SIX
JASS
BARELY
Patience has never been a virtue I’ve possessed. I’m probably the most impatient person alive at this point in time, in fact, and that’s saying something. There is a race of beings on a small, barren planet I encountered once, who have no concept of time whatsoever, and the idea of waiting for something causes them very real physical pain. They simply cannot even comprehend it. Right now, I feel like I am one and the same with that race. The flight time to Pirius has been long and arduous already, made even less unpleasant by the incessant ramblings of my injured co-pilot.
“I could really use some medical assistance,” he announces.
“I’m not a doctor. Now please. Suffer in silence.”
“Not much of a humanitarian, are you?” Col says, laughing weakly. His dark hair is plastered to his head with sweat, and his lips have turned a ghastly shade of white. “You are human, aren’t you?”
I smirk. If only he knew. “Barely.”
“I’ve been told I’m descended from some of the first settlers who left Earth thousands of years ago. I was orphaned as a baby, though, so I can’t be sure. The Pirians—”
“I don’t care about your lineage, Col. I care about one thing, and one thing only. Landing on Pirius. Once we’re there, I’ll find the girl. I’ll kill whoever stands in my way.”
“And what then?” Col’s voice is weak. I don’t need to read his mind to know how much pain he’s in. His body is trembling with it, shouting his agony out loud for all to hear, so loud it penetrates my mind, filling it whole, making it annoyingly difficult to think straight. Must be hell for him. His babbling is an attempt on his part to distract himself, but I don’t think it’s working.
“What do you mean, and what then?” I demand.
“I mean, what are you going to do once you’re finally in a room with Reza? Are you planning on killing her? Kidnapping her? Taking her back to The Nexus? You’ll forgive me for saying so, but it doesn’t seem like your return would be all that welcome. So what are you going to do with her once you find her?”
“None of your business.” The words come out hard and clipped. They sound self assured and confident, but the truth is he’s posing a damn good question. I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do once I find her. The bond between us is strong. She has energy inside her identical to the energy I carry inside me. That’s worth exploring and questioning her over. I keep trying to tell myself I want to find her because of that, but there are other reasons. At first, the meetings we shared in my dreamscapes were nothing more than a way to mess with her. It didn’t take long for me to become enthralled with her, though. She couldn’t remember much in her subconscious state. I asked her about her past endlessly, where she came from, who she knew there, but she couldn’t access those memories. She could only be her, in that moment, and very quickly that became enough. She was beautiful. She was devastating. She captured my attention in the most fucked up way, and I haven’t been able to shake her since.
Col laughs. It’s the kind of teasing laugh that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “You’re really bad at this,” he says. “I can see it written all over your face. You’re clueless.”
He’s so goddamn infuriating. I lean back into my seat, and I close my eyes. I want to kill this man. I want to, but I can’t. He is a means to an end, an entry ticket to a scenario I will have no access to otherwise. I felt the seers intent quite clearly when I ripped through Col’s mind: the string of seers I will need to meet on my road to find the girl, each one only in possession of a snippet of the information I require to find her. A chain. And if one of them has their mind taken against their will, or finds that Col Pakka is dead, they kill themselves, severing the chain. So damn smart. Too smart for their own good. I’ll make them pay for inconveniencing me. But…when the time is right, and not before.
“I’m not holding it against you,” Col continues. “I don’t blame you for being confused. I’ve been confused ever since I was told I had to hand myself over to the Construct. It took a lot of belief on my end when they told me what was going to happen.”
Despite myself, I allow his words to intrigue me. “Why would you force yourself to believe what they were telling you, then? If you knew pain and suffering would land at your feet?”
Col merely shrugs. The movement causes him pain; he tries to hide it, but I can taste it on the tip of my tongue—coppery and bright, like the blood he’s still shedding all over the rear bench that runs along the raptor’s small cargo area. The craft is flying itself at this point. I’m not needed in the pilot’s chair, but I’m loath to go back there and sit with him. He might take it as a sign that I want to talk to him or something. I can’t help but pivot in my seat when I ask him my question, though.
Col closes his eyes, stacking his hands on his ribs. He breathes out slowly, then smiles. “It’s simple. I love my people, Beylar. I love them more than life itself. If a little pain and suffering might help them survive whatever’s to come, then I’ll willingly take it on.”
Such a foolish sentiment. I know every type of life form in this galaxy. I’ve interrogated every single one of them on Archimedes, and they all crack. They all give up their friends and their loved ones when facing down the edge of a wickedly sharp blade. None of those Commonwealth fools would do the same for him, and yet he’s here, bones broken, blood pouring freely, racked with pain, tormented on their behalf. So fucking blind.
I spin back around in my chair just in time for the proximity alarm to start going off. A planet is close by, and not just any planet. Col input Pirius’ coordinates into the Raptor’s nav center five hours ago. We’ve been breaking our necks to reach there ever since, and finally it appears that we’ve arrived.
“The descent through the atmosphere will be rough,” Col warns. “You might want to take it slow. With that breach in the hull—”
“I know what I’m doing, fighter.” I’m already assessing the planet, hunting for the best approach trajectory. I haven’t said anything to Col, but the hull breach is actually much worse than I first thought. A clear foot long rent along the underside of the craft if the exterior scanners are to be believed, and they’re state of the art, so I have no reason to doubt them. A planet with barely an atmosphere at all would give us a bumpy ride at this stage. A planet with an atmosphere as thick and turbulent as Pirius’? Well, let’s just say we’ll be lucky if we make it down without the raptor tearing itself in two.
I angle the craft’s nose so it’s online for a shallow approach, and I cut the engines to a third power. Once we hit the outer atmosphere, I’ll cut the engines altogether and coast my way down if at all possible. That kind of landing will require extreme concentration and a high level of skill. Luckily I possess both.
“Not that I care particularly about your wellbeing,” I announce over my shoulder, “but you might want to strap in for this.” It’d be very unfortunate if I managed to stay my hand and keep the man alive, only to have him die during landing. Col grumbles as he clambers back into the passenger seat beside me, his face a rictus of discomfort as he fastens the safety harness around his body.
“Aren’t you going to strap in, too?” he asks.
My answer is simple. “No.”
As expected, the raptor shakes as it hits the outer atmosphere of the planet. I allow the craft to dip down a little further, waiting to see how badly the heat shields warm up before I cut the engines. A mere ten seconds, and the raptor’s sensors are all screaming, alarms sounding from every on-board system. Life Support: 54 %. Heat Deflectors: 33 %. Power Relay: 16%. Communications: Down. Coolant Cells: 12% and falling rapidly.
“Shit,” Col hisses, taking in the readouts. “We’re fucked. Why the hell are you even attempting to land this thing? It’s going to explode before we even break through the cloud layer.”
It’s true that the planet’s cloud layer is lower than most. Thicker than most. The entire planet looks like a swirling mass of white from our vantage point at the edge of its gravitational pull. I’ve had to do this before, though. Col hasn’t taken in consideration the fact that I, myself, can add a little protection to the raptor’s shields when the time comes. I grunt as I place both hands on the craft’s controls, wrestling to keep us on our flight path. Pirius’ gravitational pull is lighter than I’m used to. Regis makes his men train at twice standard gravity in order to make them stronger and more resilient, but even with that added advantage it’s proving difficult to keep the craft under control. I check the hull’s scanners, and the cause for the insane amount of drag we’re experiencing is immediately obvious: the foot long rent in the hull is now three feet long and growing by the second. Damn.
“Take the controls,” I command, hitting the release button so that a secondary panel pops up in front of Col. “This is going to take both of us.”
Col looks strangely relieved. He doesn’t complain about his broken body as he goes about aligning his panel to match mine. He moves with the authority and command of someone who’s flown before, and flown well. The two of us work furiously to control the raptor’s erratic approach toward Pirius’ surface.
The noise level inside the craft is deafening. So many alarms and klaxons all wailing at once. I hold my hand over the control board, and I imagine the flow of power running to all the alarms. I picture it, until the flow is a vivid, living thing inside my mind. I cut it off. The alarms stop wailing, every last one, and Col shoots me a nervous sidelong glance out of the corner of his eye.
No words, though. No time. The planet is growing larger and larger out of the view port ahead, and we don’t seem to be slowing down. A small tongue of flame licks over the nose of the raptor, and I realize we’re fighting a losing battle.
“Thirty thousand feet to impact,” the cool, calm voice of the ships nav system informs us. “Twenty-five thousand feet.”
We hit the cloud layer, and Col curses loudly. “If we don’t scrub our speed, we’re going to crash into the dunes and bury ourselves down a couple of hundred feet. No one will ever find us. Won’t matter, because we’ll be dead, but still…”
“Twenty thousand feet to impact.”
I cut off the nav system with a sweep of my hand. Okay, now is the time to act. Sooner than I’d hoped, but Col is right. If I don’t do something now, it will be too late. I enclose my mind around the entire perimeter of the raptor, allowing it to feel out the damage, to investigate and test out the tear. It’s bad. Really fucking bad. I can’t press the jagged edges of metal back together, because a solid chunk of it is missing. I sit back in my chair, releasing the controls.
“What the hell are you doing? Jass! I can’t hold this thing on my own!”
Col’s panic fills my head, but I push that out. I have no room for that right now. I need to focus. I need to concentrate...
I picture my mind as a fist, closing around the raptor. Tightening its hold, capturing the craft inside its grasp. Then I picture pulling the ship back, tugging on it, pulling with all my might. The raptor shudders but continues on its path, tearing through thick layers of cloud. I clench my mental fist even tighter, pulling even harder. This is more difficult that I’d anticipated. Instead of slowing, the ship’s speed increases, straining at my grasp.
“Beylar! We’re breaking through the cloud. We’re breaking though!”
I shut Col out. Inhaling one last deep breath, I picture both of my hands closing around the raptor, grappling hold of it, dragging it back, forcing it to obey. I envision it bending to my will with every scrap of power I possess. We clear the cloud layer, and a mere three or four thousand feet below, the ground rises up to meet us. Sand. So much sand.
“BEYLAR!”
I jerk the craft back with all my might, and the raptor finally obeys, pulling up a little. We’re still hurtling toward the planet, but our speed is cut in half by my efforts.
Closer.
Closer.
Closer.
I have no idea if it will be enough.
I have no ide—