The Lazarus Particle (15 page)

He was still shouting incomprehensibly, kicking and gnashing and writhing against his captors as he was raised to see…

… The narrow, very serious face of Alexia DeCoud.

“Commandant Soroya of Shih’ra, Flight Commander Vichante Harm,” she intoned with a grating, almost strangely misplaced ghost of her own voice, “we officially place you under arrest under the authority of Kerikeshaala: Tj Yeleyhi of the Tyroshi Clanocratic Syndicate. You shall hereby be transported to the nearest carrier ship to await judgment. Please acknowledge you understand the situation as it has been presented to you.”

Contrary to expectations, Vichante didn’t understand a god damn thing that had just happened. It was fast and messy and urgent and didn’t seem to make any sense whatsoever. Even their chosen envoy seemed ill-suited for the task laid upon her. Something was well and truly fucked about the whole situation. Not that he was in any sort of position to address it.

“Understood,” Soroya said tightly, her breathing labored as she was lifted from the ground after Vichante. “We are in your custody, that much is clear. Assure us that the rest of our people will come to no harm and we shall say or do as you wish.”

There was something in Alexia’s face. Something faltering and odd and just generally wrong. A flash of rage or pain or both. Betrayal, perhaps. The thought enraged him. Who was this traitorous little bitch to feel betrayed when four of their men were lying dead on the ground at his feet?

He had little time to consider the question before two cowled figures emerged from behind Alexia. They separated as they stepped forward, flowing around her like water to stand before the captives. The one was easily a head taller than his counterpart, and even before they stopped and simultaneously removed their cowls, Vichante had no doubt.

Gatz and Poe.

“It is with regret I must inform you that we are not at liberty to enter into such an arrangement,” Gatz said in that flat yet strangely mirthful voice of his. “Kerikeshaala: Tj Yeleyhi was quite specific. She has rather a…” He seemed to search the air for a moment, as if the phrase had eluded him. Poe leaned in close, whispering something unintelligible. “Ah. Yes. With gratitude, Poe.” He executed a perfunctory bow to his comrade before continuing. “Tj Yeleyhi has rather a ‘laundry list’ of your personnel that we are to deliver. She was quite specific on the matter.”

“They are being gathered as we speak,” Poe put in, endeavoring to be something more than mere window dressing to this exchange. “As none are known to be under such ample protection, we anticipate further casualties shall be minimal.”

“All shall be given a chance to surrender peaceably,” Gatz confirmed.

Soroya said nothing, for clearly there was nothing left to say. Vichante couldn’t bring himself to follow her lead. He tried to tap into the well of her stoicism, to draw from her discipline and find strength in it—but he simply couldn’t.

“These men came here to fight on your behalf, and this is how you repay their dedication. With their own blood.” He spoke to Gatz and Poe directly, unflinchingly. Calmly. “You’ll burn for this, you scum. I’ll see to it personally.”

Gatz studied the bodies ambivalently. “In point of fact, it would appear these men were here to protect
you
, Commander Harm.” He toed one of the dead men with the slightest of shrugs. “Moreover, they seem not to have done a very good job. A pity.”

A well-timed blow to the back of his head underscored the point. It also cut short the rage threatening to explode out of Vichante. He slumped forward in his captors’ arms, distantly aware of Soroya screaming something
before being gagged and bagged.
That’s not necessary
, it sounded like. And then he, too, felt a wad of fabric forced between his teeth and the false night of a head bag eclipsing his already shaky vision.

After that, everything went black.

17 • FRUITION

Deep in her daily meditative state, Tj Yeleyhi frowned.

Nightmares. Hallucinations. Visions. By any name, they troubled her. Worried what should have been an unencumbered conscience. Her mouth took the shape of an aborted snarl before settling back into that flat black frown.

In that state she dreamed of a massive bristling beast. Innocuous at first. Surrounded by dozens, even hundreds of spiked spears. Then a booming voice from the cowed beast. It was not cowed at all. Suddenly brandishing a kind of damning protrusion. Something foul. Something hated. Something that laid all her best plans to waste.

If only she could put her finger on it…

Like so much fog on the marsh, though, the vision remained beyond her reach. She dismissed it as the product of a mind fevered with possibility and promise. A self-loathing slice of her subconscious willing her to fail, to fall short of all that was her birthright.

She would have none of it.

 
“Tj Yeleyhi?”
Jskaarl’s tinny, reconstituted voice shattered the strange and ominous vision pervading her dream state.
“Tj Yeleyhi, please respond. It is a matter of some urgency.”

She suppressed the urge to eviscerate him for interrupting a sacred ritual, responding as coolly and evenly as she could muster.

“Urgency, you say. Do tell.”

“I think it would be better if you were to hear it directly.”

“For your sake, I should hope you are not wasting my time
.
”

“That would be the last thing I would ever deign to do, my Tj.”

“That statement is more accurate than you know. Very well. You may enter. Wait for me in the antechamber.”

Emerging into the antechamber, Tj Yeleyhi was understandably perturbed. For his part, Jskaarl offered a smile befitting only a purebred simpleton.

“Well? What is it? Out with it already,” she snarled. The visions that had troubled her dream state were not easily shed, no matter how much she wished them so.

Needless to say, she was in a bit of a mood.

Jskaarl, meanwhile, was unfazed by the mistreatment. Perhaps because he realized what was at stake, as well as how much he stood to gain from the news he had to deliver. Indeed, he fairly beamed with pride as he announced—almost as if he had made the capture himself—“They have them, Tj Yeleyhi.”

Her first reaction was to frown. Again. Somehow she had anticipated something grander; even her very visions had intimated more. A grand fight, a great battle. Something! Something more than fucking Jskaarl, moron that he was, preening for undeserved reward.

Then the implication of their clean sweep began to set in.

“All of them?” she wondered, just a hint of skepticism bleeding into her voice.

“All of them,” Jskaarl confirmed.

“After little more than a day?”

“As you anticipated, Gatz and his people were highly motivated. With your imprimatur secured, they chose to act quickly so as to preserve the element of surprise.”

“Show me.” Then, as if he was incapable of even that simple request, she barked, “Screen, now!” into the placidly calm room surrounding her.

A simulated screen resolved itself out of thin air before her. A short, clipped tone announced the imminent connection. The delay, at least to her, seemed nothing short of interminable.

“
Greetings, Tj Yeleyhi
,”
the grinning visage of Gatz greeted her.
“
You look most well.”

Fuck all. More genuflecting morons.

“Dispense with the pleasantries and confirm that you have Soroya of Shih’ra and her people,” she demanded.

Gatz grinned even larger.
“Oh, we have them, yes. See for yourself, good Tj.”

Abruptly, the right half of the screen quartered to reveal four separate feeds: two on the top, two on the bottom. Strictly speaking, the quality was dodgy. The footage was not just grainy and halting but further hampered by the fact that each appeared as though through a filter. The shifting masses of psychedelic green ranging from muted moss to electric lime could have been anyone. Yet even as each of the silhouettes displayed began resolving into something vaguely humanoid, even before the trickles of vital information she had long since committed to memory began to crawl along the bottom of each of the screens, Tj Yeleyhi felt a heady rush of certainty. A bristling, almost orgasmic elation. Even, strangely, a twisting, gnarly stab of fear.

Naked, elemental fear.

Summoning every ounce of composure in her reserves, she came down hard and beat all that asunder, flattening it into a hard little disc lodged firmly in the pit of her stomach.
Not until they are in your hands
, she reminded herself coldly. It was from that well of icy composure that she said only, “You have done me an immeasurable service, Gatz.” For emphasis she nodded but once, the most subtle if not imperceptible canting of her head. “You have my gratitude.”

“On the contrary
.
” Gatz’s mouth moved slyly.
“We find its worth to be quite measurable. As we have discussed previously.”

The smirking little shit,
she thought. To presume to dictate terms to her.

In the moment before she responded, Ty Yeleyhi allowed herself to be comforted by the knowledge that Gatz and his people were so very ripe for betrayal.

“Of course.”

“Very good.” Gatz canted his head forward in embellished imitation; Tj Yeleyhi made a labored point of denying herself the fury such a gesture would normally have elicited. All things in time. “As you can see
,
” Gatz continued briskly, more animated,
“the prisoners have been isolated and are being held in conditions approximating total sensory deprivation. This should ensure a most smooth transfer of custody.”

Tj Yeleyhi eyed the grainy footage warily. “This deprivation,” she said, “it does not harm or otherwise inhibit their mental state?”

“Only temporarily, and only in the most trivial sense. Confusion. Loss of fine motor control. Heightened sensitivity to light and sound.”

“Allow me, if I may,” she said with a deliberate enunciation that made each word seem as if a threat unto itself, “to remind you of the primary and, indeed, governing condition upon which this exchange hinges: The prisoners must be of sound body
and mind
. Do I make myself clear? Physical coercion is acceptable—to an extent. Diminished mental capacity is not, under
any
circumstances.”

For his part, Gatz appeared unmoved by the display. He believed himself to be in the driver’s seat of this transaction, it occurred to her, with her no more than a willing but cranky passenger. “As we have indicated, your terms are most clear. The measure is of a precautionary nature, no more. Please be assured that its effects will have worn off well before they are yours to properly interrogate.”

Tj Yeleyhi nodded slowly. Again, only once. “Very well. You may consider me reassured.”

“It pleases us greatly to consider you as such.”

“To business, then.”

“To business,” Gatz agreed. The infrared feeds winked out of existence and the screen resumed its normal dimensions, Gatz its sole occupant once more.

“Naturally, the swiftness of your success comes as something of a surprise. A welcome and celebrated one, to be sure, but a surprise nonetheless. It will be some time before I can arrange the necessary formalities and assemble a team to properly take possession of the prisoners.” She had almost said ‘take custody of the prisoners,’ but no, she far preferred the word ‘possession.’ “Are you prepared to hold and defend your position while these matters are addressed?”

Gatz only laughed, an airy and exceptionally condescending thing. “Honorable Tj, our victory over the Free Planetary Pilgrims Irregular is sweeping. Please, take all the time you need. We would greatly dislike for such a mutually beneficial transaction to be colored by any hastiness or omissions, or even the perception of such improprieties. By either faction, of course,” he added hastily, by way of avoiding any obvious implications.

“Of course. I shall be in touch, Gatz. And do not hesitate to contact my representative Jskaarl in the event the situation should change somehow.”

“We look forward to your next communication, Tj Yeleyhi. Until such time.”

The screen went blank, then disappeared entirely.

Tj Yeleyhi’s first impression afterward, in the absence of any other stimuli, was that the room was thrumming. Practically vibrating all around her, and she with it. With the passing clarity of one moment giving way to the next she suddenly became aware of the blood pounding in her ears, behind her eyes. The sense memory of so many blooded victories and conception ceremonies stirred latently. Then furiously. The insistent twitching of her roused sex became a thing unescapable, irresistible, a biological imperative operating all but independently of her own distinct consciousness.

Turning slowly from the point in space where the screen had existed, she fixed glazed-over eyes upon Jskaarl expectantly. Presently he was in the course of discharging some unintelligible stream of congratulatory pablum from his guileless gullet. A perfumed misting of pheromones demanding attention brought quick end to that. Words caught in his throat, becoming an aggressive, throatily suggestive snarl. Even as they collided bodily atop her nesting mound, Tj Yeleyhi felt a shiver of lust verging on the climactic.

For all else he was not, Jskaarl
was
an astonishingly virile mate. Not that that was so much of a surprise. Not to Kerikeshaala: Ty Yeleyhi. Indeed, she was already keenly aware that what her servant lacked in breeding he more than compensated for in the performance of the act, even if not entirely to nature’s intended fruition. She had long since lost count of how many times such a coupling occurred during the course of his service to her.

What she was certain of was that at no time previously had she allowed him the distinct honor of seeding her.

This occasion proved no different than any of the previous.

Jskaarl dressed with purpose afterward, quickly donning his second skin along with the braided cincture and manacle symbolizing his status, something loosely equatable to elevated serfdom. “I shall leave you to prepare yourself for the exchange, Tj.”