full well what they were capable of, and no matter how much Markus insisted it was all just Convectorate propaganda, she knew better. His idiotic idealism must have long since claimed his sanity, and that was all there was to it.

  “What do you think about Foln?” she asked, hoping to change the subject. “I’d heard he was dead.”

  “I actually had a chance to read over the Intelligence dossier on him just a few weeks ago,” Thexyl replied, his scales returning to a neutral gray. “The Ministry projected a fifty-fifty chance that he was killed at Mirador along with the rest of the Mire leadership. It appears he not only survived, but managed to keep most of his family’s assets as well. I wonder if this ship represents what’s left of the Foln legacy’s fortune.”

  “I suppose that’s possible. I guess the real question is how similar he is to his great grandfather. You seemed to have a rather strong opinion of Krucius.”

  “He was a legendary psychogeneticist, but he was also one of the biggest bigots in all the Sarafan.”

  “Which is definitely saying something.”

  “Yes,” Thexyl agreed. “But as far as Soren Foln is concerned, many Keledonian traditions have survived even though their planet did not. And tolerance has never been one of your culture’s virtues—no offense.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Jenavian said as she turned and glanced out the window. “Regardless, the Widow needs to know about this ship.”

  “Yes, especially given its rather unique capabilities.”

  She paused and glanced back to him. “What do you mean?”

  His scales rippled blue again. “You didn’t notice how they were able to appear virtually on top of us during the battle?”

  Jenavian blinked. She had noticed that at the time, of course, but with everything else that had been going on in the heat of the battle she hadn’t been able to process it. “You think they have some type of cloaking technology we aren’t aware of?”

  “No, and even if they did I doubt they could fit it on a ship this size. I think there’s a much more plausible explanation.”

  “You mean—” she breathed, her head shaking. “No…”

  “It’s the only thing that fits the facts,” Thexyl said. “They have a functional astral drive.”

  Jenavian slowly sank into the closest chair. A century ago, the astral drive had been one of the cornerstones of Dominion ships, but the Tarreen had gone out of their way to purge the technology from the galaxy. Intel occasionally mentioned reports of a handful of wealthy, independent ship captains having astral drives they only used in emergencies, and she’d always assumed the reports were true given how much charged psionic capacitors sold for on the black market—they were the only remaining means of po
wering the drives.

  Or they should have been, anyway. But the Mire now had access to Markus and his psychic abilities, and if they had a working astral drive then he could conceivably recharge their capacitors or maybe even power the drive itself just as he had the Damadus. What she didn’t understand was how the Spiders hadn’t detected him doing either of those things.

  “Wherever their secret base is, it must be somewhere outside the range of your web,” Thexyl said into her thoughts. “And if that’s true, then it’s possible they have other Flies hidden there as well. Perhaps a great many of them.”

  Jenavian nodded silently. A whole nest of psionic adepts concealed from the Tarreen, away from the Spiders...

  The Widow definitely had to hear about this. The amount of damage one renegade Spider could do was considerable, and Jenavian didn’t want to think what would happen if these terrorists had more in training. It might be enough to start another war.

  She wasn’t going to let that happen. Markus had bided his time and eventually fate had given him an opportunity to escape. There was no reason she couldn’t do the same. Sooner or later he’d slip up, and then she and Thexyl would bring everything they’d learned back to the Widow.

  And then, perhaps, they could finally put down this rebellion once and for all.