‘Will you please accompany us, ladies?’ the soldier said in a softer tone, motioning the two women to join them in the corridor. ‘How many others are on board?’
Lucian did a quick head count to discount Taren. ‘Two,’ he replied, forgetting all about Kalayna.
‘My count indicates that there should be three more,’ the soldier brusquely stated. ‘Let’s go find them, shall we?’
They rounded up Ringbalin from Module C, who objected profusely to being dragged from his greenhouse. ‘Is this going to take long? I’ve got years’ worth of research invested in that—Captain,’ he appealed when he spotted Lucian in the crowd. ‘Could you please explain to these gentlemen that I cannot leave Module C unattended.’
The captain raised both brows in apology. ‘I am not the authority here any more.’
‘Well, who is in charge?’ he demanded to know.
‘I am,’ stated a mature, nuggetty man, who introduced himself as Special Agent Nikkos.
‘Could I please have a quiet word? It won’t take a second.’
Lucian observed Ringbalin lead the burly officer aside and place an arm about the solder’s shoulder in a brotherly fashion. They spoke quietly for a short time.
The soldier chuckled, and then chuckled again as they reached an agreement. Nikkos turned back to address his men. ‘He’s just the gardener. Leave him with his plants,’ and then chuckled again as he looked at Ringbalin.
Kassa, Dr Portus and Lucian were amazed, but Zeven suspected that Ringbalin had used his Power to influence the soldier’s decisionmaking. Zeven wondered why Ringbalin couldn’t get them all off the hook. He couldn’t use his own Power, save for exposing himself. And Ringbalin’s Power was easier to conceal.
‘Here are the other two.’ A group of soldiers reported to their commander with Aurora and Kalayna.
‘Which one of you is Aurora DeCadie?’ Nikkos demanded, and Aurora raised a finger. He turned to the other woman. ‘So you are Dr Taren Lennox?’
Kalayna was enjoying the adventure and if she joined the head count then surely one of the crew would escape this round-up. ‘Sure, that’s me.’
Nikkos was surprised at how young and flippant she was.
Lucian, although it meant bringing Taren’s absence to light, couldn’t allow this young girl to be dragged along. ‘She is not Taren Lennox,’ he objected.
Nikkos turned and looked at Lucian. ‘You wouldn’t be trying to protect her because you are dating her, would you, professor?’
Kalayna was wide-eyed and amused at this exchange.
‘She is rather a lush little thing,’ the soldier observed, making both Lucian and Kalayna uncomfortable.
‘She’s young enough to be my great-granddaughter,’ Lucian said in desperation, trying to make the soldier see reason.
‘Aren’t you the lucky one then, eh?’ Nikkos turned back to Kalayna. ‘You are under arrest for the suspected murder of Amie Gervaise—’
‘Excuse me?’ She objected to being manhandled as the soldiers took her into custody. ‘Hey, no way. This joke has gone far enough. I’m not the girl you are looking for.’
‘She isn’t,’ shouted Aurora, now wishing that she had made her new lover go home.
‘I’m going to let the inquest sort it out,’ Nikkos advised them all, ‘so, everyone, bar the greenie, move.’
Lucian, although very curious as to how Ringbalin had got himself exempted, was also very grateful. ‘Keep an eye on things,’ he advised the botanist, before a soldier encouraged him to get moving by means of a shove.
AMIE’s crew were transported to the interrogation centre in Kotan-Bathaar, where they were split up and led into individual interrogation rooms to be drilled about their movements prior to the Maladaan incident. The rooms were mirrored on all walls and were an odd shape. They were each one-sixth of a hexagon, cut short at the narrow end by a mirrored wall—the door was located in the wall at the opposing and wider end of the room.
The master control room for the interrogation complex lay at the heart of the hexagon and it was from here that Jabez Anselm observed the interrogations.
He had sent a team back to AMIE to retrieve the ‘gardener’ and had given them strict instructions not to come into physical contact with him.
‘Get in touch with the Task Force on their way back to AMIE,’ Anselm said as he observed one of the interrogations. ‘This is not Dr Lennox. Tell them to find Taren Lennox. And release this girl. She is no one of consequence.’
Anselm moved to the next window, where Aurora was being questioned. ‘This one is as innocent as she looks.’ He kept moving and stopped at Kassa’s window. ‘However, this one is a seasoned telepath.’
‘How can you tell?’ his aide queried with interest.
‘She cannot prevent her eyes from wandering our way,’ Anselm pointed out. Inside the interrogation room, Kassa immediately looked away from the mirror and back to the man interviewing her. ‘Even though she cannot see us, she knows we’re here. Same goes for this fellow…’ Anselm moved on to Leal, who was blatantly staring past the agent interrogating him into the mirror behind which Anselm and his associates stood.
‘No mistake there,’ replied his aide.
Anselm moved on and stopped to observe Lucian Gervaise.
‘The dear professor is very circumspect indeed and that alone tells us that he probably doesn’t possess any true Power, nor pose any real threat.’
‘The perfect scapegoat then,’ his aide concluded, punching notes into his memo-pod.
‘Now, our hero, Mr Gudrun, is a very different kettle of fish. I don’t know what he does, but he sure does something! From his heroic little display in the Maladaan system, my guess would be PK or at least TK. He could be well worth recruiting at some point.’
Back where he started, Anselm noticed that the agent interrogating their impostor was getting a little intimate with the female subject, much to her vehement protest.
‘Should I call him off?’ the aide proffered.
‘No,’ Anselm smiled. ‘Let’s see what our hero, Mr Gudrun, is really made of. Link the audio from interrogation room one into Gudrun’s room.’
The command was carried out at once, but something went awry with the patch and the audio from interrogation room one was piped into all the interrogation rooms.
‘Get your hands off me, you pig!’ Kalayna was heard to roar.
‘Or you’ll what?’ the agent jeered nastily. ‘I just got word from my superiors that you’re not the girl they’re looking for. You’re nobody, sweet cheeks—’
‘Ah,’ Kalayna shrieked, repulsed, and the sounds of a terrible struggle ensued.
Anselm, although not impressed that their experiment was being broadcast to everyone, kept his focus concentrated on Zeven Gudrun. True to his hero form, the pilot jumped up at the sound of a damsel in distress.
‘Kalayna?’ He looked at his interrogator in horror. ‘Where is that audio coming from?’ He raised the agent from the chair by the man’s shirtfront.
‘I don’t know…next door?’ He took a guess when Zeven stared him down with daggers in his eyes.
‘Kalayna?’ he called again, releasing the agent.
Anselm gave the nod to his aide to have them patch the audio in Zeven’s room through to Kalayna’s.
‘Kalayna, are you in there?’ he yelled, thumping against the mirrored wall.
‘Zeven!’ The way she cried out his name let him know that he was her final hope in a very desperate situation.
He began kicking at the wall in an attempt to smash through it.
‘Hey, you can’t do that.’ The agent moved towards Zeven, but was deflected with great force into the opposing wall.
Zeven didn’t notice. He hadn’t flinched from his assault on the wall. ‘Ah, fuck this,’ he muttered angrily, and backing up to the other side of the room, he got really determined.
‘Starman, please…help!’
I’m going through, he told himself as he charged the solid b
arrier and passed right through the mirror wall into the room where Kalayna was being assaulted.
When it registered in Zeven’s brain that he’d passed right through a solid wall, he realised he’d exposed his Power and now that it was out in the open, there was no point holding back.
Zeven grabbed the agent from on top of Kalayna and smashed him in the face several times before casting him into the mirror, behind which Anselm flinched and then watched as his unconscious agent slid down the wall.
Kalayna was crumpled in a corner, trying to straighten her clothes, and Zeven noted her trembling despite a brave face.
‘Need a hug?’ He held out a hand, which, after a moment’s hesitation, she took and launched herself at the pilot and held him tight. ‘It’s okay. It’s over.’
‘Thank you, thank you. I was just about to kick his butt,’ she said, wiping her tears and finding refuge in humour, ‘but you saved me the trouble.’ She looked about to see where Zeven had entered. She moved to the door and realised it was still locked. ‘How did you get in here, Starman?’
‘A very good question,’ Anselm commented through the intercom. At his order, all the walls between the interrogation rooms vanished and the crew were reunited under the watchful eyes of their captors.
Leal made haste to join Kassa, and Aurora overpowered Kalayna with a hug. ‘Now we’re more than even,’ Rory told Zeven with sincere appreciation, and quietly took Kalayna aside to comfort her.
Zeven walked over to join the captain, who was proud of his pilot’s heroism, but sorry for him too. ‘That was professional suicide, you realise?’
Zeven shrugged off what he had thought would be his most devastating moment. ‘What’s life without a few challenges, hey?’
One of the exterior doors opened and President Anselm entered, counting off their illegal crew on his fingers. ‘Two telepaths, a PK specialist—’
‘I wouldn’t say specialist,’ Starman stated in his own defence.
‘Two missing scientists—’ Anselm attempted to continue.
‘Two?’ Lucian frowned.
‘Taren Lennox and Eleazar Kestler,’ he replied.
‘But Eleazar Kestler’s pod misfired after it landed on Maladaan?’ Lucian said.
‘Right after a canister of mysterious gas was unloaded from the pod that was launched from your vessel,’ Anselm accused Lucian, ‘and that unquarantined canister is now suspected of being the cause of the entire planet’s disappearance!’
‘How could you know that?’ Lucian flung back without admitting to anything, at the same time realising that Swithin had probably been the source.
‘It doesn’t matter how I know. All that matters is that I have enough dirt on your project to have your vessel repossessed and your key crew incarcerated for life!’ Anselm made his position perfectly clear. ‘Now…I don’t want that. I can make this entire inquest nightmare disappear. Sermetica will even fund your project for the next ten years. All you have to do is tell me where Taren Lennox is hiding.’
One of the exterior doors opened and Ringbalin was escorted into the room at gunpoint.
‘Well, if it isn’t the suggestive sympathetic,’ Anselm announced upon his entry.
‘Sympathetic?’ Kassa had never heard this term used in such a context before. ‘Do you mean empathetic?’
‘No. An empath feels the emotions of others. This fellow influences the emotions of others, making him something of an emotional enchanter, actually.’
‘Where is Dr Portus?’ Ringbalin asked, and it was only then that the rest of the crew realised she was absent.
‘Dr Portus is a Phemorian spy and is to be extradited to Sermetica for trial and sentencing.’
‘What!’ Ringbalin nearly jumped out of his skin and would have taken a flying leap at the president if Zeven and the captain had not restrained him.
‘Dr Portus is not a spy, she is a serious scientist!’ Lucian objected.
Anselm smiled. ‘That’s what you thought about your wife.’
Now it was Ringbalin and Zeven holding the captain back. ‘Taren Lennox did not kill my wife,’ Lucian barked.
‘I know that, you know that, but nobody else knows or cares,’ Anselm taunted. ‘It’s just a means to an end.’
‘What do you want with Taren?’ Zeven was beginning to get riled himself.
‘Sedate him, the sympathetic and the telepaths,’ Anselm ordered one of his agents, pointing to Zeven, Ringbalin, Kassa and Leal, who dropped to the floor as soon as the agent fired his darts in quick succession.
‘Leal is a telepath?’ was the stunned conclusion Lucian reached.
‘You really don’t know your crew very well, professor,’ Anselm replied. ‘You know even less about your lover.’
Lucian’s eyes narrowed in defiance, but the chairman appeared very confident.
‘I can state that with certainty because I know more about Taren Lennox than even the good doctor knows about herself, for I am the guardian of her memories.’
‘You run the MSS?’ Lucian asked.
Anselm shied away from the accusation. ‘I advise many agencies. Therefore, I know a great many things.’
‘But not the whereabouts of Taren Lennox?’ Lucian challenged.
Anselm smiled in a determined manner, then strolled over to where the two young girls were huddled together. ‘But I know that you know where Dr Lennox is…’
Aurora flinched slightly as Anselm toyed with one of her short golden locks.
‘…and I am fairly confident that you will tell me where to find her.’
CHAPTER 15
DISCLOSURE
Voices brought Taren back to the land of the living. She recognised one voice as belonging to Lucian—he was asking Kassa if the banishing stone might have had something to do with Taren’s current altered state of being?
‘She could be having some sort of flashback to her recent transdimensional experience,’ Kassa said.
Taren gasped as she realised that she had heard this conversation before, and sat bolt upright.
‘Taren!’ Kassa recovered from the shock and moved to comfort her patient as Lucian’s communicator alerted him to a call.
‘Damn it.’ Upon viewing the screen he decided the call was urgent enough to take. ‘Hello…what do you want?’ Lucian moved into the next room.
‘Everything is fine,’ Kassa offered Taren a drink. ‘You just tranced out on—’
‘No.’ Taren was running over the details of what she’d perceived during her trance state. ‘Everything is not okay,’ she stressed. ‘That’s Swithin talking to Lucian on the phone right now, warning him that the MSS still exists and plans to make AMIE the scapegoat for Maladaan’s disappearance. The MSS will expose all those with the Powers amongst our crew, and attempt to pin Amie Gervaise’s death on me!’
Kassa was mortified. Under normal circumstances she would assume her patient had lost her tiny little mind, but not this patient.
Lucian returned to the room appearing a little upset.
‘Who was that on the phone?’ Kassa inquired, to put Taren’s claim to the test.
‘No one of importance,’ he said, wanting to quell his rising panic.
‘It was Swithin, warning you that the USS and MSS are coming for AMIE,’ Taren told him and Lucian went white with shock. ‘Believe it or not, he is telling the truth and we have about two hours to escape custody.’
‘That’s impossible…we’re too big, too slow!’ Lucian baulked at the task.
‘Not with our crew,’ Taren smiled, having being made aware of several others in their midst who also wielded a Power.
‘And where shall we go?’ Lucian queried, and when Taren smiled he realised the solution and they both replied, ‘Phemoria’.
Taren gave a nervous laugh. ‘Now I am seeking political asylum.’
Leal and Zeven were immediately recalled to AMIE. All the others who would be adversely affected by the events Taren had foreseen were already on board their craft. None of AMIE’s
other staff were intimately involved in this debacle and would be better off finding new lives on Frujia. Aurora was the only crew member Lucian was undecided about. He knew she would be hurt he if didn’t at least tell her they were going. But Aurora was not really in any trouble and Lucian had no desire to lead her into any. In the end, he decided to call her, but was diverted to her message bank, where he bade her farewell.
Once Leal and Zeven arrived, Lucian, Kassa, Ayliscia and Ringbalin joined them in the cafeteria to hear Taren’s concerns.
‘I have had a vision of our future,’ she began a little awkwardly, ‘and in that vision many secrets about the people in this room were made known to me.’
Everyone present looked uncomfortable.
Taren went on to outline the intention of the USS and MSS to frame AMIE. ‘Everyone here will be arrested, exposed for who they really are, AMIE will be repossessed by the MSS and I am to be charged with the murder of Amie Gervaise.’
Her audience’s discomfort snowballed to disbelief!
Zeven whistled as he considered his own situation. ‘Hero of the USS one day, intergalactic terrorist the next.’
‘That’s politics for you,’ Kassa sympathised with a grin.
‘I believe I have a plan to escape the clutches of the inquest. Phemoria has already offered me sanctuary. But first we must get AMIE to Phemoria and in order to accomplish this, most of us would have to come clean about our hidden resources, so that we can work together and avert this disaster. So I guess my question to you all is this: Is there anyone here who strongly objects to being exposed at this time?’
Everyone present had a long hard think about this, and it was only Ringbalin who shyly lifted a finger.
‘Would you mind if I just have a quiet word with Dr Portus?’ he requested. Dr Portus was intrigued and Zeven frustrated.
‘In the name of the universe, Balin, haven’t you told her yet?’ the pilot grumbled.
‘There’re been a few interruptions!’ Ringbalin retorted as he walked out ahead of Dr Portus, who joined him out of sight of the others in the corridor.