Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY) (68 page)

“Now, according to my calculations, four or five of you should do the trick, so we’ll try five to start. Better to slightly overkill than underkill, and have to retry. Helstead, MacInnes, Crow, Teevie, and O’Taicher, you are each fairly strong psychics. I need you to
be
psychics at this point in time. Each one of you will take up one of these guns. The safety is here, the trigger is here, and you wrap your hands around these crystalline bits,” he added, bringing over the first gun so that he could stand in front of the semiarc they made and point at each bit. “Obviously, the thing you want pointed at your target is this crystal shaft out here.”

Eyeing each other, the men and women in question picked up the bulky, odd devices and tried to settle them like weapons. MacInnes’s arms were long enough, but Helstead’s were a bit short.

“Sorry the front grip’s so long, but I couldn’t reconfigure it because of the resonances. You can rest this back bit on your shoulder here to help balance the gun, like this.” Lifting it to his own shoulder, Harper displayed how to hold the thing, turning so that it was pointed off to the side. He lowered it again and showed them where the eight e-clips had been already slotted along the underside of the canister-thick barrel. “These clips are just the initializers, like spark plugs for an old combustion engine—and yes, it really does take that many e-clips, Teevie.”

She blinked at him, her lips still open to ask her unspoken
question. Licking them, she asked instead, “How did you know what I was going to say?”

“Because the Captain already showed me. Now, according to my source materials, I can get a much greater efficiency if I use mid- to high-ranked psis. And according to Helstead, who has been very helpful in testing the prototypes,” Harper added, “you will probably feel an odd tingle, and maybe hear a faint chiming or humming sound. That just means the gun is working. You will also feel drained afterward, but actually using it won’t cause any real harm.”

Harper then handed the weapon to Helstead, who grinned and hefted it onto her shoulder. “Wait until you try this, meioas. If we get it right, the end result’s a muckin’ trip, and I can’t
wait
to see it happen.”

Ia stepped into her own designated spot as Harper checked the grips of each volunteer. Waiting for him to finish, she caught their puzzled looks. “Harper, did you remember to
tell
them what they’re about to do?”

“Nope. I didn’t want them spreading rumors around the ship. Okay,” he said, handing the last oddball weapon to O’Taicher. “Everybody, find your safety switches and flip them off. That will automatically start the weapons charging. Then grasp the hand grips where I showed you, take aim at Captain Ia, and on my command—so you do it all at the same time—you will fire your weapons at her.”

The others exchanged very dubious looks. O’Taicher frowned at their first officer. “Are you bloody
nuts
? That’d be Fatalities Thirteen and Twenty-Two!”

“If you don’t shoot me, Private,
that
would be Fatality Five: Disobeying a Direct Order,” Ia pointed out gently. “Besides, it’s not a case of Friendly Fire
or
Attacking a Superior if you’re ordered to do it.”

MacInnes shook her head, muzzle still pointed at the ground. “I can’t do it. I won’t. Not without a direct order from
you
, sir.”

“Fine,” Ia agreed. “Everyone, I order you to remove the safety locks, aim your weapons at me, and at Lieutenant Commander Harper’s countdown and command, I order you to pull and hold the triggers of your weapons, firing them at me until Commander Harper gives you leave to stop. Any questions?”

Crow and Teevie exchanged looks. Corporal Crow shrugged
and lifted his gun to his shoulder, sighting down the top of the brass barrel at his CO. “…It’s been nice knowing you, sir?”

Ia smiled wryly at the jest. So did Harper—until he flinched, realizing he was in the way, and quickly ducked out from between Ia and the armed members of their crew. That made her grin.

“Right…right. Alright. Safeties off,” he ordered, firming his tone into an order. “Take aim at Captain Ia…and at my command, pull and hold the triggers. In three, two, one…
fire
.”

Helstead pulled her trigger right away. MacInnes was next. Nothing seemed to emerge from the guns, nothing in the visible-light spectrum, but Ia felt each impact. Each unseen beam felt like a jolt of electricity, like a bath of warm sunlight, the pull of a magnet…or rather, like the touch of a mind. The touch of life-energy.

The first one tingled. The second itched. Crow and Teevie shook their heads and fired. The third and fourth unseen beams altered everything. The bodies of her crew members started glowing, the power cables gleamed…and the floor and the walls and the boxes and crates shimmered, turning into tissue paper.

With the alteration in her perception, she could see the guns firing in bright, golden white lances that swirled at their edges with flickering hints of rainbow colors. Time seemed to slow down, and the white, Sol-spectral glow of the overhead lights stretched out, taking on elongated, prismatic hues. She watched, wide-eyed and fascinated, as O’Taicher exhaled in a swirling smoke cloud of heated gas, and remembered where she had seen this before.

When I was enraged by Sung’s disobedience in battle…and then later…later, when I learned to let go of the pain from the…

Sighing, O’Taicher tightened his finger on the trigger, firing the odd weapon at her. The fifth beam struck with blinding intensity, inadvertently aimed right at her eyes. On instinct, Ia inhaled, focusing on the feelings and letting go of her mind. She embraced the energies, embraced, absorbed…and slipped. Slipped, disintegrated, free-fell, and coalesced.

Not too unlike the downward-around-and-out flip she normally made with her gifts and her mind, save that this was a
three-dimensional aerobatic twist made with her body as well as the rest. Her body, which no longer had substance, but which now felt whole in a way she couldn’t confine into words.

“Holy
shakk
!” O’Taicher dropped his gun, releasing the trigger as it fell. The metal clattered and the crystal chimed against the deckplates, but the gun wasn’t damaged.

Ia could see the whole cargo bay, up, down, and all around, though most of her attention, her viewpoint, was still focused on the quintet. That quintet, and the six bodies beyond and the seventh to one side, still continued to glow. Mostly with thermal energy, in a warmth that…that reminded her of a muffin, of all things, soft and bready and sweet. The overhead lights were a glass of cool water. And the beams of the weapons, those were a meal injected directly into her bloodstream.

“Yess! Cease fire!” Harper ordered. He grinned—glowed—and raised his fists in the air.
“Success!”

Ia opened her mouth to say something, to respond, but nothing happened. Her sense of self moved, but only in the way that a ball filled with liquid, or maybe of plasma, might swirl and shift. She focused again on the dozen Humans standing in front of her. Something was missing. Something…Ia realized with a swirling start that she couldn’t
smell
anything anymore.

Accustomed as she had grown to the scents of ship metal, cleaner, lubricants, recycled air, plant life, washed and unwashed bodies, as much as her active awareness of all of that had faded over time…she couldn’t sense that anymore. She could
see
the motes of molecules wafting off their bodies, but it wasn’t a sense of smell as her now-missing nose once knew.

It was a strange side effect.

Harper clapped his hands, and she watched, fascinated, as the sound waves rippled out from his cupped palms in little pale violet shimmers. “Right! Captain,” he stated, facing her sphere and bowing slightly, “can you hear me?”

She tried again to speak, then gave up. Reaching out with her mind, she broadcasted to him. (
Yes, I ca…
)

All of them doubled over, grabbing at their heads. Even Harper, who was the most mind-blind of the group.

Oh.
Reining back on the effort she thought she had needed in order to project, Ia opened up a gentler, whispered level of projection. (
Yes, I can. How’s that? Too loud?
) she asked, focusing on each of the others. Helstead, still wincing, gave her a
thumbs-up as she straightened. (
Sorry, this is…new. I…
see
things…It’s all very…
)

She started to turn around, still staring at the waiting lamps and cables and the pulsing green-brown coils of the rare-earth magnets. Their auras looked tasty. She didn’t have a sense of smell, but she did have a sense of taste. She was also hungry. Very hungry.

“…Captain? Captain Ia, if we could kindly have your attention?” Harper asked dryly as she drifted toward the magnets. She heard/saw him sigh, another swirl of exhaled breath. “Great. I’ve reinvented the old attention-deficit disorder, only I’ve given it to a half-blooded Feyori.”

(
Shh. I’m hungry.
) Since she didn’t have a mouth, just an all-over sense of self, she intersected that sense of self, that sphere, with the green-brown energies. Sure enough, it tasted green-brown.
Heh…like the way a Gatsugi would describe a dish of broccoli beef.
Inhaling the flavors, she supped from the magnets and drank from the overhead lights.

“Helstead, would you kindly shoot her?—No, not the psi-gun,” Harper corrected. “Use the stunner I issued you.”

At the backside of Ia’s field of view, she watched the others hastily move out of the way, and the petite redhead pull out a handheld stunner. Its field was a single, invariable width, though it could be programmed for up to five different strengths. Raising it, Helstead aimed it at Ia, thumbed the controls to maximum, and fired.

It felt…It felt like getting hit in the back with a giant shepherd’s pie. Or maybe a pot pie. Some kind of pie, meaty and filling. (Again!) Ia ordered, turning to face her, still soaking in the magnetic auras. She gentled her tone as the others winced. (
Sorry…again, please. That felt good.
)

Helstead obligingly fired. Harper, on the other hand, snapped his fingers and pointed one at her spherical sense of self. “
Focus
, Captain. No drifting off into an energy-based food coma. Focus!”

The third pulse of the stunner made her feel full. Instinctively, Ia shielded herself against the influx of energies, moving out of the immediate environs of the magnet. (
…Enough. I’m good.
)

“Good,” Harper praised her, and gestured to a spot next to himself, with a half-bowed sweep of his arms. “Now, get your floaty, silvery self over here so I can explain to you how to get back into your normal, Human,
matter
-based self.”

Swirling in a sigh, Ia refocused on him and drifted over to the indicated spot. (
And how do I do that? And why should I try?
) she asked, mildly curious. (
This is all rather fascinating. I’m in no hurry to go back.
)

Sighing, he boldly stuck his hand into her side, invading her sense of self. Shock rippled through her, not only from the touch, but from the energies and sensations that touch brought. Not only could she feel his chemical heat, and the faint hints of magnetism inherent in his cells, but she could taste the electrical impulses of nerves chattering back and forth with his muscles. The kinetic energy of his blood as it raced through his veins. The thoughts in his head.

The thoughts…
His
thoughts, of just three nights before, when she had managed to scrape free one precious hour of time with him. Memories of their activities. Sights, tastes, sounds, touches…and smells, all evoked with a vividness and an intimacy that sprang from his emotions. Strong ones, and a source of energy all of their own. It was so much easier to read his mind like this…

“Shoot her now!”
Come back to me, Ia,
he ordered in her mind, even as he slashed his free hand.
Focus on what you
want!

Everything vibrated. Everything focused as their energy, mental/emotional/psychic/crystalline energy, flooded into her. For a moment, Ia’s whole being quivered, struck like a bell…and then she fell, snapping back into her body. Snapping back into the memories of bliss
his
memories invoked.

She hit the deck with a head-cracking
thud
. Uncomfortably aware of just how
solid
and
separate
each part of her bones and muscles, organs and blood felt, she grunted, shifted her limbs, and pushed herself up on one elbow. “Slag…
shakking v’
slag,” Ia muttered, head aching from its blow. “Slag, but that hurts.”

Harper crouched and offered her both his hand and a wry smile. “Next time, try to land on your feet?”

“I
did
land on my feet,” she growled, blushing. Accepting his hand, Ia let him help haul her upright. “I just…slag…I forgot
how
to stand. Just for a moment. Oh, laugh it up,” she retorted, as Helstead shook with barely suppressed snickers. “
You
try losing two of your five senses and your awareness of how things like muscles and joints work.”

Letting go once she had her balance, Harper grinned unrepentantly at her. “Collapse or not, it worked! Welcome back to the land of the matter-based, my love.”

She gave him a dirty look. “Why did you have to use
that
set of images?”

He sobered, giving her a mildly chiding look. “My research notes stated quite clearly that the subject has to
remember
what it’s like to have a body and
want
to return to it. Our primary source for information did a number of experiments on willing half-breeds, and
that
was one of the best focal points for wanting to return. Now, gather your wits, rest for a few minutes, then we’ll try it again.”

“Ugh. Again?” Ia half muttered, half groaned. She knew he was right, but that didn’t mean she was ready to go for it just yet.

“The more times you make the crossover and manifest with our help, the closer you’ll get to figuring out how to do it on your own.
And
how to come back on your own.” The look he gave her was both a warning and a tease. “Because until you do, I will
continue
to think those thoughts at you.”