Operation Hydra (21 page)

Standing also, Trey turned to Drakkin. “Master Gerr is a fine navigator, but more importantly, he is a Master-level Mage. If he assists you from within the
Gale
, can you guide her into the
Tempest
, without the benefit of conventional navigational systems?”

Drakkin inclined his head, the red ring in his eyes glowing subtly. “Your plan has definite potential, but who will sneak into the Center? How will they take down the security grid?”

“You leave that to me, Lord Drakkin,” Trey said. “Hydran’s got one of my crewmembers. I’ll play his game one last time — and then he’ll play mine.”

* * * * *

“Krysta, there is no reason for you to leave the
Tempest
.”

Gasping, Krysta staggered back a step, as if Trey had slapped her, but he wasn’t moved by her melodramatics.

“How can you say that?” Her tone sounded almost convincing. Her eyes stared back at him, wide and innocent. “What about Belle? Are the elders unimportant? Maybe they mean —”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” Her reaction seemed a bit too well rehearsed. “You’re out of Hydran’s grasp and I’m not giving him another opportunity —”

“It’s not your choice to make.” She dropped the hurt little girl act just as suddenly as she’d adopted it.

They faced off, hands on their hips. “Actually, it is. This is my mission and anything that affects the mission is my call.”

“They’re my people! You can’t just leave me here. Get me inside the wards. I can coordinate the evacuation with a thought. They’ll listen to me. They’ve been expecting me. You can’t exclude me. This is my mission, too.”

He stared at her flushed face. Purple eyes flashing, chin tilted stubbornly, she was extraordinary.

“You have to give me your word. You’ll leave Hydran to me.”

She bristled.

“You leave Hydran to me, or you stay behind.”

“Fine.”

“Dro Tar can get us into the wards if my plan fails, so I’d rather you stay with me.” He narrowed his eyes. “You got a problem with that?”

“No, sir,” she said with a smile.

By the time they reached the Center, Krysta was no longer smiling. Trey had wanted to spare her any further contact with the facility and especially the man who had caused her so much pain, but she couldn’t relax in her freedom so long as her people were still under Hydran’s control.

The receptionist asked them to wait in the lobby when they informed her they didn’t have an appointment, but a short time later Dro Tar arrived to escort them to Hydran’s office. Trey did his best to appear nonchalant. Still, she looked so tame in her Operation Hydra uniform that he could hardly believe it was his feisty first officer.

She remained faultlessly in character, leaving Krysta and him alone in Hydran’s office without a word. But as she passed him on her way out, Trey felt her slip something into the pocket of his jacket. Knowing Hydran’s love for voyeurism, he pulled Krysta into his arms and kissed her before she could protest. “She slipped something into my pocket,” he whispered. “Reach in and see what it is. I’ll moan, like you’re doing something else.”

She laughed, low and throaty.
“If you want me to fondle you, all you have to do is ask.”

He wasn’t sure if she was teasing him, or if she was reinforcing the illusion he was suggesting they create, but her hand slipped into his pocket and started sliding around. Trey moaned all right and he didn’t have to manufacture the sound.

“It’s a slip of paper,” she whispered back.

“Pull it out and open my jacket.”

She laughed again. “You should have said that louder.” Carefully unfolding the paper between them, while he nuzzled her neck, she chuckled and nodded downward. “I can’t read Ontarian.”

It took Trey a moment to read Dro Tar’s hand writing upside down, but he finally managed to decipher the simple message. “It says: Something big is up, but no one is saying anything.”

“Your spy is right,” Corra Stacey said as she stepped into the office.

Releasing Krysta with a reassuring squeeze, he turned his attention to Hydran’s daughter. “My spy is right about what?”

“There is something big underway, or actually, there was… I’m afraid you just missed the action. My father left about an hour ago.”

Something in her expression,
a certain
wildness in her eyes, made Trey choose his words carefully. “It is very important that I speak with him, Dr. Stacey. When do you expect your father to return?”

She caught a half-hysterical giggle behind her hand and sat on the corner of the desk. “I don’t.”

Trey felt a tremor pass through Krysta and slipped his arm around her waist. “You don’t expect him today?”

“I don’t expect him
ever
. Quite simply, you’re too late. The general came for him. They wiped out the archives. All the frozen specimens are gone. He’s relocated — without me.”

Her leg began to swing rhythmically, almost gently, but her light blue eyes revealed the devastation of his betrayal. He’d left her behind. She’d been discarded.

“You have no idea where he’s gone?” Trey asked.

“The Center is still full of people — our people,” Krysta said quietly. “I can sense them.”

Corra swayed forward and back. “It’s over. Don’t you get it? He’s gone! Take
your people
and go home. The all mighty Dr. Hydran has lost interest in you.”

Krysta’s nails bit into Trey’s forearm and he glanced at her ashen face. The fury written there rocked him, stirring his protectiveness.

“If he took the frozen specimens, then he hasn’t lost interest in
our
people. Tell me where he went. Your father is in way over his head. He has no idea what he —”

“How long have you known how it would happen?” Her gaze focused on Krysta. “‘The serpent will split from the inside out.’ Those words gave Father
nightmares
every night since he heard them.”

“Because he sensed your doubt long before the prophecy?”
Krysta ventured softly.

“Do you even know how it all started?” Corra’s gaze bore into Krysta’s hostile and intense. “The logs don’t go back before Operation Hydra existed. Haven’t you ever wondered why?”

Krysta glanced restlessly toward the door. She sensed no fear, no great upheaval from the wards. Either no one knew that Hydran had fled, or Corra was completely insane. Either way, they lost nothing by indulging her for a little while longer.

“How did it start?” Trey asked. “How did he learn of Krystabel’s abilities? Or was it one of her guardians who revealed themselves?”

“No, it was Krystabel. I was five, she was even younger. I know now that it was a rapidly mutating virus, but then I only knew that I was scared and I was sure I was dying.” Her feet slid to the floor and she wrapped her arms tightly around herself. “My mother
fell
ill first and then me, so I had to watch each stage of the illness manifest before it actually happened to me.

“Father was the most brilliant scientist in the world. How could I die of something
so
simple as a virus? Papa would save me; that’s what he did. He used science to save people, to cure them of diseases, and prevent birth defects.” She swallowed back a sob. “But I was dying.”

“How did you meet Krystabel?” Trey asked.

“Healers can’t heal themselves,” she murmured. “She’d fallen out of a tree and broken her arm in three places. Her guardians brought her to the same hospital where I was being treated. I remember only bits and pieces, but apparently she sensed my fear, my pain, and sneaked out of her room and came to me. She healed me of the virus and collapsed across my bed. My father found her there. He tried to force her to heal my mother, but she wasn’t strong enough. That’s when the war began.”

Tears swam in her eyes and her lips trembled, but Krysta didn’t understand the other woman’s emotions. “What
war?
”

“If she’d saved his one true love, he would have done anything for her.” Tears trailed in shining rivulets down Corra’s pale cheeks. “I heard him talking to Rawdon the day Rawdon asked me to marry him. Father wanted to know why he wanted me. Rawdon is brilliant and ambitious. He could have had any woman he wanted.”

Corra didn’t say anything for a long time. Krysta tried not to stare as the woman regained her composure, but her story made no sense.
What war?
Clearly her mind had snapped.
Had some mysterious general taken Hydran to a new location or not?

“Father told Rawdon that Krystabel had saved the wrong person.” Corra’s voice was quiet and composed now. “My mother could have given him more children, but I could give him nothing. If Krystabel had saved my mother and let me die, he would have given her the world. But she saved a sickly, barren child, and allowed his one true love to die. He declared war on ‘the creatures’ that destroyed his life.”

“For God’s sake, Corra, a virus destroyed his life. My mother was only a child!” Krysta flared. She made herself pause, shaking with impotent anger. It did no good to kill the messenger. Corra was simply relaying a story. But what was her part in the story? “She saved your life, Corra. How can you justify —”

“I don’t justify anything my father did,” she cut in bitterly. “I didn’t even know about it until I met Rawdon. I knew Father worked with highly classified genetic research, but I had no idea there was a connection between his project and the little girl who saved my life.”

They just glared at each other for a moment.

“I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t I turn him in?
How could I allow it to continue, after I learned what was really going on?”

Krysta shook her head, understanding more than Corra realized. “Your husband was too deeply involved by then.”

“I did help you, Krysta. I did more than you’ll ever know. I sabotaged Father in ways you’ll never understand. We both did, and we’ll live the rest of our lives in hiding because of it.”

“Were you responsible for I-219?” Krysta asked gently. Corra’s reactions grew more unpredictable by the minute.

“It was a message in a bottle.” Corra licked her lips as she wrung her hands. “Anyone could have found it. We wanted them to. He’s so close now. He has everything he needs. Level Four would have launched years ago if it hadn’t been for Rawdon and me.”

“What is Level Four?” Krysta asked urgently. “We can’t access those entries in the log.”

“Father knows you’ve been to Meditek. That might be the reason for his sudden relocation. I’ve given you everything you need to bring him down.” She
laughed,
an eerie, hollow sound. “Now, all you have to do is find him.”

“What do we do now?” Krysta asked in a soft, bewildered voice.

“We win by default.” Trey tried to sound encouraging.

“I don’t want to win by default!” She headed for the door to Hydran’s office. “I want to rearrange his features.”

Trey followed Krysta out into the corridor. “Commander
Barrel,
is their security grid still operational?” he asked into the audiocom hooked around his ear.

“That’s affirmative. What’s your status? We lost your signal as soon as you stepped into that office. Al assured me
that’s
not unusual.”

“Yeah, well communications are the least of our worries. We’re currently short one villain.”

“What?”

Without explaining, Trey said, “Pass my signal to Al.”

“I’m here, Commander Aune,” the communications officer replied.

“Should I turn off?” Lyrik asked.

“No need.” Dro Tar awaited them at the end of the corridor, so Trey slowed his long stride. “Al, see if you can hack into the local Space Authority’s computers. See if any sort of airlift was authorized from the Center this morning. Start with military transports and broaden the scope to any aircraft.”

“What if they didn’t file a log?” Lyrik asked. “I didn’t.”

“Yeah, but your ship is undetectable to their scanners. We were only here two hours before the Space Authority was all over the
Gale
.”

“On it, boss,” Al assured him.

Dro Tar snapped to attention when they reached her. She glanced meaningfully at the surveillance panels, set high in the unadorned walls. “The wards are in lock down, Mr. Darrin. I’m sorry. You’ll have to come back when Dr. Hydran has lifted the stipulation.”

“And why is that?” He moved slowly toward her.

“I only know what I’m told.”

If they weren’t being watched, he would have applauded her performance. She stood passively, with her hands at her sides; inside she must be tearing her hair out.
Dro Tar meek and mild?

Krysta lunged past him, seeing what he hadn’t — the purpose for Dro Tar’s posture. Dro Tar hit the
wall,
Krysta’s forearm across her throat, the slender wandlike weapon suddenly in Krysta’s other hand.

“You need a written invitation?” Dro Tar hissed in Ontarian.

“You struggle, you die,” Krysta growled for the benefit of their audience.

He’d missed his cue. Damn the ghosts of the night moon!

“Bend my arm behind my back and shove my face into the scanner,” Dro Tar instructed in a soft urgent whisper, but Krysta’s headset picked it up. “And tell
your hero
to wake up. There will be three of them waiting on the other side of the door.”

Krysta turned to repeat the instructions, but Trey just nodded stiffly toward the door. Pulling Dro Tar away from the wall, Krysta adjusted their position. Reaching up under his jacket, he retrieved the pistol Lyrik had given him that morning. Made of the same iridescent alloy as the
Tempest
, Lyrik had said the weapon was also undetectable to most scanners.

Trey focused on the doorway, preparing for what awaited beyond. Dro Tar said three.
Probably one to each side and one in front.
Hydran’s staff wasn’t hired for their creativity.

The panel slid open. He fired to his left. The guard screamed, his body vibrating. Without missing a beat, Trey threw a vicious jab into the solar plexus of the man to his right, robbing him of breath, dropping him without a struggle.
Down to one.
The last guard was older, his uniform slightly different from the others. He faced Trey, holding his wand-shaped weapon in one trembling hand.