Redemption of Light (The Light Trilogy) (18 page)

“If a captain got kidnapped, then maybe Jehu did escape?”

“Bah!” Ari discounted. “Even if he had, he couldn’t have gotten here early enough to nab Jossel. That stupid worker with no teeth said she’d been missing for six hours.”

Yosef’s eyes widened as a Magisterial soldier joined up with a planetary marine and walked straight for their row. “Somebody’s coming!”

Ari scrambled to his feet and ran on his tiptoes down the row, turning the corner into a dark dead-end alcove formed by crates piled ten high. Each container had a red triangle marked conspicuously on the outside. Now you’ve done it,” Ari blamed. “Look what you’ve gotten us into!”

“Quit complaining. Pry the lid off that crate on the ground.”

“But we don’t know what’s in there.”

“Who cares?
Do it!”

Ari reluctantly jerked his knife from the sheath on his belt. Manically, he pried at the lid. The crate opened with a shriek.

“Help me,” Ari ordered and Yosef trotted forward, hefting with all his strength to lift the heavy lid. The blasted thing weighed a ton. What was it made of? Uro-lead?

“Hurry! We have to get inside!”

Ari tucked his knife back in its sheath and made a basket with his hands. Yosef jammed his foot in it, levering himself up. By the time he got halfway there, however, Ari’s arms waffled so wildly that Yosef ended up toppling into the crate headfirst. The tubular, tightly packed canisters that stuffed the bottom of the crate jangled when he hit. Ari swiftly scrambled over the lip and fell on top of Yosef. He pulled the lid back over them. They lay in contorted positions, panting.

“Will you get off my face!” Yosef insisted furiously, slapping at Ari’s skinny butt.

“Shh! They’re coming.”

Yosef stopped in mid-swing, listening to the sound of booted feet on hard stone.

“Yes,” one of the officers said in a deep voice. “These are the crates. Get them loaded into the shuttle quickly. First Lieutenant Woloc identified them as top priority.”

A hesitation. Yosef heard someone’s boots clicking as the man approached. The crate tilted suddenly.

“Goddamn it, Corporal! Put that down!” the deep-voiced officer commanded. “Doesn’t that governor of yours teach you anything important? You could blow up half this planet handling those crates roughly. You see those red triangles? That symbol signifies a very special and very touchy explosive compound.”

Yosef watched Ari clap a hand to his sweating forehead. His lips moved in what had to be a silent prayer. Warily, Yosef glanced at the canisters from the corner of his eye. In the past few seconds, they’d grown a malignant personality. He could feel them grinning at him.

“Don’t tip that crate at more than forty-five degrees, Corporal, or you’ll—”

“Well, why didn’t anybody tell me before?”

“Just be careful!”

The thudding of retreating boots vibrated through the crate. The remaining man cursed under his breath. In a few minutes the growl of a loader moved closer and their crate gently lifted.

Ari craned his thin neck to scowl murderously at Yosef. Carefully avoiding the canisters, Funk reached down and tried to twist Yosef’s ear off. It took a concerted effort not to scream or thrash about. In defense, Yosef thrust a skeletal finger into Ari’s crotch. Funk jerked, gray eyes going wide. He let go of Yosef’s ear.

The loader carried them for a period of about fifteen minutes, then gently set them down. A series of new scents and sounds penetrated their container. Foreign voices, all speaking intergalactic lingua, issued quiet orders. Metallic clashings and hollow thuds rang out. Finally, someone gently shoved their crate over a smooth surface until it banged softly against a wall.

They strained so hard to hear any word or movement that when the door slipped closed, it sounded thunderous. A blanket of dark silence descended.

Yosef gazed up at Ari. He couldn’t see him, but he could hear Funk’s labored breathing. The shuttle moved. They felt it rise off the ground. G-force pushed them back against the crate wall as the ship shot forward.

“Good God,”
Ari whispered morosely.

Aktariel stepped out onto a barren ball of red dust. He propped his hands on his hips and scanned the windswept wasteland. Anxiety and exasperation combined into a fine hot brew inside him. He had critical business to attend to. He couldn’t afford this search!

“Where are you, Rachel,” he asked through gritted teeth.
“What are you doing?”

A dust storm tormented the distant plains. Red spires bobbed over the sun-drenched land, twining and colliding. In a furious movement, he gripped his
Mea
and concentrated. He hadn’t time to trace her path! There were too many possible universes to search!

His jade green cloak flapped like wings as he strode back into the void.

CHAPTER 20

Carey slumped wearily in the probe chair. The lights shimmered with a starry radiance in the facets of the instruments on the silver table in front of her. The EM restraints gave her scant room to shift positions to ease the discomfort in her legs and lower back, but she struggled against them regardless. Every nerve in her body screamed at her to move.

In most of the galaxy, they’d call this torture. It would be against a thousand treaties. But not on Palaia. In this secret government bastion Slothen can order anything he wants and no one will know.

The helmet still rested on her head. She blinked wearily at the catheters they’d inserted in her abdomen to remove body wastes. More slithered from her throat and arms—feeding her, giving her air whether she wanted it or not. Sometime during the night, they’d removed Samuals. Probably taking him to the hospital. He’d screamed for hours, pleading for mercy, telling them everything he knew.

From the edge of her vision, Carey could see the windows on either side of the door. No Giclasian monsters marred the raised seats. They’d all vanished in the early hours of the morning. Idly, she wondered what time it was now, 0:400? Mundus had swiveled her chair around so she could no longer view the chronometer. She faced north, overlooking the last place Samuals had lain. Scratch marks from his frantic fingernails still gouged the wall.

In the deep dark recesses of her soul, a voice whispered, soft, reassuring in its deep tones and she shuddered, closing it off, forcing Jeremiel’s confident face from her thoughts.

“Don’t dream,”
she roughly commanded herself. “Stop it!”

They’d left her hooked up to the probes for a specific reason: at some point, she had to sleep. When she did, the dreams came unbidden, and the monitors recorded every scene in intimate detail. Her only defense lay in falling into deep dreamless sleep for a few minutes and then jerking herself awake. It kept her exhausted. Three times in the past day, she’d sobbed insanely and deliberately. Anger no longer worked. They’d expertly drained her of rage. Now only wrenching expressions of grief and despair kept the probes out of her most dangerous memories.

But how long could she wield the bitter explosions of anguish before their jagged edges sliced her resistance to nothingness? How long before she, too, surrendered to the sweet oblivion promised by the probes? Samuals had broken far sooner than she’d expected. It terrified her.

How long can you hang on, sweetheart? The crew on the
Zilpah
are convinced you’re a tough bitch. Are you? Dear God, let Jeremiel and Cole be far away when I go.

Surely, they’d already have taken defensive action, just in case any of the officers had survived the Kiskanu attack. Did they suspect she might have? A trembling began in her hands. She clutched her chair hard. If Jeremiel or Cole suspected, they’d both be wild with fear and near desperation. If she could only find a way of killing herself, she could free them….

“No, Lieutenant, that won’t be necessary.”

The kind voice echoed through the room, as soft and beckoning as an extended hand. Haggardly, she blinked at the far wall. A shadow wavered, huge, as though cast by some hunching monster from the deep.

In a sudden burst of light, a man of crystalline beauty appeared. He wore a jade cloak cut from the finest velvet. Within his pulled-up hood, a magnificent golden face glowed. The angles of his features were sharp, as though chiseled from pure light.

And she knew where she’d seen him before …
on the bridge of a dying starship when the very survival of Gamant civilization hung in the balance.
As he walked toward her, Carey’s heart seemed to stop.

“Angel,” she whispered. The sound of her hoarse voice frightened her. Had she cried out so much in the last session?

“Yes, Lieutenant,” the man of light answered gently.

He loomed over her, looking down through eyes as compassionate and concerned as those of God Himself. He threw back his hood. Hesitantly, as if worried about her response, he extended a golden hand and caressed her face. The fingers felt so warm and tender, they sent a tingle through her weary, weary body.

“Why are you here?” she croaked.

“To help you.”

“Can you get me off Palaia?”

He lowered his brilliant gaze to pensively study the multitude of tubes that webbed her. Curiously, he prodded the petrolon lengths. “In all the ways that count, Lieutenant.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can’t physically take you away. I’m sorry. Your presence here buys time for Jeremiel and Cole. Time they desperately need.”

“Then how—”

“If you’ll let me, I can give wings to your soul.”

Carey eyed him anxiously. “How?”

With the tenderness of a lover, he removed the
Mea
from around his own throat and draped it around hers. Then, strangely, he reached around to the chest of drawers behind her. He brought back Jeremiel’s
Mea.
It flared suddenly in his hand. The sudden flash of stunning blue light made her gasp in awe. A cerulean gleam sparked across the room, touching everything like a flaming sapphire wash of St. Elmo’s fire.

Carey whispered, “Why? Why do you need—”

“I’m not sure I will,” he responded softly. A forlorn tone echoed in his voice. “But I might. And mine will work just as well for you, since you’ll want to go through the seven heavens.”

Gently, he brushed drenched auburn hair from her pale face, lifted Carey’s new
Mea,
and pressed it against her forehead.

“Let me show you the way to God, Lieutenant,” the angel whispered intimately. “Close your eyes.”

Carey basked in the warmth of his smooth fingers against her forehead. The last time she’d seen him, he’d saved thousands of Gamant lives—and foreign women, too. She was loath to trust anyone, yet she did as he instructed and let her eyes fall shut.

“Yes, that’s it, Carey. Clear-your mind of thoughts. Now go deeper, very deep, seek that one place inside of you that always listens.”

For what seemed hours, she followed his guiding voice. Whenever she took a wrong turn, his confident tones corrected and soothed, showing her how to back up and retrace her steps—until finally she entered a strange silent place. It had a peculiar feel, safe and warm, like a protective womb of light. She felt oddly as though all her waking life were nothing more than the echo of this eternal brilliance.

“That’s it, Carey. Stay there. Can you still feel the press of the
Mea
against your skin? Good … good. Now I want you to imagine a tunnel, a tunnel of pure light that shoots out from you to connect with the Mea.”

Carey concentrated and the tunnel seemed to form out of nothingness, swirling like a fiery vortex.

“Yes, very good. Now walk, Carey. Just walk … from here … to the gates of heaven. Come, I’ll take you as far as I can.”

He stayed close beside her, his green cloak swaying with his graceful movements as they traversed the tunnel. They talked about little things, the cyclones of light that eddied beneath their feet, the glitter that fell in a shower from overhead. At times, his amber body seemed to blend with the tunnel until only his green cloak existed. The sparkling vortex spiraled upward, upward. She could not keep from glancing at him. She’d always believed the stories of the ancient Gamant zaddiks about angels and God—strongly suspecting they were alien beings from another universe.

A cool wind brushed her hot face and she saw a gaping black void widen before her. It devoured the tunnel of light.

Carey took a step back.

The angel gripped her arm supportively. “It’s all right. The Darkness only seems to conquer the Light. It’s a brief illusion through which you must pass. But I can’t go in there with you.”

Fear tingled along her limbs. “What is that?”

“The path to God. Are you brave enough to seek Him out?”

“Me? Brave?” She smiled disparagingly at herself. “How do I get there?”

He pointed down the throat of the Darkness. “Walk straight ahead. Don’t let the images you see frighten you. The void holds the imprint of all the faces of the creatures who’ve ever ventured on the path of illumination. But they’re not real. They can’t hurt you.”

She expelled a taut breath, thinking about God. All the old Gamant stories rose in her memories. “I’ve dreamed of this, you know.”

The angel’s amber eyes flared, glowing so brightly she could barely continue to hold his gaze. “Yes, I know. What will you say to Him?”

Carey folded her arms. Was she dreaming even now? A cold tickle of fear tingled around her hairline. Perhaps her brain had found the key to truly avoiding the probes: Dreams that weren’t based on memories. Could she control it? If so, she could gain a reprieve for her exhausted body.

She turned and tilted her head curiously at the angel. “I think I’ll ask Him why He takes such poor care of His Chosen People.”

The angel bowed his head for a long moment. “I’d hoped you would.”

He touched her hand warmly, then he slowly walked back the way they’d come, calling, “If you have any problems, ask to see the archistrategos Michael. No matter what the lesser angels tell you, you have the right to take your case for entry to a higher judge.”

“Who are you? Who should I say sent me?”

But he only lifted a hand in farewell. Carey watched his green cloak waver through the deluge of gold until it vanished. She turned to face the whirling Void of Darkness.

From the depths of her memories, Cole’s voice chided,
“Oh, I get it. You like the idea of getting sucked into a black hole. And to think that for twenty-five years I’ve thought you had good sense.”

“Anything’s better than the probes, Cole,” she sighed as she resolutely forced her feet forward.