Dazed and in pain, he tried to fight his shock. What was happening? “I… I’ll do my best.”
The other two guards swayed, then turned with a singular focus toward Osira’h and Reyn in the anteroom. Reyn grabbed Osira’h’s arm and drew her behind the meager shelter of the small table.
Yelling, Muree’n threw herself at the two guards, but the nearer one backhanded her with incredible strength. Her reflexes jerked her head backward, and she barely avoided a blow that would have snapped her neck, but struck her shoulder instead. She crashed hard onto the floor and skidded against the wall with a cry more of indignation than of pain.
The two possessed guards lunged toward Osira’h and Reyn again, obviously intending to kill them. But Osira’h drew herself up and seemed to armor herself with her own strength and telepathy. Her eyes were wide, pearlescent, and she stared at the guards with tangible force. Her jaw clenched, her teeth ground together, and she forced words between them. “I have brought hydrogues and faeros to their knees—I can stop you!”
One of the two guards reeled away, as if derailed, but the other stood anchored, pressing himself forward as if against a hurricane. He inched closer, raising his katana. Osira’h strained, until the blood vessels stood out on her temples, on her neck.
With a wordless cry, Reyn shot forward, waist bent, head low, and rammed the guard at waist level, knocking him backward. The kithman clattered to the floor, his weapon skimming aside. The guard flailed, as if he couldn’t control his muscles. Reyn staggered, caught his balance again.
Inside the vault, the other possessed rememberers were sluggish and no match for Yazra’h when she dove among them. In moments she was spattered with blood.
Panting, Anton wondered if he had broken a rib or two when the rememberer hurled him against the wall. He’d never broken a rib before. Anton had heard about the inexplicable flashes of violence against Nira, but he couldn’t understand why any rememberer would destroy history!
Again, sounds of fighting came from the anteroom. “Go save them,” he told Yazra’h. “I’ll be safe here with Dyvo’sh.”
As if in a trance, Dyvo’sh bent over the body of the first dead guard. He looked stunned.
In the anteroom, Muree’n threw herself back at a possessed guard, snatching his katana from the floor and driving it into his chest. The long crystal blade snapped off in his sternum.
The remaining guard came to himself for a moment, fighting with an invisible force. His eyes flashed, and he held on to the staff of his katana as if wrestling with a demon. Directing an anguished gaze at Osira’h, Reyn, and Muree’n—all of whom he was supposed to protect—he righted the katana staff, pressed the butt end against the floor. In a brief moment of triumph, he launched himself forward—onto the katana blade, snapped the shaft, and collapsed to the ground.
Still breathing heavily and leaning against the vault wall, Anton turned to Dyvo’sh to ask if he had suggestions. But when his young assistant rose from the dead guard’s body, his eyes were blank, and he held the crystal dagger he had yanked from the armor. Dyvo’sh’s face was a placid mask, yet he raised the crystal dagger and slashed.
Anton dodged, felt a sharp pain in his back and side—indeed, he must have broken some ribs—and Dyvo’sh drove in again, trying to stab him. Anton deflected a blow from the dagger with a crystal document sheet, and the document shattered in his hand.
Yazra’h bounded back into the vault to protect Anton. She swung her bloody katana before he could yell for her to wait. He cried out in anguish as her razor-edged blade cleaved Dyvo’sh nearly in half, and his young assistant fell dead on the cluttered floor.
Anton was horrified and confused, unable to understand any of this. “You didn’t have to kill him! It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t in control.”
She stood over his assistant’s body, satisfied but not triumphant. “I know that, Rememberer Anton, but he was tainted. They were all tainted.”
Muree’n entered the vault to stand next to her. “We would never have been able to trust them again. They were vulnerable.” The girl looked exhausted as well. Her mane of hair was wet with splashed blood.
Reyn and Osira’h joined them, both covered with red spray as well. Osira’h said, “The Shana Rei must have invaded through the thism. They found these weak points, these people, and controlled them. Made them try to kill.”
Yazra’h faced Anton. She had always been haughty and overconfident, not affected by anything. He had never seen such a depth of emotion on her face as he saw now.
“Rememberer Anton, I cannot protect you anymore—not against threats like this. You must leave Ildira. Go with the King and Queen when they return to Theroc.” She cocked her head toward Osira’h and Reyn. “You too, Prince Reynald. You must all go.”
ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN
ORLI COVITZ
Orli had never felt such despair. After Tom Rom left her in the Proud Mary, she fumbled with the med kit and slapped a pad of coagulant gauze on the inside of her arm where he’d been so rough taking his blood and tissue samples.
Her mind was filled with recriminations. She never should have given him the chance to come near her. She knew that Tom Rom was a relentless extremist, and he had explained what he wanted from her. She should have taken the time to rig her ship for self-destruct when he’d first started to pursue her.
BO and the other clan Reeves compies in the derelict city had been so brave. DD would have been just as brave. The thought of sending a final message to Rlinda, of delivering all that valuable scientific data—those had just been excuses. Excuses! And now that madman was in possession of the deadly alien plague. She had clung to a last few days of life, and now that decision might cost billions of lives if the disease ever got loose.
She hauled herself to the cockpit, barely able to stay on her feet, and collapsed into the pilot chair. She stared across the shadowed crater and watched the lights on the other ship brighten as Tom Rom went back inside with his prize. The stardrive engines glowed, and with a graceful leap the ship lifted from the crater floor and rose away from the asteroid. It ducked over the foreshortened horizon and streaked off, dwindling until it became lost among the other stars.
Orli slumped back, sobbing. Tom Rom was gone. He had vials of the plague. What sort of twisted employer would take such extraordinary actions to obtain a deadly microorganism, if he or she had no intention of using it? A collector?
It was too late.
She heard the outer airlock door activate and the hatch slide aside. Instantly alert, she scrambled for her hand jazer… but Tom Rom had taken the weapon as well. Orli felt yet another degree of helplessness. But when the inner hatch opened, it was only DD stepping into the main compartment.
The compy looked scuffed and covered with grit from tumbling against the crater wall and then trudging across the loose crater floor. His polymer body was also smudged with soot and charred lubricant from his repair work on the Proud Mary.
She nearly collapsed with relief, and he seemed just as pleased to see her. “Orli, I am so glad that man didn’t kill you. I was concerned.”
“He didn’t need me dead because the plague is going to kill me in another few days. Maybe he left me alive because he knows there’s absolutely nothing I can do about him. Bastard!”
She lifted herself from the pilot chair and staggered over to the compy like a little girl seeking comfort. She needed DD like this more often than she wanted to remember, and he had always been there to soothe her. The last time she’d cried on his shoulder was when Matthew had told her he was leaving. Now, that seemed like such a trivial thing to cry about.