Polaris (29 page)

JETH'S MIND REELED. HOW WAS SAAR HERE ALREADY? HAD
he been tracking them the entire time, or had Dax told him where they were headed, how to find them? And the worst thought of all, the one that made his blood crystallize to ice in his veins: Where were Lizzie and Milton?

He had no answers as they entered the control tower and then an elevator. They descended several levels down into the structure, remerging in a long, wide hallway. Most of the doors they passed were sealed, but a few had windows looking in on laboratories or computer rooms. Jeth expected to be taken to another prison cell, but instead he was brought to what was unmistakably an interrogation room. The bland, blank-walled space held a single stark table with two chairs set on either side of it, facing one another.

Jeth didn't have to look up at the corners to know there were live video cameras. He almost smiled at the formality of it, the archaic idea that as a prisoner he still had rights to be treated fairly.
The ITA and their pretenses,
he thought. So long as the appearance of justice was present, the reality didn't matter.

The soldiers forced him into the chair farthest from the
door and then fastened the chain of his manacles to the small metal hoop protruding from the table—its only decoration.

Then they left, leaving him alone in the semidarkness. Jeth didn't expect to wait long, not in this room, but he was mistaken. Hours slipped by. He grew desperate to stand and stretch, returning blood flow to his lower extremities.

Even worse was the oppressive company of his thoughts. Where were the others? What would happen to them with Saar here? Saar, the man who had executed Vince with no remorse or hesitation. A hundred horrible visions of what awaited them came and went in Jeth's mind, leaving him exhausted.

Finally, the torturous wait ended. The door opened, and Saar stepped inside.

Hatred ignited in Jeth's chest, and it was all he could do to sit still and look impassive. His jaw ached from the effort of holding back a scream of rage. Sweat dampened his neck and arms.

Saar carried a blue box in his hands. He approached the table and looked down at Jeth, his expression completely neutral. He was wearing the gray uniform of an ITA soldier, the left breast covered in elaborate rows of insignia. The straight, high collar of the uniform emphasized the gauntness of his face. His cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut glass. The tentacles of his silver brain implant were visible beneath his ear. His eyes were ice—glistening and pale blue. They pierced Jeth, freezing his heart.

“Jethro Seagrave,” Saar said, setting the box on the table. His gravel voice sent a jolt of fear through Jeth as he remembered the first time he'd heard it, the moment before Vince died.

He shook the feeling off. He refused to let this man intimidate him. Jeth flashed his cockiest grin. “David Saar. Or should I call you Dave? Can I call you Dave?”

No reaction showed on Saar's face. He might not have heard Jeth speak at all, but Jeth knew better. This was a man who wouldn't provoke easily. His patience made Jeth feel small, inconsequential. He swallowed.

Saar pulled out the chair across from Jeth and sat down, crossing one bony leg over the other. He touched the top of the box with a gnarled finger, the nail thick and yellowed. “Jethro Seagrave, you have been found guilty of treason against the Confederation of Planetary Systems and it is within my authority to bestow on you the punishment of death for your crimes.”

“Found guilty?” Jeth said, managing to keep his voice steady. “Funny, but I don't remember a trial.”

Saar acknowledged Jeth's response by raising a single eyebrow. “A trial? How quaint that you think one was needed.”

“I really didn't.” Jeth hesitated, weighing his next words carefully. “Not from your point of view, anyway. Must be nice to feel so justified to commit murder. To be so certain of your authority over every life that crosses your path.”

“Certainty,” Saar said, “is the only way an entity such as the one I serve can guarantee its authority. There is no room
for doubt in the ITA. Not when it comes to criminals and terrorists such as yourself.”

Jeth snorted. “Like the average citizen is treated any differently.”

Saar bared his teeth in a ghastly smile. “I wouldn't know. I don't deal with the average citizen. But what I do know is that your kind is a cancer and it is my duty to cut you out.”

A cancer
. Jeth's stomach turned over, guilt churning inside him as he remembered he had thought the same way about Shady and Celeste. How wrong he was—as wrong as Hammer had been. “My kind?” Jeth said, his voice trembling. “You mean free-thinking? Free-willed? Well, then to you all humanity must be a cancer.”

Saar ignored the comment. “You have been found guilty, but I am going to give you one opportunity for redemption: a chance to take a more righteous path.”

Jeth smacked his lips. “I don't believe any such path exists. Anywhere. But most of all not here.”

Saar bowed his head slightly. “Perhaps. Still, it would be something other than immediate execution.” Saar bared yellowed teeth in an expression designed to petrify. It very nearly worked.

“I suppose that's something.” Jeth leaned back in the chair as far as the manacles would allow. “What would I have to do to earn this chance, then?”

“You will confess all your mother's secrets. Specifically, the location of Empyria.”

Jeth glared, the pain of his mother's death an open, seeping
wound. He didn't even know what they had done with her body, although he suspected they had collected it like a specimen and sent it back to the Hanov lab to be dissected and studied.

But if Saar wanted the truth, he could have it. “I don't know the location of Empyria.”

“Perhaps, but I'm disinclined to believe that your mother died without passing that information on. I've seen the recordings of her time in the ITA labs. That is one secret she would not take to her grave.”

Jeth smirked. “That's an interesting conclusion to make. I've seen the recordings too, and it seems to me that taking that secret to the grave was precisely what she was planning to do.”

“You're lying.” Saar said it so simply that Jeth almost faltered.

Forcing his eyes not to shift off Saar he said again, “I don't know the location of Empyria. Besides, why do you even want it, now that you've got Cora and Aileen Stock?”

“Insurance,” Saar said at once. “The cloning project will suffice as an alternative to metadrives for a while, but access to the Pyrean home world will make the ITA's power absolute.”

“You mean it'll keep someone else from trying to take your power from you,” Jeth said, understanding perfectly.

“There will always be those who try,” Saar said. “But none who will succeed. Not while we control the means for interstellar travel.” Saar uncrossed his legs and faced the
box in front of him. For the first time Jeth wondered at its contents. It was large enough to contain several handguns. A brief fantasy of getting his hands on one went through his mind. He would not hesitate to plant a bullet between this man's eyes.

Saar opened the hinged lid and reached inside the box. Jeth couldn't see anything from his side of the table. He waited, breath shallow as Saar set one of the objects on the table. It took him a second to recognize it. He'd only seen the Reinette canisters briefly during the Hanov mission.

“What did you intend to do with these?” Saar asked.

“You know what it is, right?” said Jeth.

Saar nodded. “Reinette. A microorganism designed to break down plasinum. A highly destructive, though generally nonlethal weapon.”

“That's the idea.”

“What did you intend to destroy?”

Jeth pressed his lips together. He didn't have a lie to offer, but he refused to speak the truth. If his mother could keep her secrets through years of torture, so could he. The very idea of denying this man something he wanted was enough motivation to seal Jeth's tongue for all eternity.

“I take it you don't wish to convey this information willingly?” Saar said, cocking his head ever so slightly.

“Right again,” Jeth said.

“Very well.” With a satisfied smile, Saar opened the lid to the box once more. “Then we will try some means of motivation.” He set three more objects on the table, each one
completely identical—and a thousand times more frightening than the Reinette.

Implants. Three black, Brethren implants. Jeth knew at once that the one in the middle was his. He didn't know how he knew exactly, but he did, without a doubt. He battled down the impulse to reach out and snatch it. He wasn't sure the manacles would be long enough, but he wanted to try. More than anything.

And yet he didn't.

“Who do those belong to?” Jeth asked, eyeing the ones on the right and the left.

“Your companions.”

Eric and Perry?
Why had Saar collected their implants? Surely whoever was controlling them was working for Saar. “Why do you have their implants?”

Saar sighed, the sound as gravelly as his voice. “They won't be needing them anymore.”

“What?” Jeth sat up straighter, his heart rate doubling.

“Yes, they too were found guilty of treason and have already paid for their crimes.”

“They're dead? You killed them?”

“I am the Storm that Rises,” Saar said. The familiar words made Jeth's gut twist, his hatred and fear a toxic mix inside him.

“I'm not going to tell you anything,” Jeth said through gritted teeth.

“We shall see.” Saar reached into the box a third time. The object he revealed crushed any hope Jeth had in a
single, red-hazed blow. It was another implant, one the color of old blood.

Breathless, Jeth asked, “What did you do to Dax?”

“A cancer must be eradicated wherever it is found.” Saar reached a hand to the back of his head and removed his silver implant. He set it on the table next to the others before picking up the red implant once more. He raised it to the back of his skull, and inserted it with quick efficiency.

“This is an amazing device,” Saar said, motioning to his new accessory. “Implants with this level of network capability are expensive and hard to come by, even in the ITA. My own is networked, of course.” He touched the silver implant. “My men call it the Temple. It's very similar to the Axis—though, to my dismay, not as powerful. The hierarchy structure Hammer introduced with the Axis makes the Temple seem primitive by comparison. It's a fault I have since rectified.”

“How do you mean?” Jeth said, his lungs constricting.

“I have combined the two networks, integrating the Axis hierarchy into the Temple. In other words, I have made the Malleus Brethren and the Guard a part of my Temple.”

Vomit burned Jeth's throat. Dax was dead, and the Axis now in the control of this man—a man used to wielding power with heartless efficiency.

A moment later, the realization of what Saar intended to do struck Jeth. He leaped up, pulling against the chains. He would cut off his own hands rather than sit here and let it happen.

Saar smiled, and as if the gesture had been a silent command, two ITA soldiers stepped into the room. They weren't the ones who had escorted him here. These men wore silver implants, marking them a part of Saar's army, connected to the Temple.
And now the Axis.

They walked toward Jeth, who started to flail. In unison, both men pulled clubs from their belts, the short sticks lengthening with the single press of a button.

They rounded on Jeth, swinging. The first blow struck him midthigh, the other in the small of his back. He went down to his knees, his arms wrenching out of their sockets as he reached the end of the manacles' length. Jeth let out a pained cry, and kicked out with his uninjured leg, but it didn't matter. The soldier to his left struck him again and then pressed against him, pinning his body to the table. The soldier to his right grabbed the implant Saar held out to him.

Together the soldiers forced Jeth's head down, neck exposed. The stem of the implant jammed against the back of his skull a couple of times before they managed to find the architecture hole and drive it home.

All the fight went out of Jeth like a light shutting off. He sank to his knees, his head on fire with both relief and a terrible, penetrating fear. He wanted the implant back, wanted its strength and reassurance, but the Axis was gone.

No, not gone. Rather, amplified. It was no longer an inviting hum in the back of his mind, a doorway to information and community. Now it was a tempest, a flood of power barreling over him, bending his will.

You will relent,
Saar spoke into his mind.
You will obey
.

Jeth fought against the power, the strength of it seeming to flay his mind.
I will not.

You will obey
.

No.

Obey.

Blood filled Jeth's mouth as he bit down hard on his tongue. He didn't taste it. He felt disconnected from his body. He was all mind and nothing else. And he felt himself bending, surrendering.

Tell me about Empyria,
Saar said.

No
. But even as he thought it, images rose unbidden in his mind, of Lizzie, and the data crystal.
Hidden code,
Lizzie had said.
Empyria
.

Noooooooo!
Jeth screamed. He fought and raged, but it was too late. Once released to the Axis—to the Temple—there was no taking it back. Jeth struggled to shut the door, to turn it off and keep his secrets, but there wasn't any door anymore. There was nothing but Saar.
The Storm that Rises. Storm scourge.

Destroyer of Minds. Eater of Souls.

The images began to flow freely now, his mind ripped open and spilling out. Saar saw everything. The mission to Hanov, the plan to destroy the Harvesters, even Marian's dying words, her wish for Jeth to go to Empyria, to bring the Pyreans and the humans together, finally.