Severed Bonds

Prologue-3

Anna grinned, then bowed her head to the other woman. “You really don't know, do you?” she asked, stepping forward. “There is only one telepath with us, and she's here of her own free will.”

“Impossible.”

At that moment, Keli stepped out from the intersecting corridor. The woman had a pistol in one hand, its muzzle pointed down at the floor. “Lenai tells the truth,” she said. “I am the only one.”

Pressing her lips into a thin line, the red-headed woman blinked several times and shook her head. “You alone possess the skill to block us?” she asked. “That is impossible. No one telepath could do so much.”

“I am…unique.”

“And you serve Leyria?”

That came from the blonde man who stepped forward and kept his hands hidden in his sleeves. His eyes were fixed on Keli as if he'd never seen a woman before. “By all the gods in Celestus, what would possess you to do that?”

“The Leyrians never locked me in a cell,” Keli replied. And then, a moment later, she added. “Well…there was that one time, but it was a much nicer cell than the one our people provided, and they did let me go.”

Anna was growing tense, and she could tell that Melissa wasn't doing much better; the girl kept fidgeting with her pistol as if she wasn't sure whether or not to do something with it. You didn't have to be a mind-reader to read minds.

Thankfully, Melissa's Nassai would make it difficult – if not impossible – for the enemy telepaths to sense her thoughts, and that might give Anna a chance to calm things down. No, you didn't have to be a telepath to read minds or to communicate without even a single word. A glance from her was enough to make Melissa holster the weapon.

“We're here to stop weapon's smuggling,” Anna said.

The red-head looked at her with large brown eyes, and then her mouth twitched in obvious displeasure. “Really?” she asked. “I have a very hard time believing that. After the reports I've seen…”

Keli moved forward, rudely shouldering her way through the narrow gap between Anna and Melissa. The woman positioned herself between Anna and the other telepaths. “We have no time for dawdling,” she said. “Find the weapons and destroy them. I'll deal with Carissa and her friends.”

“How do you know my name?” the redhead shouted.

“Your mind is an open book.”

Melissa put one hand on the grip of her pistol, staring down the three telepaths with resolve in her eyes. “We're not just gonna leave you,” she insisted. “Three against one is hardly a fair fight.”

Keli glanced back over her shoulder, her mouth tight with disapproval. “Go,” she grated. “These three are nothing.”

“But-”

Anna grabbed her young companion by the arm and pulled Melissa away from the confrontation. “Come on!” she said. “If Keli says she can handle it, she can handle it. We have a mission to complete.”

They turned their backs and ran up the corridor, past the intersection where several uniformed security officers were still passed out, toward the spot where their intelligence said the cargo bay would be. So far, they had been able to avoid the use of lethal force, but it didn't look as though Keli had any intention of showing her enemies mercy. Anna was not happy about that, but what else could she do? Keepers stood a fighting chance against telepaths, but three would be a challenge, and capturing mind-readers was not her objective. They had weapons to destroy.

She just hoped they didn't run into more security teams.

Grinning like a princess who had just been given a new necklace, Carissa strode through the corridor, flanked by her two male subordinates. They were not as skilled as their mistress – Keli could tell – but together, the three would present a challenge. And she wanted a challenge.

With the pistol in one hand, Keli stood before them in the black pants, t-shirt and armoured vest that Keepers wore on these ridiculous missions. Her eyes were downcast, her breathing slow. “I offer you this one chance to retreat.”

Carissa laughed.

Keli looked up and then squinted at her opponent. “As you wish,” she said, nodding once. “Don't say I didn't offer.”

Anyone who walked by would see nothing but one woman staring down three other people in the middle of a hallway, but in Keli's mind, a furious battle took place. Waves emanated from the three, waves that crashed over her, threatening to break her will and leave her subordinate to them.

She smoothed mental defenses – there was no other word for it; the shield that she crafted was like a perfect sphere of glass around her mind – allowing the waves to wash over and drift harmlessly past.

And so the waves changed, becoming sharp, cutting at the sphere.

Keli winced, tears streaming over her cheeks when she felt the pressure those three exerted. “All right,” she croaked out. “You have some skill between you. But I have been training for this all my life.”

She lashed out with waves of her own, razor-sharp waves that cut into Carissa and forced the woman to stumble backward. Groaning and doubling over, ringlets of red hair falling over her face, the woman shook her head.

Her attack intensified.

Keli responded in kind.

She perceived the psychic bond between her three adversaries almost as a single cord of energy that connected all of them. So, she segmented it in two places, mentally separating them.

Carissa's onslaught was suddenly much easier to ignore, the woman flinching as she realized that she had lost her support. “How?”

The blonde man staggered, bracing one hand against the corridor wall and trying to catch his breath. Clearly, he had not expected to be cut off from his allies. Three minds blended together and then ripped apart. It could be quite disorienting.

Keli raised her weapon and fired.

A bullet pierced the blonde man's chest, blood spraying out behind him as he took a shaky step backward and then fell to the floor. Moments later, it was pooling out over the tiles while he made harsh rasping sounds.

Her mouth a gaping abyss, Carissa blinked a few times as she studied Keli. “You would resort to that?” she screamed. “To the use of one of their primitive weapons? You fight without honour!”

“What use do I have for honour?” Keli said. “I had three opponents, and now there are two.”

The mental attack came at her again, trying to bury her mind beneath an avalanche of pain and regret and despair. Keli didn't put up a fight. She let the negative emotions fill her thoughts, let her enemies feel as if they had dominated her. Carissa became focused on the invisible war, the war inside Keli's mind. These fools really did see themselves as superior to ordinary humans. Keli knew better.

Ordinary humans had kept her locked up in a cage for years, had pumped her body full of drugs and stimulated her brain with electric shocks. Ordinary humans had forced her to compete against other telepaths. Raynar was not the first.

Ordinary humans had outwitted her, poisoned her and then trapped her in a slaver's collar. Ordinary humans had forced her to perform for their amusement. She knew first-hand just how dangerous ordinary humans could be.

As Carissa directed all of her will and that of her partner into one final assault, Keli reacted as an ordinary human would.

She pointed her gun at the other woman's leg.

And she pulled the trigger.

A bullet ripped through Carissa's thigh, forcing the woman to fall flat on her face. Just like that, the mental onslaught stopped. Carissa was lying flat on her belly, shrieking in pain.

Keli fired her weapon again.

Ten paces up the corridor, the dark-haired man was trembling on the spot, terrified that he might be next. He glanced down at Carissa and then up at Keli. Without one word, he turned and ran.

The huge cargo bay door was shut tight, light gleaming off its metal surface. There was no way that they were hacking their way through the security system to get that thing open; Anna was good, but she wasn't that good. Truth be told, even Ben couldn't devise an algorithm to override an enemy vessel's security protocols, and the fact that Antauran tech used an entirely different operating system was only part of the reason why. So, that left them with only one option: brute force.

Anna stood before the door with fists balled at her sides, her face tight with anxiety. “All right,” she said, nodding once. “Let's get this done. The sooner we get rid of these weapons, the sooner I can go home to a nice bubble bath.”

At her side, Melissa was down on one knee, removing an explosive charge from a pocket in her pants. The girl stood up. “We should be able to detonate this remotely. But we'll need to put some distance-”

The door slid open.

Anna looked up, and her eyes all but popped out. “Well that isn't ominous at all!” she spluttered. “What do you think, Melissa? Feel like walking blindly into the enemy's meticulously-planned trap?”

“We'll probably find Grecken Slade in there.”

“That would be consistent with our luck.”

Despite her reservations, Anna stepped through the open door and found nothing but a huge room with crates that were secured in metal frameworks that were bolted to the floor. Starships got jostled quite a bit when they took enemy fire; it was important to make sure the cargo didn't go flying all over the place.

A catwalk overlooked the cargo bay, but there was no one up there that she could see, and when she focused on the impressions she got from Seth, she realized that there was no one else in this room. Only a few dozen containers.

Chewing on her lip, Anna shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “I do not like this,” she muttered, shaking her head. “First they throw up all kinds of resistance, and now they make it super easy?”

Melissa was standing with one hand on the grip of her holstered pistol, turning her head to take in the sight of everything in this room. “I don't know,” she said. “But we're here; let's finish the job.”

Anna nodded.

The first thing she wanted to do was check one of those containers; the intelligence reports said they would contain guns, low-yield particle weapons and maybe even a few battle drones. Everything the Antauran colonists would need to fly across the border and conduct a few raids against their Leyrian neighbours.

But they were supposed to be personal weapons, not the sort of ordinance that one would use to arm a starship. But intelligence could be wrong. If they used explosives to destroy the contents of this room, and if some of those contents just happened to be high-yield warheads, they could vaporize half the ship. Hundreds of deaths on her conscience. Keepers were sent on missions like this to preserve life; the lives of enemy combatants were no less valuable than those of her own people.

Besides, she was hoping there was some clue that would lead them to Isara.

Anna lifted the lid of one crate to find not guns, not bombs, but carrots. Hundreds of fresh carrots that filled the container to the brim, each one plump and ripe. The next crate over contained lettuce.

“What in Bleakness…”

A little ways up the aisle between two sets of crates, Melissa was leaning over to peer into one of the containers. “Sweet corn,” she said. “And there's farming equipment along the back wall.”

Anna backed away from one crate with her arms folded, shaking her head. “This is not a weapon's supply,” she muttered. “It's a food shipment! We boarded this ship, beat up their guards and risked an act of war to destroy a food shipment!”