Alien Honor (A Fenris Novel) (3 page)

In the premier’s quest for iron-fisted peace, Lang had taken a leaf from the old Social Unity Party. He used the wealth of the Outer Planets to appease the billions on Earth and terraformed Venus. Many in the Outer Planets complained,
and a few had formed conspiracies aimed at toppling the dictatorship. Each attempt had failed miserably, most in dark rooms where the leaders howled under torture, and one by the Sunbeam’s destructive ray. A few theorists believed Lang’s predecessor had died from an assassin’s poison. Conspirators had killed the tyrant but failed to stop the next man from filling the premier’s post. With Lang’s rise had come an ominous increase in secret police scrutiny and security procedures, the NKV.

The two NKV agents beside Jasper were big men with normal faces. They carried weapons and rode with Jasper in an air-car approaching Milan.

Mostly, the city entrance was green, a park with a few mansions for the very rich. Only the lucky and a few agricultural workers lived above ground. Everyone else lived in the kilometer-deep cities. Beyond the park were orchards and vineyards. It was beautiful and idyllic. The two NKV agents stared out of the air-car, apparently drinking in the details.

Their ability to sit serenely beside him deeply bothered Jasper. He was the most talented telepath on Earth. Yet the leaders of Psi Force had given him a second class ranking. It was insulting. Worse, he felt little better than a chained ferret, carefully kept under control to do his duty.

Out of the billions in the solar system, only 143 people had psionic abilities strong enough to produce visible effects. Those abilities stretched across a range of talents: telepathy, empathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance and others. That wasn’t the reason why Lang’s people desperately scoured the solar system for more. No. The psi-able could perform an amazing new trick for their masters.

Masters
: the word galled Jasper. He hated one other word, too:
mutant
. The world treated him like a freak of nature, one they needed to tame and corral so they could use.

Jasper touched his smooth scalp. Learned surgeons had put an inhibitor into his brain. Oh yes, it was a fine piece of netting carefully woven under his skull. It was a fail-safe, a chain, a collar to put on the mutant. They had put the inhibitor into the freak that terrified normal people.

“You’re sure it’s Milan?” asked the NKV lieutenant. He was the one with an inhibitor switch. When he flicked it on, Jasper could apply his talents. When it was off, the inhibitor kept him from using his psionic abilities.

“Yes,” Jasper said without looking up. At the moment, the switch was on. “The youth is still in the city.”

The air-car banked, heading down.

The truth of the matter was something completely different from what
normal
people thought about Specials. Jasper understood why they feared him: because he was a godlike being, a new man, superior to these halfwits with their bulging muscles. They had chained him out of fear of his superiority. They thought to use him as a toy, a thing, a component in one of the greatest discoveries and inventions in human history.

It was small “h” human because the Normals lacked psionic powers. They were the old breed in awe of those who, in several centuries, would supplant them. Did they think he would play their chained ferret forever?

I’ll find a way to rid myself of this inhibitor
. Thinking about that brought a smile to Jasper’s chubby face.

“Do you know which level he’s in?” the lieutenant asked.

Of course, Jasper knew. He was a telepath. The lieutenant was a dolt to ask such a stupid question. But that isn’t how Jasper answered. He said, “I don’t know yet, but I will once we begin searching the city.”

The NKV lieutenant nodded.

Jasper smirked to himself. It was good to keep the extent of his ability secret. The day they learned his true might would be the day he ran everything.

Premier Lang hunted the solar system for Specials, for mutants to use in the new Space Fleet. There were several laborious ways to discover if a person had psionic talent. But when the odds were 143 out of tens of billions… one wanted a better way.

Jasper was the better way. With his telepathy, he could pinpoint others of his kind as if they were flickering candles in a dark room. He hated being a chained freak, a slave to lesser beings. But he’d be damned if he was going to let others of his kind walk free while he had to wear a leash. Besides, once he discovered a way to beat the inhibitor, he would have soldiers in his new army to help him.

Cracking his knuckles, Jasper closed his eyes and concentrated. Oh, this was interesting.

He opened his eyes and glanced at the lieutenant. “We’d better hurry. Our candidate is in trouble.”

“Trouble with the law?” the lieutenant asked.

“No. With several Red Blades.”

The two NKV agents glanced at each other. “Who are these Red Blades?” the lieutenant asked.

Jasper concentrated once more. The wild ones usually didn’t have good mind shields. This one certainly didn’t. He was an open book. “Red Blades are a gang, Dust dealers.”

“Vermin,” the lieutenant said with a frown.

“Whatever they are, they’re hunting the candidate,” Jasper said. “And this time it looks as if they have him.”

The lieutenant bent toward to the pilot in front. “Condition red,” he told the man.

The pilot nodded, got on the radio to the airport, and sped down for a landing.

Jasper folded his arms. This looked as if it could get interesting.

Cyrus Gant ran, skidding around a corner and sprinting for his life. Behind him shouted thickly-built goons. They wore red jackets with big blades stenciled on the back. Each clutched a shock rod, a nasty weapon normally wielded by riot police.

“You little punk!” shouted a goon with a tattooed head. “You can’t run forever!”

Cyrus would have liked to shout back how clever that sounded. But he was too winded, too spent by a long chase. He ran through a giant warehouse with mountains of crates all around. The workers were gone. The place was empty but for the seven of them—six Red Blades to beat to death one Latin King.

Cyrus had come here for a special delivery, but had found an ambush instead.

He’d risen in rank from being a mule to a foot soldier in the Latin Kings. Killing the enemy gunman in the ducts had catapulted him far ahead of others his age. The older, stronger foot soldiers had jeered him at the beginning. Cyrus showed them their mistake by offering to duel anyone knife-to-knife. One soldier six years his senior had taken him up on the offer. Cyrus never fought for sport, and he hadn’t that day either. He’d killed the Latin King and taken the beating for it from the others without protest or regret. To climb the ladder of
power, one had to pay the price. To make the others fear and respect him, the beating had been a cheap price to pay… in his opinion.

He was taller than two years ago, but just as thin, with muscles like strings of steel. His eyes were deep blue and haunted with the knowledge that today he was going to die.

This was a setup, a careful one, and Cyrus suspected one or two Latin Kings had helped the Red Blades lure him here. The six men blocked his escape routes. He’d cut one and taken a hit in his left shoulder for it. His shoulder still buzzed from the shock.

Cyrus’s lungs burned with the need for air. Sweat slicked his skin. He had good clothes now and the regular boots that all Latin King foot soldiers wore. When the bosses gave him an assignment, he came through every time. Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to come through today and fear made his mind cloudy. He despised that.

Cyrus skidded and ran between two mounds of piled crates.

“Bad choice, cutter!” a goon shouted. “This is the end of the line for you.”

Cyrus understood the taunt a few seconds later. He’d run into a cul-de-sac. A quick scan showed him the crates were piled too high for him to scale them. He whirled around and faced the racing goons.

They slowed down, three panting Red Blades. The others would be coming from where they had blocked his escape routes earlier. Each of the Red Blades had wide shoulders and thick muscles from hours in the gym and growth hormones. One by one, they flicked on their shock rods to full intensity. Sweat dripped from their beefy faces and the crazy look in their eyes told Cyrus they were high on Dust. Their smiles said this was going to be brutal.

“Kneel, cutter, and we’ll bash you in the head first, making it easy on you. Resist us, and we’ll take hours to finish it and make sure it hurts bad.”

Thinking about the coming beating made several of Cyrus’s bones ache from previous breaks. His palms were sweaty and he gripped his vibrio-knife so hard his hand hurt. His mouth was dry and his tongue stuck to his teeth.

If you’re going to die, go out swinging
.

Cyrus grunted, and through an act of will he forced his muscles to loosen. He even managed a shrug, but he couldn’t think of anything cool to say to show them he thought they were punks.

The three goons inched closer, and two of them began to weave their rods back and forth. The third goon spit on the warehouse floor.

“Your death is going to be a hard one, cutter.”

Cyrus crouched, with his knife close to his chest.
Which one should I cut first?
He didn’t know. As he tried to puzzle it out, a sizzle sounded.

The leftward goon staggered.

What was that? What’s making the noise?

The Dust freak who had staggered shuffled around as if he’d been hurt. The other two goons paused, glancing at the third.

A volley of sizzles sounded, one after another. One of the Red Blades dropped his shock rod so it hit the floor with a
clack.
He followed it, hitting the cement face first. Then the others fell with their batons. They fell and lay still as if dead.

Cyrus stood there blinking as two black-coated men approached the fallen Red Blades. The two men had flat-shaped guns gripped in their fists. Those obviously weren’t slugthrowers, but they were something fancy that made sizzling sounds.

Another man followed the two in black. The other was short, fat, and bald, and wore a shiny suit. That one looked bored, and his eyes shined strangely, almost a metallic color. He raised a pudgy hand and pointed a fat finger at Cyrus.

“He’s the one you want,” Mr. Shiny Suit said.

“So I gathered,” said one of the men in black. “Cyrus Gant?”

“Yeah?” Cyrus asked. “Who are you?

“I belong to the NKV, as you have no doubt surmised.”

“What?” Cyrus asked.

The man turned to Mr. Shiny Suit and raised an eyebrow.

“He doesn’t know about the NKV or the Conscription Act,” Mr. Shiny Suit said.

“Explain it to him.”

Mr. Shiny Suit scowled, but nodded and managed a false smile. He took a step toward Cyrus.

“You can call me Jasper,” the man said.

“What’s this about?” Cyrus asked.

“That’s easy enough to answer,” Jasper said. “These two men are NKV agents and I’m a Special.”

Cyrus’s eyes narrowed.

“You’re suspicious about us,” Jasper told him. The little fat man spoke as if he was a card shark explaining his tricks. “What’s more, you think my suit looks ridiculous and that these two gentlemen must belong to a gang you’ve never heard of.”

Cyrus’s eyes widened for just a moment. Then he became wary and smiled. “How’d you do that?” Every con artist had his methods.

“I read the information in your mind,” Jasper said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“No? Well, I’m a telepath.”

“Don’t know what that is,” Cyrus said. “Tell me. What am I thinking now?”

“That one plus one equals two,” Jasper said.

Shock filled Cyrus’s face. He’d been thinking exactly that. It was time to get out of here. He pointed his vibrio-knife at the two NKV agents. “Thanks for the help. I’ll be seeing you around.”

“No,” said the one who had talked before. “You’re coming with us. That’s why we came to Milan.”

“Sure,” Cyrus said. He’d expected something like this. These three must be sex-fiends and they wanted to kidnap him for their vile games. He flicked on his vibrio-knife and launched himself at the nearest gunman.

Both black-clad men lifted their shiny weapons and pressed the firing buttons. Nothing happened because Cyrus had shorted each gun. He almost reached the nearest man with his knife. Just before he did, something hit him inside his head. It hurt, and it exploded darkness in his mind. The fat one must be doing this, the telepath. Cyrus tried to adjust, but the darkness spread throughout his mind.

He lost consciousness and sprawled onto the warehouse floor, his knife clattering as it skidded across the cement.