Skybreach (The Reach #3) (44 page)

Something happened.

The Redman stopped dead, and Ursie thumped into his side, but she didn’t notice the impact.  She wasn’t looking through her own eyes anymore.

The images were coming at her mind so fast that she couldn’t hope to process them entirely.  She saw a dusty red sky, a group of boys in a pit with glinting swords in their hands.  Cold stone sleeping pallets.  A fantastic domed city, the likes of which she would never have imagined could actually exist.  The interior of some kind of vehicle, black space outside, a sprinkling of stars.  A group of men in prayer.  Crimson armour lying on a bed.  An old man’s haggard face.

She gasped.  Even in the early days when she’d first discovered her abilities, she’d never seen the images with this kind of clarity.  With this kind of depth.  She could
smell
the red dust, feel the solemnity of the prayers aching through her bones.  She wasn’t just seeing these memories.  She was
living
them.

Somehow she pulled herself free of the deluge of thoughts and emotions and brought her mind back to herself.  Peripherally, she was aware that her fingers had touched the Redman’s bare skin under his glove.  She realised that, at that moment, she had entered his mind in such a profound way that it dwarfed anything she had ever experienced before.

She looked up.  The Redman was staring down at her, his face a rictus of horror.  He seemed frozen in place.  As he sought to break his paralysis, his free hand began to move jerkily in her direction.

Instinctively, Urise reached up and hooked her toe into the Redman’s belt.  She thrust herself upward onto his back and, in one motion, looped her arm around his bare neck as if she were grabbing him in a choke hold.

Her fingers alighted on the Redman’s jaw, and…

Oh my god…

Here, her touch was like sinking herself into the very essence of the Redman.
  She occupied him as if she’d slipped into his skin.  She could feel the fabric of his garments, the weight of his boots on her feet.  The slightly stale taste in his mouth was now in hers,
the air in his nostrils filtering down into her lungs
.  There were a dozen other sensations that came to her that were so foreign she could barely begin to describe them.

Everything that had been his to experience was now hers.

The Redman’s resistance ended and his hand dropped away again.

He was like a puppet dangling in Ursie’s hand.

Vishesh watched idly as a scattering of travellers, vendors and administration staff shuffled past along the concourse.  His eyes drifted toward the far end of the habitat, where the OrbitPod dock was located, and he wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to travel down to the Reach and join rank with his brothers in the Crimson Shield who were stationed there.

In truth, he was bored here in the habitat.  Sure, there was security in this place, high above Earth in the sterile bubble he called home, but that was not what he craved.

Vishesh desired action.  He wanted stories to take back to the Citadel when his service here ended, exciting tales to enthrall and delight, just as the old grey-haired Evocatus had retold when Vishesh had been a wide-eyed youth.

Up until now, the only story he would have to
recount was how he watched travellers shamble through the habitat on their way to destinations unknown.  There had not been a single
skirmish
, let alone a battle, in the years he had been stationed here.  Not a single incident worth speaking about.

In contrast, things were happening down at the Reach.  The arrival of the insurgents had caused concern among some of his colleagues, but Vishesh had felt nothing but excitement.  Anticipation.  He hoped that soon he would receive the call to take his place on the OrbitPod, to travel downward and take up arms against the filth that threatened to destroy the Reach.

And now there were reports of another attack, this time centred on the Atrium.  With comms disrupted, details had been sketchy, but Vishesh had a feeling that this might be it.  This might be his chance.

Across the concourse, Argyle had left his post and was now hunched over, talking to a kid in a checkered coat, a skinny adolescent with messy blonde hair.  It was an unusual sight, since Argyle wasn’t usually the talkative type, but Vishesh supposed even a grump like Argyle had to pull the stick out of his ass now and again and lower himself to conversing with the commoners.  Vishesh himself would have done it more often had it been allowed; a good conversation might help pass the time in this dreary place.

He glanced further afield and saw Dylan sauntering around on patrol, well out of earshot, his crimson armour sharply contrasted against the attire of the commoners around him.  He looked as bored as Vishesh felt.  Vishesh smiled and hit the communicator on his shoulder.

“Yo, Dylan.  What’s happening?”

Dylan continued to walk, but his eyes shifted toward Vishesh. 
“More than you can handle, Vish.  You hear any updates on that fracas down south?”

“Last report said a few of the brothers were closing in on
the Atrium, but it was a mess.  The place is overrun with scum making their way up from the lower levels.  I–”

“What’s Argyle doing?”
Dylan said suddenly.  There was a note of incredulity in his voice, mixed with a vague kind of unease, and Vishesh snapped his head across to the other side of the concourse.

Argyle had straightened and was now standing deathly still, head bowed.

The kid who had been talking to him a few moments prior was now clinging to his shoulders, as if she were gearing up for a piggy-back ride.  Like Argyle, her head was bowed, her face hidden behind the tangle of her hair.

The same unease that had permeated Dylan’s voice now wormed its way into Vishesh.  There was something spooky about the two of them joined there in silence.

“Hey, Argyle,” he said, moving forward, “quit playing with the wildlife, will you?  We’re on duty here.”  Argyle did not respond or even attempt to lift his head.  “Argyle?” Vishesh said, raising his voice and walking faster now.  “This isn’t funny, man.”

As Vishesh approached, Argyle turned his face upward.  Vishesh stopped dead.  Argyle’s eyes seemed dark and hollow, haunted.

“Everything’s fine,” Argyle said in an oddly stilted voice.  “Go back to where you came from.”

The face of the girl draped over Argyle’s shoulders was still hidden, and Vishesh craned his neck as he tried to get a better look at her.

“Put the kid down, Argyle.  I’m not kidding.”

“She’s my niece,” Argyle said, and he gave Vishesh a plastic smile, then began to turn away.  “I’m going to show her around the observation deck–”

Vishesh’s sword was in his hand in a flash, barring Argyle as he tried to leave.

“Stop right there, brother.”  He touched his finger to his comms again.  “Dylan, I need you.”  As he turned, he saw that Dylan was already running toward them.

Argyle’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword.

“Don’t do it,” the Redman named Vishesh was saying.  “Don’t you fucking do it!”

Ursie scanned rapidly through Argyle’s memory, digging up information on the Redman who had accosted them.  She found what she sought quickly, which pleased her.  Navigating through Argyle’s mind was becoming easier by the second, and she figured that within a few minutes she would feel right at home here.

Assuming either of them lived that long.

Vishesh was young, a bit brash.  Argyle didn’t like him a whole lot.  They’d sparred often, and Argyle invariably won, a fact that did not sit easily with Vishesh.  Argyle had also accumulated a nice repository of Vishesh’s shortcomings in technique during their time in the training room.

That was all Ursie needed.

She drew her sword with blinding speed, knocking the other sword away.  All of Arygle’s instincts, all of his knowledge were at her disposal.  She was not only living vicariously through him, she
was
him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said with Argyle’s voice – indeed, with Argyle’s mouth – as she dropped into a ready stance.  “Just turn around and walk away.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Vishesh said.

Ursie struck with a savage combination, forcing Vishesh backward, and then disarmed
him with a move that had worked often in training.  As the sword clattered to the floor, she became aware that people around them had begun to scatter in all directions, crying out in fear.

She turned just in time to see Dylan bearing down on her.

As she parried the first blow, recollections of the newcomer filtered through Argyle’s consciousness and into her own.  Dylan was a somewhat more formidable opponent than Vishesh, and could hold his own against Argyle in most training situations.

This wasn’t going to be easy.

Dylan drove in at her, and as she backed up, she kicked Vishesh’s sword out of reach before he could reclaim it.  She parried, then took a glancing blow that skidded off her armour, but which still hurt like hell.

“Are you crazy, Argyle?” Dylan panted.  “What’s gotten into you?”

Ursie glanced around through Argyle’s eyes
for somewhere to which she might run, but she knew that there was no chance of losing the two Redmen in the confines of the habitat.  She would have to incapacitate them somehow if she wanted to slip away.

“Get the kid off,” Dylan was saying as he circled, and Ursie realised that she’d lost sight of Vishesh.  Too late, she felt him grip a handful of blonde hair and begin to pull.

She swivelled Argyle’s body instinctively, bringing up the short sword in self-defence, and the blade ripped through the weak spot in Vishesh’s armour directly under the arm, plunging deep into his flesh.  Vishesh’s eyes flung open in shock, and his mouth made a soundless ‘O’ shape.

“No,”
Ursie cried in horror.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t meant to–”

The words lodged in her throat as an excruciating pain lanced her side.  It was unlike anything she had ever felt before, like fire ripping through her entire torso.  Somewhere deep inside of her, she felt Argyle’s mind spasm, a reflection of the pain she was feeling.

Beside her, Dylan grunted with effort as he drove the sword deeper into Argyle’s body.

Before she knew what she was doing, her own sword had been wrenched free of Vishesh’s body and was arcing toward Dylan’s exposed neck.  She felt the weapon bite, then Argyle’s mind seemed to convulse.  She felt herself being ejected from his consciousness like a wad of phlegm, and everything went black.

She felt her own body again – her own hands and coat and shoes – and sensed the floor rushing up to meet her.  Then she was sprawling across the hard, unyielding surface, the wind knocked out of her, her eyes blurry and her mind halfway between her own reality and that of Argyle.

She lay there for a moment, the roof of the habitat spinning around her, and then slowly, everything came into focus.

People were still running, screaming.  There was blood on the floor, a veritable ocean of it that was spreading
further
by the second.  Looking down, she saw that she was covered in it as well – her coat, her arms, her legs.  She brushed apprehensively with her fingertips against her ribs and her belly, where she’d felt that indescribable pain, but she was unharmed.