Elite: A Hunter novel (44 page)
Read Elite: A Hunter novel Online
Authors: Mercedes Lackey
“One other thing, Joy,” Uncle said, without looking up from his keyboard. “During the first attempt by the Othersiders to destroy a pylon, you recall when PsiCorps came riding in like the cavalry to save the day?”
I made a face. “I’m not likely to forget.”
“And you may recall that a great many of those Psimons collapsed before it was all over.”
I nodded. He swiveled one of his monitors to face me. “Not all of them recovered. This is what the dead ones looked like.”
I found myself staring at vid of a dead Psimon being collected by PsiCorps med techs. An apparently
ancient
dead Psimon, who looked almost exactly like the ones I had found in the storm sewers under the Hub. My jaw dropped, and Uncle swiveled his monitor back around. “And thanks to all the vid taken at the Barrier, we know, for a fact, that before they collapsed, those elderly Psimons were quite young and healthy Psimons. That’s why they could only field a quarter of their numbers the second time.”
“But what does that
mean
?” I asked, bewildered.
“Probably that Drift is exposing some, if not all, of her Psimons to some experimental procedure, which has unintended consequences, a procedure she doesn’t want the rest of us to know about.” Uncle shrugged. “The reason is obvious. Drift will stop at nothing to have PsiCorps supplant the Hunters as the primary guardians of Apex and the territories. I suspect that she intended to paint PsiCorps as the real saviors of Apex, and not the Hunters, but she assumed that the one attempt at breeching the Barrier was the only one there would be. And I don’t think she realized that what she’d done to her Psimons would be fatal in so high a percentage.”
I had very mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was begrudgingly grateful to PsiCorps because the appearance of the Psimons at the Barrier really
had
pulled our fat out of the fire at a point where we were seriously outgunned. And I could not in good conscience feel anything but horrible that it had cost so many of them their lives.
On the other hand—I was really,
really,
angry at Drift. First of all, that she’d done this to her own people; second, that she’d tried to pin the initial deaths on
me
; and third, that she hadn’t done the smart thing and worked with the Hunters on this. If she hadn’t thought of herself and her power games first and foremost, we’d probably have a lot fewer dead Psimons—
Uncle was watching my face closely and nodded as I looked up at him, making no effort to hide my anger. “Drift is a fool, but she’s a ruthless fool,” he said. “And she is not someone I care to turn my back on. My hope is that she’ll go hunting through the Psimons still left alive for whoever was working with Ace, if only to get some kind of advantage out of the information. I personally don’t believe she’ll find anything. But…”
“But?” I prompted him.
“It’s possible she’s playing an even deeper game than I thought,” Uncle admitted, looking very troubled indeed. Then he shook it off. “But it’s equally possible that she
will
find a renegade or at least the traces of one. Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof.” He got up and gestured for me to join him. “Now I have starved you long enough. Let’s go up to lunch.”
We passed Josh coming into the office just as we were leaving it. My heart felt like it was being squeezed by a giant hand, but I nodded to him in a cool but cordial fashion. He nodded back to me, though his eyes had a hurt look to them as he opened the door for us.
As I could have predicted, we were just about to order dessert when my Perscom went off. I looked at it and sighed. “Drakken at a coastal weather station,” I said apologetically. “I have to go.”
“There’s a helipad on the roof,” Uncle said immediately, doing something with
his
Perscom. “The elevator—”
But I was already running for the elevator, which opened at my approach and went up a floor instead of down. I emerged on the windy rooftop, and within five minutes, a chopper came in hot, with Hammer beckoning to me from its open door. I groaned a little as I ran for it, and took his hand so he could pull me in.
Playing bait again.
They’d brought my load-out with them, and as I kitted up and the chopper banked sharply to head toward the coast, I got a good long look at the side of the building that held Uncle’s office. You couldn’t
see
anything, of course, except for the blank wall. Nobody had the sort of glass-wall buildings anymore that they’d had before the Diseray. It was all armor plating, from first floor to last. Even the Sky Lounge didn’t have actual windows, just vid-screens repeating what cameras placed on the outside of the building saw. But I knew where his office was, and that only served to remind me that I was playing bait for more than just Drakken. In fact, I’d been playing bait from the moment I arrived here; just now, I was aware of the fact.
And I thought I might know what it was Uncle had thought of but had not said. If Abigail Drift was ruthless enough, it was entirely possible that “deep game” she was playing involved her—and the Folk. Because she’d had to have gotten this dangerous new technique of boosting the power of her Psimons from somewhere, and the Folk knew more about psionics than we did.
That, however, was above my pay grade. There were Drakken that needed slaying.
And a City, and Cits to defend.
And I am a Hunter.
MERCEDES LACKEY
is the
New York Times
best-selling American fantasy author behind the Heralds of Valdemar series, the Elemental Masters series, the Five Hundred Kingdoms series, and many more. She has published over one hundred novels in under twenty-five years.
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