Laura Jo Phillips (50 page)

“Better yet, how about I show you?” Hope asked.

“All right, let’s see what you can do,” the Director said.  He thought for a moment, then slipped his wrist watch off and handed it to her.  Hope took it from him with a confident smile.  She laid the watch in the palm of her hand and closed her eyes for a moment.  Less than a minute later she opened her eyes and handed the watch back to the Director.

“This was given to you by Ellicia, for Christmas, three years ago,” she said, her smile gone, her manner more subdued.  It had been a very special gift.

“Very good,” the Director said as he put the watch back on.  “Do you read the history or the emotional attachment?”

“In this case, the emotional attachment,” Hope replied. 

“In this case?” the Director asked, intrigued.

“I read the most salient facts of an object,” she explained.  “If there is a very strong emotion attached to it, I get that.  If there is an event that it played an important role in, a murder, death, accident, birth, I’ll get that.  If there are none of those things, I can get the object’s origin.”

The Director was stunned.  This was the most flexible, and potentially the most powerful, psychic gift he had come across in a very long time.  If she could really do what she said. 

He reached into his pocket and removed a personalized writing stylus.  It was made by a very famous designer, and was quite expensive.  He handed it to Hope, who took it without hesitation.  She held it in her hand, eyes closed for a few moments.  She opened her eyes and grinned. 

“Nice try,” she said.  “There is nothing connected to this.  It’s something you recently purchased, made by hand on Sheara 3.”

The Director grinned.  “Excellent,” he said.  “I can understand why you would be worried about the Directorate,” he said.  “We most certainly would want your gifts on our side.  But I promise you, we do not force people to work for us.”  He smiled again.  “Although, I would not be adverse to bribery.”

Hope laughed.  She liked this man, which surprised her. 

“What is it that you want to do in exchange for the full story concerning your cousin?” the Director asked.  He was tempted to just tell her what she wanted to know, but he was curious.

“I thought it might be helpful if I tried to get some impressions from the ground-car,” Hope said, confirming his guess.  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to find the Brethren compound, but it’s possible.

“Hope, might I ask that you do something else?” Jackson asked, barely containing his excitement. 

“Sure,” Hope replied. 

“We know, or at least, we believe, that Blind Sight is a Xanti product,” he said.  “But no one knows where the Xanti home world is.”

“I will certainly give it a shot,” Hope said, knowing what he was going to ask.

“The problem is we don’t want to touch the Blind Sight until we learn more about it,” Jackson said.  “It’s too damn easy to set off a self-destruct in those things.”

“Didn’t you say there was one on the compound?” Hope asked. 

“Yes,” Jackson said with a grin.  “I didn’t think of that as it’s no longer operative.”

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Hope said with a shrug.  “I think it would be best for me to try with a component rather than the entire unit, though.  Something you are certain was made by the Xanti.  If it’s a component, there is less likelihood of influence by emotional impressions or events.”

“Where do you want to start on the ground-car?” the Director asked.

“The seats,” Hope replied at once.  “Because of the accident, and the deaths of two of the ground-car’s occupants, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a strong emotional impression there.”

Jackson led Hope to the ground-car, moving the rope aside for her and opening the passenger side front door where he knew one man had died. 

“I ask only that you not touch the electronics panel,” he said, pointing at the Blind Sight.”

Hope nodded.  She knelt down on the floor, placed her hands on the seat and closed her eyes.

It didn’t take long for her to get impressions, but it did take a few minutes for her to sort them out and understand what she was getting.  She opened her eyes and looked at the electronics panel, then down to where the power outlet was, set into the dash in front of the passenger seat.  She kept looking, bending down low to look up beneath the front dash panel, and down on the floor until she spotted what she was looking for.  Satisfied, she moved back and stood up.

“The man in this seat was highly stressed, confused, and afraid,” she said.  “Someone kept telling him to plug something in, then unplug it, then plug it in again.  He was very afraid that he was going to plug in the wrong thing, or unplug the wrong thing, and in fact he did make that mistake several times.  He thought he was going to be killed for it, so he became even more nervous.  In the end, he unplugged the wrong thing again, which caused the ground-car to shoot forward.  There was  lot of confusion and yelling, and then nothing.”

Jackson listened carefully to Hope, but he didn’t really understand what she was saying.  Hope sensed his confusion.

“Look,” she said, pointing at the floor of the ground-car.  “There is a cable lying up there, in the crease between the console and the carpet.  It’s a power cable.”

“Are you saying they turned the Blind Sight off and on by plugging it in and unplugging it?” Jackson asked, stunned by this bit of information. 

“Yes,” Hope replied.  “There was confusion because they had an infra-red scanner they were using to search for us, and both of the cables were plugged into the same place.  This man unplugged the wrong one, which caused the accident.”

“That explains why that ground-car appeared so suddenly,” Jackson said thoughtfully.  “It also explains the speed.  I would think the Blind Sight uses massive amounts of power.  Unplugging it probably shot a boost of energy to the vehicle.”

“Is this helpful to you?” she asked.

“Yes, I think it’s critically helpful,” Jackson said.  “Clark, get in and start it up, would you?”

Clark nodded and walked around the other side of the ground-car, opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat.  He powered it up, and they all watched as the electronics panel booted up. 

“Okay, let’s try this,” Jackson said.  He knelt down where Hope had been and retrieved the cable, then plugged it into the power outlet.  The ground-car disappeared among a chorus of gasps.

Jackson pulled the plug and the ground-car appeared again. 

“Why would they do this?” Hope wondered.  “Why not turn the unit off and on?”  

“These things are set to self-destruct if they are not used in a very specific way.  My guess is that the driver had a difficult time remembering the correct sequence, so he just used the power cable to turn it off and on instead.  Which is a great boon for us.  The chances of us finding the correct sequence for powering this thing up are very slim.  Now it’s not an issue, thanks to you, Hope.”

“Does this mean you’ll be able to find the Brethren’s main compound now?” she asked.

“It means we are very close to it,” Jackson said.  “According to the information we received from the Katres this morning, there is something called a ‘decoder’ that allows the Blind Sight to be seen through.  The problem is, if we start pushing buttons in an attempt to find a decoder, we will certainly set off a self-destruct.”

“Oh,” Hope said, crestfallen.

“Don’t worry,” Jackson said.  “Now that we have a working system, we can analyze its energy field.  I have no doubt that it will be a unique signature.  Once we find it, we will be able to use it to locate other matching energy fields.”

“Excellent,” Hope said with relief. 

“You have helped us immensely,” the Director said as he joined them.  “I would not ask you to do anything more than what you have already done for the information you have requested.  This has been the most important break-thru we’ve had so far.  However, knowing where the Xanti home world is would be critically important to all of us in the Thousand Worlds.”

“I’ll do my best to find it,” Hope said.

“Thank you,” the Director said.  “Now, if you like, come on over here and I’ll tell you what you want to know about Harlan.”

The Director led Hope to a far corner of the room were several chairs were situated.  Hope was unaccountably glad when Jackson, Clark and Rob joined them.  “We would hear this as well, if you do not mind,” Jackson said.

“Not at all,” Hope said.

The Director waved them to take chairs and he paused a moment to consider where to begin his story.  At the beginning, he decided.

“A couple of years ago, Ellicia’s sister, Lariah, was abducted by a crime boss by the name of Stephan Loggia,” he began.  “It was a case of mistaken identity.  She was taken from Ellicia’s home, and tortured in an attempt to force her to perform Ellicia’s psychic ability for them.  She never told them that she was not who they thought.

“Ellicia was able to track Lariah, and we rescued her, but did not capture Loggia.  Lariah was put in a healing tank in a secret location, but Loggia continued to try to reacquire her from the hospital.  I realized we had a spy in our organization.  I removed Lariah from the hospital and sent her off world to safety.  She went to Jasan, and there she remains.

“Later, we identified a traitor in our organization based on the electronic files we confiscated from Loggia’s base of operations.  It was a woman who worked in data retrieval who had sent Ellicia’s address, physical description and other information to Loggia.  Oddly, the description she sent matched Lariah, not Ellicia, but we were never able to determine why that was.  The woman told us that was the description she received, so it was what she sent.  She had never personally seen either of the Daniels sisters.

“Ellicia was instrumental in Loggia’s capture after he murdered the Queen of Marrazo.  Shortly afterward, the attacks on Ellicia began.  Some attacks were clearly attempts to kill her.  Others seemed more intent on capturing her.  Two of her team members were killed in these attacks, and one was seriously injured.  Which brings us to Harlan.

“After the death of one of Ellicia’s team members, Harlan volunteered to join her team.  Because Ellicia’s talent required her to travel to the locations that items were stolen from quite often, it was critical that she have a team to protect her. 

Harlan was determined to not only protect Ellicia, but also to get to the bottom of the attacks on her.  Since Loggia’s arrest, and subsequent death, we had a rash of new crime lords vying to take his place, so it was a toss up as to who was after Ellicia, and why. 

“Harlan pulled all of Ellicia’s case files going back a couple of years and spent all of his free time poring over them.  He noticed that several crimes had been committed in very remote and unusual areas.  A small museum in Florida, a personal collection n Brazil, an antiquities display in Ireland.   None of the items stolen were big money items, but Ellicia had to travel to those places to find a connecting object in order to track the stolen items.  Harlan speculated that these strange thefts were actually ruses, and that there were people waiting and watching for Ellicia to show up so that they could identify her, and target her.

“The next time a location theft occurred, we sent doubles in, while Harlan and a team of operatives watched for anyone who seemed to be watching for Ellicia.  The hunters became the hunted, if you will.  Harlan’s hunch turned out to be correct.  They tracked one particular pair of men back to Virginia, as they followed the false Ellicia and her team back. 

“We were still trying to decide how to use the information we had uncovered so far when Harlan came up with some new information.  He refused to reveal his source, but told us that he had learned of an upcoming plan for a theft from a military arms manufacturer, and a meeting between three of the crime bosses to divvy up the goods a couple of days after the theft.  He knew when and where the meeting was to be held.  When the arms shipment was stolen as planned, we knew his information was correct.

“Three crime bosses were arrested that day, one of whom turned out to be the son of Stephan Loggia.  He blamed Ellicia for his father’s capture and death, and he freely admitted that he was the one trying to kill her.  He was nineteen years old.

“We learned enough from those three crime bosses to identify and capture four others.  Before long, we had them all incarcerated, crime rates dropped significantly, and the attacks on Ellicia stopped.

“But, we made a fatal mistake,”  the Director said, his voice dropping almost to a whisper.  “We underestimated Junior Loggia.  Because he was so young, he was sent to a criminal rehab center rather than a prison planet.  No one realized that Junior was using his father’s contacts.  He had more power than any of them, yet he was treated like a rookie. 

“He put out a hit on Ellicia, from the rehab center, with a hefty bonus for any other Agents that could be taken down with her.  On the day of Harlan and Ellicia’s engagement party, the caterers they’d hired opened fire on the guests, and on Harlan and Ellicia.  Harlan was able to save Ellicia’s life, but not his own.  He and 14 other Agents were killed that day.  Seven others were wounded so severely that they will never work again.  Three were close to death, but eventually survived.  Ellicia was one of those three.