Severed Bonds

Prologue-4

“Maybe the weapons are elsewhere?” Melissa offered.

“Or maybe they're planning to go to war against an army of bad comedians!” Anna snapped. Mocking your subordinates was not exactly admirable behaviour in a leader, but she was pissed. “Regardless, we came here for nothing!”

“Precisely!”

The rich, deep voice that echoed through the room had a slight drawl to it, and the way it snapped like a whip made Anna jump. With so many crates between her and the door, she wasn't able to perceive the newcomer with spatial awareness, but she heard his footsteps. She reached for her pistol.

Except her holster was empty! She had thrown her pistol away to snatch up one of the assault rifles, and then she had thrown that away without a second thought. Damn her impulsiveness! It was going to get her killed one day.

A man in a dark blue uniform rounded a set of crates and stepped into the aisle with her and Melissa. He was tall and handsome for an older man, barrel-chested but muscular just the same. His dark complexion was contrasted by a neatly-trimmed silver beard that stretched from ear to ear. “Good morning,” he said.

The man shrugged his shoulders and sauntered toward them with his hands clasped behind his back. “Of course, it's morning for me,” he said. “It might be the middle of the night for you. Human measurements of time have no meaning in space.”

“Who are you?”

Pressing his lips together, the man turned his face up to the ceiling and blinked. “I do wonder,” he said. “Have you ever considered the implications of it? The philosophical quandary that arises from a relativistic universe?”

Anna stood before him with fists on her hips, head bowed as she tried to collect her thoughts. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “This is exactly what I was looking for. Nothing else compliments a gunfight quite like a deconstruction of absolutist morality.”

“It does make one wonder though,” the man said. “If there were a god – or gods – would they not make a universe of absolutes?”

A few steps behind Anna, the silhouette of Melissa stood with hands folded over thighs, watching the man with a serene expression. “Maybe that's the point,” she offered. “Maybe God wants us to find meaning on our own rather than providing it for us.”

The man closed his eyes and turned his head so that Anna saw him in profile. “You may be right, my dear,” he said. “Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Colonel Tad Sorelu, and this is my ship.”

“You let us in here.”

“I did.”

Anna flinched when she realized the implications; there was really only one reason for all this. “Because you wanted us to find the vegetables, the farming equipment,” she said. “There never were any weapons.”

“Got it in one, my dear.”

Craning her neck to stare up at him, Anna narrowed her eyes. “The intelligence we received,” she said in a rasping voice. “The reports of an arms race here on the Fringe? It was all made up.”

Colonel Tad Sorelu let his head hang and then scraped a knuckle across his brow. “I can't speak to that,” he admitted. “But it would appear so. Several of our cargo ships have been attacked by people who have displayed abilities similar to your own.”

Anna slipped her hands into her pockets and turned away from him, pacing through the aisle with her head down. How much should she reveal? These situations called for a certain amount of discretion, but Anna was never the sort of girl who went in for all that cloak and dagger crap. Straight up and to the point: that was her way. “We've encountered people like that,” she said. “Grecken Slade and those who work for him have developed a kind of corrupted Nassai that grants anyone access to the powers of a Justice Keeper with none of the restrictions a normal Nassai would impose.”

“And you failed to share this information with us?”

“Until recently, secrecy was necessary.”

The man just nodded as if he accepted that without question. Who knows? Maybe he did; military officers put more faith in the chain of command than Keepers did, and it wasn't as if Leyria and Antaur were the best of friends. Sharing secrets was something you did with your allies.

Anna stopped in her tracks, then turned and looked over her shoulder, a thin lock of white hair falling over one eye. “Something I don't understand,” she said. “Why are you so willing to trust us?”

The colonel smiled down at himself, trembling as he chuckled softly. “Unlike some of my people,” he began, “I do not distrust Justice Keepers. I know what you stand for. I saw how you conducted yourselves on this mission.”

He looked up to fix a steely gaze upon her and then nodded his approval. “You all went to great lengths to avoid the use of lethal force,” he went on. “My security officers are still alive because of you.”

“Keepers revere life.”

“I know.” The man let out a soft sigh, leaning his shoulder against one of the crates. “If only your telepath friend were as magnanimous.”

Instantly, Anna felt her stomach tie itself in knots. She knew leaving Keli alone with those other telepaths was a bad idea. The woman couldn't be trusted! Anna wouldn't have brought her along for this mission except that Keli had insisted that they would come up against rival telepaths, and Larani had made it clear that leaving her behind was simply not an option. “What did she do?”

“She killed two of our telepaths,” Sorelu answered.

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be,” the colonel said a little too quickly. “They weren't members of my crew. To be honest, Carissa often acted as if the ship existed to serve her every whim, and she was far too willing to treat my people as expendable.

“That is the way with telepaths, my dear; they aren't like you. They didn't earn their power through training, discipline and strength of character the way you did; every single telepath was born with his fantastic abilities. It makes many of them arrogant.”

That was a little more prejudiced than Anna would have liked; Raynar hadn't been like that, and she was willing to bet that the arrogance Sorelu saw in telepaths had little if anything to do with their ability to read minds; rather, the culprit was a culture that prized “genetic superiority” – whatever that meant – and treated telepaths as some kind of super-species. The whole idea was repellent to her, but she wasn't willing to say as much when whatever ceasefire they currently enjoyed might fall apart with one ill-timed comment. She was impulsive, not stupid.

“Now, you could get back in your pod,” Sorelu said. The man was smiling down at his own feet. “I'll order my people to avoid shooting it down, but I would imagine you'd rather go home by SlipGate.”

“You'd let us do that?”

“I'll do you one better,” the Colonel replied. “I'm willing to let you search the ship, every cargo hold, every storage locker. I'm sure you'll find that there are no weapons here beyond those that would be considered standard compliment for a war ship of this size.”

Anna froze, considering the man's offer. Was it really that simple? Search the ship, confirm that there were no weapons and be on their merry way? If this was a trap, then it was a needlessly elaborate one. Sorelu could just flood this room with more of his security officers; even Keepers would be overwhelmed at some point. “Why?” she asked.

“Isn't it obvious?” Sorelu replied. “People posing as Justice Keepers are attacking Antauran ships; you're getting reports about non-existent weapons smugglers out here on the Fringe, reports that implicate my people. Someone wants us to fight with one another, and I, for one, would like to know why.”

PART I