Jeremy Kael bolted upright in his body-crypt.
The ship had fallen apart in flames. His avatar had
been destroyed. But not Myla. He had failed pretty little Myla. He had
left her alive, and in doing so had subjected her to terror and agony beyond
imagining.
He looked down at white, skinny legs covered in
muscle-toning electrodes. He held shaking hands before his eyes in
disbelief. This was his own body. He hadn't been awakened in his own body
for years.
"No, not like this! Put me back! I want an avatar!
Not like this!"
Nobody responded to his cry. He lay back down and
trembled in simmering terror. The colony had been routed. Had the Hive or
the incoming aliens managed to inflict damage upon the Ark, Covonia's vast
repository of human life? Jeremy imagined everyone having been awakened,
the interior of five hundred thousand crypts filled with the muffled screams
of those doomed to a slow and horrible death in their sealed vaults.
A relay clicked in speakers to either side of his
head. "Get dressed," Executor General Gorlon Hague muttered in a calm tone
of voice. "Report to the command center meeting chamber. The Overlord is
waiting."
He was not aboard the Ark after all. His body had been
transferred to Bolphan, and that, too, alarmed him. The Ark was practically
invulnerable. Bolphan was not.
But he responded like an automaton
to his orders. In many ways, he
had become one down through the years. Rules and regulations had structured
his life for so long, they should never have expected him to think for
himself. They should never have put him in a position of responsibility for
another human life.
He climbed from his crypt, dressed in standard
coveralls, and wended his way through deserted corridors to the meeting
chamber near Overlord Nome's command pavilion. He paused just inside the
cavernous chamber, shocked to see both General Hague and Overlord Nome
awaiting him. He managed to close half the distance separating him from the
grotesque giants before dropping to his knees in terrified supplication.
"My Lord. . ."
His voice sounded like that of a sick and helpless
child. Without his augmentations and his handsome avatar, he felt blind and
disabled.
"She's not dead," Overlord Nome's voice rumbled
unexpectedly.
Jeremy looked up, more in confusion than hope. Of
course she was not dead. She had fallen into the hands of the Hive. They
all knew what that meant. It meant that he should die for his selfish
cowardice. He had hesitated to kill her and in doing so had allowed her to
suffer torments worse that any imagined hell.
"She found refuge in a cave," Khalin said casually.
"She is unharmed as of this moment."
Jeremy gawked in astonishment. A child had been left stranded on the
face of an abandoned world infested with monsters.
“I understand that having been unexpectedly awakened in
your own body is a traumatic experience, and I do not wish you incapacitated
by your failure to fulfill your mission. I should not have expected you to
kill the child. I myself would not have been able to do so. I only wanted
her rescued."
Lord Nome had a reputation as a madman, little more
than an icon of Covonian authority in his advancing years. It sounded
strange to hear him speaking with such understanding and compassion.
Khalin made a gesture. The stars appeared overhead
against the black of interstellar space. Jeremy spotted Alexus as a bright
golden star and estimated its distance as at least a quarter light-year.
Bolphan had hung back at the edge of the Alexus system to retrieve Myla.
"I am sending you back to complete your task," Khalin
said.
Naked?
In his own body?
Jeremy leaped to his feet with a strangled cry. "My
Lord, not like this!" He threw his arms out to show how helpless and
vulnerable he was. He shook his head frantically. "My Lord, I cannot
function without my augmentations!"
General Hague stepped forward to explain. "You are not
going back to Covonia. The mission would be hopeless. Rather, you will be
given a warcraft to wait at the edge of the system. That is why you must do
so naked, so to speak. You will be out of communications range with
Covonia.
“Dikki, Myla's MI servant, was sent out before we
departed and will locate the girl and take her to a personal transport that
has been hidden in the forest for just this sort of contingency. She may be
able to evade the Hive's attention, but the transport will not have the
range to reach Bolphan. You will rendezvous with her, defend her, if you
must, and bring her home."
A fool’s mission. Neither
of them would survive in open
battle with Hive forces. He opened his mouth to protest, but strangled his
own words rather than risk Lord Khalin Nome’s infamous temper.
"I know of your feelings for Myla," Khalin said,
pinning Jeremy in place with a stab of panic of an entirely different kind.
"I know of Myla's feelings for you. Bring Myla safely back to me and I will
allow you to openly socialize with the child."
Jeremy’s eyes darted to the ground for fear Lord Nome
would see his guilt. How had Khalin known? For how long? Few knew of
Khalin's obsession with Myla, but Jeremy had known, and he had known all too
well the dangers it posed to Myla and himself when they slipped away
together on rare occasion. It seemed strange that Khalin could have known
of his love for Myla and not retaliated.
"Do not think me a fool," Khalin said, his tone of
voice gentle, but ominous. "There is nobody else who would willingly go. I
am not commanding that you obey me. I am merely making an offer. Bring
Myla back to me and I may eventually offer to you Myla's hand in marriage
according to the Nat tradition to which she subscribes."
Jeremy could not react through the numbing shock that
engulfed him. He began to fear that Khalin would interpret his silence as
refusal, but Khalin saw otherwise in his expression, and he gestured.
Guards appeared from either side. They lifted him to his feet and turned
him about. "We must hurry," one of the two men murmured in his ear. "There
is not much time."
General Hague waited until Jeremy was gone. "Khalin,
it's not likely he will succeed."
Khalin took a deep breath. "Myla is resourceful. She
may find a way."
"We risk too much for one child."
"I will decide the risk. Are we secure for the
moment?"
"We are secure, my Lord. The Hive has paid us little
mind. The crashed alien vessel dominates their attention."
"Where are the other vessels that accompanied it, the
vessels of alien origin?"
"Standing off in the distance, watching and biding
their time."
"Vessels of alien origin. Are they, in fact?"
"Several hundred, my Lord."
"They have attacked Hive forces, have they not?"
"No, my Lord, they did not attack Hive forces, but Hive
forces that attacked them inflicted no apparent damage and simply
disappeared. Perhaps destroyed. We do not know. The alien presence has
initiated no hostile move of its own."
"A superior force, then," Khalin said.
"A vastly superior force, my Lord, one that has
undoubtedly attracted the attention of the Alliance military. We should expect
their arrival within a short period of time."
"But the Hive does not
calculate that we are somehow
involved in this historic event. They have no reason to attack us."
"The Hive has not attacked the colony," Gorlon said.
"We have no knowledge of why the crashed vessel chose Covonia as its
destination. I cannot accept that it did so because of our presence. There
must be other, unknown reasons."
Khalin sighed. "Then Bolphan stands fast and observes
from its present location. Keep me posted on Myla's status at brief
intervals."
"And if she's captured by the Hive?"
Khalin mulled over the horrific possibility. "She may
have the resources to avoid capture."
The comment puzzled Gorlon. What resources could a
child bring to bear against the Hive?
Nome eyed him as if aware of a slip of the tongue.
"The boy's presence will contain her."
Which made even less sense, and the statement both
startled and frightened him. Myla was beyond hope, but Khalin wasn't so far
gone that he didn't know what he was doing, or what he was saying.
The Overlord's behavior posed a mystery, and the
mystery, any unknown factor at this stage of events, posed a critical and
immediate danger.
