Crystal Healer (34 page)

I said nothing.

"Tell me where she is, Cherijo, and I will see to it that you're reunited with her as soon as she can be retrieved. She belongs with us." He tried to touch my face, but I jerked out of reach. "If you don't tell me, you'll never see her again."

"There is no child," I insisted. "I lost my baby. The Jorenians will give you the medical records to prove it."

"Of course." He sounded thoughtful. "The Jorenians would do anything to protect you, wouldn't they? Part of the problem in finding you was always getting past them. I want to show you something."

When I made no move to follow him, he took me by the arm and hauled me across the deck to a vid panel set into the wall.

"I took great interest in the Hsktskt who was alterformed into a Jorenian," he said as he switched on the screen. "Jorenians, like the Hsktskt, refuse to live as slaves, and to attempt to abduct one is to sign one's own death warrant. Acquiring samples of their DNA, however, only involves briefly interrupting one of their funerary probes on its flight into their star. I believe that is how the Hsktskt acquired what they used to create PyrsVar."

I saw the image of a young Jorenian male in an empty isolation chamber. He appeared frightened, and moved restlessly around the room.

"I commissioned the alterforming of this slave-born crossbreed to serve as a subject for my viral research," he said, indicating the image. "It took some months, but with my help the geneticists were able to alter his DNA and his body to make him approximately ninety percent pure Jorenian."

A drone arm extended from the ceiling of the chamber and jabbed a syrinpress into the neck of the young male. I flinched exactly as he did in the image.

"Using what I learned from studying this male's physiology, I engineered a virus," Joseph said. "He has just been injected with it." He tapped some of the screen controls. "Now I'll increase the speed of the replay so you can observe the full effects quickly. This will cover twenty-four hours in a few seconds."

The actions of the isolated male began to speed up. He clutched at his belly, began to sweat, vomited, fell several times, and then collapsed. His mouth opened again and again as he apparently called for help. His movements became slower, and he fell, unconscious, and stopped breathing.

The young male's face blurred momentarily, and I blinked the tears from my eyes.

"No need to be upset, my dear. He was bred in a slave pen. Granted, dying in this manner was quite painful, but really nothing compared to the lifetime of misery he would have experienced as a slave." Joseph switched off the image. "The virus attacks either through the bloodstream or the respiratory system, depending on how it is delivered. But the truth of it is that it only kills Jorenians."

His self-satisfied babbling finally penetrated my wretched sorrow. "You were a doctor once. You took an oath to do no harm to any other sentient being. How could you do such a thing?"

"I had planned to disperse the virus on Joren in order to find you," he admitted, as if it were something of little consequence. "Until now I had thought that would no longer be necessary."

I stared at him. "You are a monster."

"I will have what belongs to me, Cherijo." He used the com panel. "Captain, please set course for Joren."

"You
have
me," I said.

"I want Marel," he told me. "Tell me where she is, and I will destroy the virus as soon as she joins us."

"There is no Marel," I said, desperately clinging to my lie. "You would be murdering millions of people for one child who exists only in your imagination."

"She is as real as you, Daughter," he said. "As for the Jorenians, their fate is in your hands now. You will decide which is more important to you: your daughter or an entire civilization." He turned as two guards entered the room. "Take her back to the cell."

"You can't do this," I shouted as the guards seized my arms. "I will do whatever you want. I will go willingly with you anywhere."

"You are going with me to Joren," Joseph told me. "If you do not tell me what I want to know, you will also watch everyone on the planet die."

I didn't see where the guards took me. The face of the dead alterformed slave seemed imprinted on my eyes. When I blinked, it changed to that of Jorenians I knew: Salo, Darea, Xonal, young Fasala. I told myself over and over that even a sadistic brute like Joseph Grey Veil would not dare exterminate a species merely to get his way. Then I remembered what Reever had told me of him, and what I read in Cherijo's journals. In his efforts to retrieve Cherijo, Joseph Grey Veil had set into motion the war between the League and the Hsktskt. Worlds had been devastated, millions wounded and killed--all because of this one man and what he desired.

I saw myself taking one of the rifles from the guards and firing it into my mouth. The pulse would vaporize my head and most of my upper torso; surely enough to kill me. I would happily die to protect Marel and Joren. But would that even stop him? If he suspected Marel was on Joren, my death would not prevent him from releasing the virus. It removed every obstacle that would otherwise keep him from searching the planet for Marel, and he knew it would not kill my daughter.

The guards stopped outside the room that had been made to look like our quarters on the
Sunlace
, and one of them checked the interior on the outside door panel. It showed Reever and Shon still lying bound, gagged, and unconscious on the deck. Only then did the guard input the entry code and march me inside.

What happened then was fast and violent. Blood splashed over me as a blade whipped across the throat of one guard. Claws blinded the second, who choked on his scream as his head was wrenched too far to one side and his neck snapped.

Reever dragged the dead guard inside and reached with a bloody hand to close the door panel.

"You were on the floor," I said stupidly. "I saw you."

"We made a recycling image of ourselves as we were before we got out of our bonds, and programmed the panel from the inside to display it." He pulled me into his arms. "Did he harm you?"

In ways I could never describe
, I thought. "Not yet." I held on to him for a few precious seconds before I pulled away and turned to Shon. Streaks of crystal ran diagonally across his face and encased his right forearm. I knew from the sorrow in his eyes what it had cost him to kill the guard. "Thank you."

"You can thank me, too," Uorwlan said as she came out of the adjoining room. She handed rifles to Shon and Reever, and offered one to me.

I took it and slung it over my shoulder. "How did you free yourself?"

"Remember what I told you about males?" She smiled, showing bloodied teeth. "There's one guard who won't be spreading it around anymore."

Shon began stripping the guard out of his uniform. "Rinse the blood from the other's tunic. It is dark enough that no one will notice it is wet."

As I helped Reever removed the other guard's uniform, I told him about the clone Joseph Grey Veil had used on Terra, how he had gone into hiding to conceal his identity during the war, and why he had offered the bounty for us.

"That man cannot be Joseph," my husband said flatly. "I saw his dead body on Terra. It was not that of a clone."

I wanted to believe him, but I had felt such an instinctive fear of the man that doubt filled me. "If he used a clone, he would look the same."

"Cherijo once stabbed Joseph in the hand. It left a small but distinctive scar. The man Jericho killed had the same scar." He glanced at my face. "Something else happened."

I told him of the Terran's demands and his promise to release the bioengineered virus as soon as we reached Joren if I did not tell him where our daughter was.

Reever stripped out of his garments and dressed in the guard's wet tunic. "If he has this virus on board, then all we have to do is destroy the ship."

"First we have to get off," Uorwlan pointed out. "Which we should do--now."

"We will go directly to launch bay," my husband decided. "As soon as we can find it."

"I am certain this ship has the same number of decks, quarters, and bays in the same places as the real
Sunlace
," I said. "I think it was built to be a duplicate."

"Why use all the holoprojectors, then?" Uorwlan asked. "Why not fit it out like the real thing?"

"They didn't have enough time," Reever said. "One of the guards was complaining about it. From what I overheard, this ship was removed from the construction docks before it was finished. The crew was not supposed to report for duty for another six months."

"The Terran said he had intended to use the virus to find me on Joren," I said. "He must have commissioned the HouseClan ship as part of that plan."

"He would have been able to assume orbit around Joren without arousing suspicions." Shon pulled the guard's headgear down over his face, and to cover the rifle draped my shoulders with the native garment he had removed. "Remember to hold your hands behind your back so they appear to be bound."

To anyone watching us leave the cell, we appeared to be two prisoners being moved by two guards. The ruse worked so well that we passed two crewmen who barely gave us a glance.

We entered the lift that would take us to launch bay, and as soon as it closed us in, I turned to my husband. "We can't return to the station or the planet. Where will we go?"

"My ship," Uorwlan said. "It's not the
Sunlace
, but she's fast, well armed, and can make a jump in under two minutes."

"What is it, all engine?" Shon asked, amused.

The Takgiba gave him a decidedly sultry look. "It's not the size of the weapon, but how much power you put into it."

The lift came to a stop and the doors slid open. I stepped out first with Uorwlan, placing my hands behind my back again to play the prisoner. An alarm screeched as the light emitters began to flash, and something came running down the corridor toward us.

The massive humanoid, easily twice my height, had a body like the front end of a land transport. His hands had been replaced by two weapons somehow welded onto his arms, and he began firing both at us as he charged the lift.

"Drone," Shon shouted.

I had never seen a drone made to look like a living being, but I targeted the center part of the torso and fired. The drone's power core exploded, causing his enormous chassis to break part into three pieces, which fell smoldering to the deck.

"Move your tail," Uorwlan said, pushing at my back.

Reever and Shon took positions in front of us now, and we went around the remains of the drone and ran for the bay. Halfway down the corridor a door panel ahead of us opened and a blue-striped white creature leapt out.

Jlorra.

I stopped, disbelief making me rigid. "It cannot be." No one had ever successfully removed one of the six-legged death cats from Akkabarr. Anyone who had tried had died a messy death.

Beside me, Shon also went still. "It's a torpa," he said, his voice rough. "It's blind but it can feel movements in the air. Don't move, or it will spit its venom at you."

"What are you talking about?" Uorwlan demanded, gesturing toward the jlorra slowly walking toward us. "That's a pralme. It will gut you with its tusks." Under her breath she muttered, "I thought we killed them all."

"It's a jlorra," I insisted, raising the rifle. "You have to shoot it in the space between its eyes. It's the only thing that works."

Reever turned to me. "I see a Hsktskt in full battle armor."

"They must have drugged us," Shon muttered.

"No. We all see it differently." I fought back my fear and raised my rifle. "I know what it is."

The jlorra crouched down and sprang at Reever, and I fired. The pulse round had no effect on the big cat. With a shriek of rage, Uorwlan jumped into the jlorra's path and knocked it to the deck. As she rolled away, Reever somehow adjusted his rifle to produce a stream of fire. The big cat's eyes flashed as orange as the flames and it screamed and fell writhing and burning at my husband's feet.

As he stepped back, the big cat began to shrink into a long, thin humanoid with ghostly silver-white skin and blunted features. It tried to rise, but its burning body fell and went motionless.

"Shifter." Uorwlan walked up to the inert form of the Odnallak. "Think you'd scare me with that? I was part of the Great Purge, you scum." She spat on the body.

Reever looked ahead. "There could be more lying in wait for us. Fire is their only vulnerability." He went around and quickly made the same adjustments to our weapons. "Remember, they can read our fears and assume the shape of them. Don't trust your eyes."

We hurried toward the bay. Although I knew my eyes would deceive me, I still staggered back when SrrokVar came around a corner and threw at us handfuls of the bone dust that had caused the plague of memory on Vtaga. The dust vanished along with the nightmarish image of the reconstructed Hsktskt madman as soon as Reever engulfed him in flames.

We fought our way through a horde of terrifying attackers. I burned a Toskald soldier who had once stabbed me while I'd tried to save his life on the battlefield, the League general who had enslaved Cherijo, and a glowing ring of energy that tried to suck me into its black maw. Each fell as soon as the fire from our weapons touched them, and shifted back into their real bodies.

A pair of Hsktskt prison guards, their mouths dripping with red blood, their teeth foul with ragged strips of flesh, entered the corridor. They stopped at the sight of the burning, fallen bodies, turned, and ran away.

Shon had to blast out the control panel beside the launch bay entrance, which had been locked down, and he and Reever pried the doors apart. Inside a half dozen crewmen scattered, firing at us while trying to take defensive positions behind the launches. Reever and Shon returned fire until there was nothing left but bodies on the deck.

"I'll rig a bypass." Uorwlan, clutching a wounded shoulder, went to the airlock control console. "Prep that small scout over there for launch; it's the fastest thing they've got."