Death Drop (78 page)

“So, what,” Dezmara said, trying to understand, “he was brought back to life or something?”

“It might seem that way to you,” Kaelth said, “but to us, it’s just another step in the life we’re given. It’s part of our way.” Dezmara shook her head in wonder, and she could see by the look on Simon’s face that she wasn’t alone.

“There’s much you don’t understand about us,” Tyrobus said, “and that’s to be expected; our species is as unfamiliar to you as you are to us, and there is time. You’re still weak, and it will take some while yet before you feel whole again.”

“There’s something I don’t understand—well, actually there’s a lot I don’t get right now—but what I’m wondering, at the moment, is how you guys found us. I mean, in all of space, how did you guys know to come to… Geezus, I don’t even know where the hell we were with those bastards!” Dezmara said.

“It was a Durax outpost,” Tyrobus said, “called Aktuug.”

“Oh,” Simon said, “I’ve heard this part of the tale, an’ that reminds me. If I don’t tell someone you’re awake, he might start dislikin’ me all over again! Prepare to be a little more freaked out, luv!” Simon skirted around Kaelth. He was still leery about the warrior’s mysterious resurrection, and his head turned so he could continue to stare at the Mewlatai as he passed. Simon slid the wall open, put his thumb and forefinger between his teeth, and whistled loudly. A streak of gray and black darted through the opening and nearly bowled Simon over. “Oi! Whatchit, mate!”

“Doj!” Dezmara shouted.

Diodojo sped under Kaelth’s legs and nuzzled his face into the side of Dezmara’s neck and then leaned up against her shoulder with his flank. Dezmara reached out and caught herself to prevent being toppled over onto her side by Diodojo’s usual rough greeting, then she laughed. “Careful, Doj! I’m not quite as strong as you remember!” She stopped him as he turned to make another pass with his side, grabbing his face just under his ears and massaging with her fingers. He squinted his eyes happily and let out a rumbling purr. “Where was he? How’d you find him?”

“He told us where he was,” Tyrobus said.

“So he can
talk
to you somehow? Is it like a Mewlatai thing or something?” she said.

“It’s certainly
something
,” Tyrobus said. There was confusion in his voice, but before she could press him, he went on. “Diodojo is Maituk. They’re our ancestors. The earliest of our kind could still speak to the Maituk”

“So the little buggas could speak once upon a time,” Simon interrupted.

“Not exactly,” Kaelth said.

“The Mewlatai and the Maituk shared a mental link; they could speak to each other with their minds.”

“Great,” Simon said to no one in particular. “More things what can do odd tricks with their thinkers!”

“As the aeons passed,” Tyrobus picked up where Kaelth left off, “our evolution took us further away from the Maituk and the link weakened. Fewer Mewlatai were born with the ability to talk to our ancestors, and they could only pick up bits and pieces when the Maituk were expressing strong emotion. Kaelth has the gift, and Diodojo led him to Clara 591.”

“Okay,” Dezmara said, “that explains how you found Doj. Now, how’d you track me and Simon down?”

“Here it comes!” Simon said. Dezmara shot him an irritated glance, and he swallowed hard and hung his head like a scolded child.

“That’s what is most interesting to us,” Tyrobus said with an air of wonder. “He led us to you as well.” Dezmara looked at the big man for a moment without understanding what his words meant. “He’s told Kaelth—albeit in a crude fashion—that he shares a connection with you. His leading us right to you at the Durax outpost is proof that it’s true.”

“That’s…that’s…unbelievable,” Dezmara stammered.

“That’s not the half of it,” Tyrobus said. “Kaelth’s come to understand that, at sometime in your past, you and Diodojo have shared the strongest of links. The kind only experienced by our greatest ancestors in the earliest dawning of our kind—but it has somehow become harder to get through to you.” Tyrobus was looking at her with interest that bordered on awe, and it made her a little uncomfortable that one of the most magnificent creatures she’d ever laid eyes on was staring at her like she was something rather special.

“The voice!”
Dezmara realized.
“The one that told you to wake up from cryo eight years ago!
The one that told you your name! The one that told you you were Human!”
At that moment, she knew Diodojo knew about her past.

“Did he say why the link was breaking? Or if we can do anything to get it back?!” She tried not to sound frantic at being so close to understanding who she was, but she wasn’t doing a very good job.

“I’m sorry,” Kaelth said, “but our link is mostly images and an occasional word or two. It’s not like having a detailed conversation.”

“I thank you, Dezmara,” Tyrobus said, “for bringing Diodojo back to the House of Daelekon…or to me, anyway.”

“You know each other?” Dezmara said.

“He is a direct forefather of the Daelekon line and has defended our family temple for many millennia.”

“Millennia?” said Simon.

“The Maituk do not have houses like we do, but they live long lives.”

“You can’t link with him in any way,” Dezmara said, hoping for another means to access her past, “being a direct descendant and all?”

“The Daelekon link has not been alive in my family for several hundred generations,” Tyrobus said solemnly. He hung his noble head, and Dezmara felt guilty for pushing her agenda.

At that moment someone she thought she should certainly recognize slid the wall to the side and stepped through the opening. Dezmara looked at him for a moment, studying him with a strained, puzzled look, and then she remembered. It was the guy the Durax soldier had tossed into her cell back in that horrible place. He was as small as she remembered, and he was wearing robe-like garments in the same fashion as Tyrobus and Kaelth. He stepped inside, and as he lifted his tiny hand at her in salutation, Dezmara remembered something awful about their last encounter.
“The weapon!”
she thought.

“Here’s the help I mentioned earlier,” Tyrobus said.

The little man wobbled awkwardly over to Dezmara and touched her forehead with the back of his hand. “How do you feel?” he said.

“Uh, a little confused,” she said.

“Well, that’s understandable. How about pain? Any pain?”

“My head hurts a little.”

“Follow my finger with your eyes, please,” he said.

“Can you wiggle your toes and fingers for me?” Dezmara did as instructed. “Good. I don’t have the equipment to make any scans of your brain, but I think you should be good as new in another month or so.”

“You’re a doctor?” Dezmara said.

“Yes,” the little man said. “And by the way, that’s a pretty clean application of Haleonex on your ribs.”

“Oh, thanks. Picked that up from a Dr. Weiloonyu after a little misunderstanding with a guy named Rilek and a Dissension soldier.”

“The Dissension!” he said with excitement. “And Rilek?!”

“That’s right,” Dezmara said, not quite understanding what the fuss was all about.

“When?! What Dissension soldiers? Did you get any names?!”

“Um, yeah. Major Otto Von Holt and a big guy…what was his name…Meru, M-M-Melu”

“Malo!” he shouted with glee.

“You know them then?”

“My dear, I know Otto and Malo very well. I was the Dissension’s chief medical officer, you see!”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Er—of course—I apologize. You can call me Doctor Blink or, um, just Blink!”

“Pleasure to meet you, Doc,” Dezmara said.

“Yes, yes! The feeling’s mutual, my dear. Now, how were Otto and Malo, hmm? Were there any other Dissenters with them?”

“The major was ship-shape,” Dezmara said, feeling a little like she was in the Dissension Army herself and commanded to give report, “but Malo wasn’t doing so well. He was unconscious in the infirmary when I saw him.”

“Oh, no! Did the doctor say what the diagnosis was?”

“No, I didn’t ask a lot of questions,” Dezmara said, a little saddened by the genuine concern in Blink’s voice. “As for other Dissenters, there was someone being kept in isolation—head injury or something—but I never really caught his name.”

“Oh, my!” Blink said as he looked down at the floor. “I wonder who that could have been?”

“Doctor,” Dezmara interrupted as politely as possible, “not that my running into your friends isn’t interesting and all, but, if you don’t mind me asking, what in the hell were you doing on that Durax outpost?” Blink’s face slackened with fear at the mention of his captivity. “The last time you and I talked, you were ranting about ‘the weapon’ and that ‘the weapon was complete’ and we were all going to die.” Blink sat stone still as he resisted the journey his mind was trying to take into his not-so-distant and mortifying past. “Doctor?”

“I was kidnapped from our base of operations—a converted mine—on Siriti 9. I don’t know how. I think someone may have injected me with a sedative in my sleep, because when I woke up, I was in the very cell where we last saw each other. The Durax tortured my mind for a while, just so I would know they meant business, and then they ordered me to design a weapon.”

“I didn’t think the Durax had much use for guns or ships or machines because of their mind powers,” Dezmara said. Simon shivered when he thought of the gruesome battle he had witnessed with the Irongores, and he envied Dezmara for being unconscious when it happened.

“That’s mostly true, my dear, but I’m not talking about bullets or blades. I’m talking about a biological weapon.”

“What, like a virus or something?”

“Yes, a viral infection is part of it, but it’s only the catalyst—the trigger, if you will—on the most destructive weapon ever designed.” He shook his head from side to side and fought back the tears that were beginning to gather in his small, dark eyes. “I was instructed to engineer a substance with similar qualities to the Serum, but, instead of allowing the mind of the infected person to block out the powers of the Durax, it has exactly the opposite effect!” Blink’s voice was rising in anger for what he had done, and Dezmara tried her best to keep him calm.

“It’s okay, doc,” she said calmly. “Can you tell me what that means exactly?”

“The Durax need to be within reasonable distance of their victims, depending on their level of power. As far as we know, only Helekoth has been able to accomplish a mind spike at any significant separation and that only on his own kind. Neural activity doesn’t cease, even when we are at rest or unconscious. The Durax break into a mind by traveling down the pathways of thoughts radiating from it, and these signals weaken over distance. The virus I designed boosts the signal—in a manner of speaking—and makes a mind controllable, theoretically, from one end of the known universe to the other. They call it the bio-amplifier.”

“So the Durax are going to infect the universe with their mind powers, so what? I mean, not that that isn’t bad enough. What I’m saying is, they’re doing that already, aren’t they? This just lets them do it from farther away, right?”

“I wish that was all,” Blink said in a dark tone Dezmara didn’t think someone of his obvious academic nature could possess. “The amplifier isn’t the weapon—the race of creatures they intend to infect with the virus is. You heard their awful screams back on the outpost.”

“What are they?” Dezmara said, feeling a small tinge of the creeps tickle her neck as she remembered the cries she had heard just before Simon showed up and sprung her from her fleshy, putrid smelling prison.

“Imagine a race of creatures with physical abilities to rival our friends here,” Blink said as he looked over at Tyrobus, “and the ability to reproduce a full-grown adult almost spontaneously.

“Helekoth is building an endless army of the most powerful soldiers the universe has ever known, and they will obey his every depraved, sinister command without question. They are called the Auchenor!”

“Whew!” Dezmara said. She was at a loss for words and she stared at the floor until she found some. “How long did you work on this thing?”

“Almost two years,” Blink said.

“Two years? Is that a long time?”

“Well, if you ask the Durax, two months was too long, but this sort of thing has never been done before—as far as I know—and I was ordered to design it in phases so it could be tested.”

“Tested? On who?”

“I’m not sure. I was never allowed to witness the tests as they were taking place, and I’m quite thankful for that. I only received a go-ahead for the next phase if the current one was successful.”

“What were the phases?” Dezmara didn’t know why this was so important, but her mouth was spitting out questions like she’d lost control of it.

“Phase one was mind amplification: being able to hear a complex organism that wasn’t another Durax from a distance. I would assume from an entirely different planet. Phase two was direct control of that organism’s actions, and phase three…”

“Phase three? Doc? What was phase three?” Blink was fighting back his guilt demons again.

“Contagion,” he said.

“Hmmm.” Dezmara’s head was still pounding from being spiked by the generals, and she made big circles with the tips of her fingers on her temples. There was something familiar about all this that twirled in her mind like pieces of a puzzle that kept slipping from her grasp as she tried to set them down and align their edges.

“Well, it sounds like we’ll all be slaves for the Durax by lunch tomorrow!” Simon said in his casually pessimistic way.

“How’d the Durax get the Serum you used to build the virus in the first place?”

“They didn’t get the Serum,” Tyrobus offered.

“An’ just how do you know that, mate?”

“Because I make the Serum and deal directly with the Dissension colonel in charge of distributing it!” Tyrobus’ voice trembled with might as his muscular torso swelled, and Simon took several steps backwards.

“Not only that,” Blink said to deflect the rising tension in the room, “but there’s the fact that I used pure samples of Mewlatai DNA to manufacture the virus.”