Broken Worlds_Civil War Page 17

  This time Tanik didn’t need to push Cassandra back. She backed up all by herself, and he could hear Trista, Yuri, and Gatticus all doing the same thing. Calling them here for this behavioral test had been Gatticus’s idea. Tanik hoped it wasn’t about to get one of them killed. That would really mess up his plans.

  “We administered a treatment that was designed to eliminate an alien parasite in your blood,” Tanik explained. “It made you sick.”

  “I remember,” Queen Rassura growled, and her hands curled into fists.

  Tanik went on blithely. “The parasites made you sick with toxins that they released when they died. We believe that while they were alive, these parasites were influencing your behavior, making your species more aggressive and impulsive.”

  “You are mistaken,” Queen Rassura replied. “We would have noticed such changes in our behavior.”

  Tanik shook his head. “Not if the onset was gradual. The proof is in the fact that you are talking to me rather than attacking.”

  The Ghoul’s body tensed, and her legs bent. Here it comes... he thought. But then she appeared to relax, her eyes narrowed, and she gave an ugly, toothless smile. “You are trying to trick me. It will not work.”

  Tanik couldn’t believe it. “Yes, you are clearly too smart for that,” he said, and began backing away, forcing the others to leave the Cygnian’s cell.

  “Release me!” the Ghoul snapped in a throaty roar.

  “Soon,” Tanik replied, nodding. “We will take you home to your people as soon as this is all over.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “You will just have to trust us,” Tanik said.

  Queen Rassura narrowed her eyes at him once more, but still she made no effort to attack. They all managed to leave her cell and shut the door behind them without incident.

  “I think we have our answer,” Tanik said, turning to face the others in the corridor. Yuri and Trista nodded slowly, while Gatticus gave no reply. Tanik glanced at Cassandra. “This is proof that we can save your father.”

  She offered a trembling smile and wiped sudden tears from the corners of her eyes. “When do we leave?” she asked.

  “In two days. As soon as Gatticus has finished preparing enough nanites to infect all of the Revenants.”

  “I’m going to need all of the booster shots you have,” Gatticus said, looking to Yuri. “And access to the fleet’s manufacturing facilities to make more.”

  Yuri’s pointed black ears twitched, and he hissed with displeasure, but he gave in with a nod. “Very well.”

  “How are we going to get the virus into position to infect everyone?” Trista asked. “Orbital patrols will be searching inbound transports, and security at the inauguration is going to be on high alert.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Tanik explained. “Remember the patrols that Darius sent looking for his daughter? I’ll do the same thing again. It won’t be a problem.”

  “Why don’t you just use a portal to get us there?” Trista asked.

  “Because Darius already has one open, and I can’t open one big enough for a transport, so we’re going to have to go to Tarsus the conventional way.”

  “All right, let’s say it all works out just like you’re planning,” Trista said. “What happens after we’ve infected everyone and you’re the last Revenant standing? You really expect us to believe you’re just going to let us infect you and take away your powers too?”

  “She makes a good point,” Yuri said.

  Tanik favored each of them with a paper thin smile. “So what do you suggest?”

  “How about we infect you now?” Trista said. “You can be our next test subject. That will also tell us how it works on a Revenant, which we’re only guessing at right now.”

  “It will work,” Tanik replied, waving his hand to dismiss those concerns. “Regardless, you can’t afford to infect me yet. You’re going to need my help to smuggle the virus past security and orbital patrols.”

  “Well, isn’t that convenient,” Trista replied.

  “What if we infect him with a dormant version of the virus,” Gatticus suggested. All eyes turned to him.

  “How would that work?” Yuri asked.

  “Simple. I set a timer to activate the virus during the inauguration. We could also use that version to infect Darius prior to the event, just in case he doesn’t get infected with the others.”

  “Timing would be critical,” Tanik mused, while stroking his chin between his thumb and forefinger.

  “The event has been widely publicized,” Gatticus replied. “It won’t be hard to time the activation sequence to coincide with the ceremony.”

  Tanik nodded. “True. And you’re right, we can’t assume that Darius will be infected with the others. He might see the crowd reacting to the release of the virus and manage to escape before it reaches him.”

  “Great. It’s settled then,” Trista said. “Gatticus will infect you before we leave.”

  Tanik noticed that she was watching him carefully, trying to gauge his reaction. “Why not do it now?” he replied, smiling back at her. “Gatticus has the virus ready. All he has to do is set a timer. That shouldn’t take him more than a minute or two, right Gatticus?”

  “Less than that,” Gatticus confirmed.

  “Then let’s do it,” Tanik said.

  Trista’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, and her lips flattened into a dissatisfied line, but she relented with a sigh. “Okay, but we still have a lot of details to work out. So maybe the plan won’t fail because you’re planning to betray us, but it could still fail by sheer lack of planning.”

  “There’ll be plenty of time to work out the details while we’re en route to Tarsus,” Tanik replied.

  “But I won’t be there for that,” Yuri pointed out. “Where’s my role in all of this?”

  “Defeating the Revenants will create a power vacuum. We’ll need to set up a legitimate government as soon as possible to avoid chaos. That will be your job. We’ll arrange a rendezvous before we leave, and as soon as it’s safe, I’ll send for you.”

  Yuri nodded. “I will be waiting.”

  “Are there any other questions or concerns?” Tanik asked, his eyes flicking from face to face.

  “Just one,” Cassandra said. “How do we know the virus is safe?”

  “The girl makes a good point,” Yuri added. “Thanks to Queen Rassura, we know that it makes non-Revenants sick. How do we know we won’t be releasing a deadly pathogen that later goes on to kill billions?”

  Tanik turned to Gatticus. “Well?”

  “The virus won’t be able to spread from one host to another, and it’s not self-replicating, so it won’t be as dangerous as a biological pathogen. As an additional measure of security, I will be able to deactivate the virus with remote access codes.

  “Aha!” Trista said. “So what’s stopping Tanik from deactivating the virus to protect himself?”

  Tanik spread his hands in a placating gesture. “I don’t have the codes.”

  Trista frowned. “You expect us to believe that?”

  “He’s right. Only I know the codes,” Gatticus replied. “And I am immune to the Revenants’ mental influence, so there is no way for him to steal the codes from me.”

  “He could still coerce you,” Trista pointed out.

  Gatticus shook his head. “I would not allow it. If he tried, I would activate the virus prematurely, and neutralize him as a threat.”

  Trista still didn’t look satisfied.

  Tanik fixed her with an innocent look. “You see? There’s no reason for you not to trust me. Why don’t we all go to the med bay now? You can watch while Gatticus injects me with the virus.”

  “Maybe someone else should do it,” Trista replied. “Just in case you’ve found some way to get to him.”

  “My programming is impossible to alter,” Gatticus replied. “The Cygnians made sure of that.”

  “He’s right,” Yuri added. “We’ve tried re-programming E
xecutors before. It triggers a complete memory wipe and an SOS call to anyone close enough to hear.”

  “Well, how do we know he hasn’t found some other way to beat the virus? Maybe he’s been developing a vaccine or something.”

  “If you’re looking for reasons not to trust me, I’m sure you’ll find them,” Tanik replied. “But if I really am planning to keep my powers and betray you all, then the solution is simple. Have Gatticus deactivate the virus before it runs its course, and let Darius and his Revenants deal with me. It’ll be one against twenty thousand, and I’ll never stand a chance.” Tanik spread his hands in invitation. “Either way, you’re still holding all of the cards.”

  Trista still didn’t look convinced, but Tanik suspected that was a product of stubborn pride and an old habit of distrusting everyone but herself.

  After a protracted silence and a brief staring contest with him, she gave in with a huff and shook her head. “I suppose it will have to do. Let’s get down to the med bay and get this over with.” Trista turned and started down the corridor, heading for the nearest bank of elevators.

  “After you,” Tanik said, smiling politely as she breezed by him. Buddy pulled his cheeks open and stuck out his tongue in a childish gesture of contempt, but that only made Tanik’s smile stretch into a grin.

  Chapter 34

  Darius stood on the speaker’s podium before a crowd of tens of thousands of Revenants and ordinary citizens. The palace courtyard and surrounding streets were crowded to the point that not a single gap remained. Hovering camera drones buzzed in the air, zipping around above their heads. The inauguration ceremony was being recorded for subsequent distribution to news networks throughout the known galaxy. This was a moment that would go down in galactic history.

  Darius smiled and took a deep breath. As he did so, unintelligible whispers crowded in at the edges of his hearing. The sound gave him pause, and he hesitated. His eyes darted through the crowd searching for a threat. He recognized that sound. It was a warning from the Sprites, but what were they trying to warn him about? The crowd began murmuring amongst themselves, feet and clothes rustling as they waited for him to speak. Perhaps it was nothing. Just his imagination.

  “Welcome, everyone!” Darius said. “This day we come together with one heart and one mind to celebrate the end of the Cygnians’ rule over us. They are defeated, and they are never coming back!”

  The crowd roared and screamed in response, and Darius smiled winningly for the cameras. He waited for everyone to settle down, but the commotion showed no signs of stopping. If anything, the screaming was growing louder. A moment later, Darius saw why. The crowd was thinning out rapidly; people were dropping in waves.

  Darius stumbled back a step, his eyes darting to find a cause. He summoned a shield to protect himself, but there was no discernible threat anywhere. No sign of anything...

  Then he spotted the silvery clouds undulating through the crowd, glittering like sand in the sun. People fell wherever the clouds went. But not everyone was reacting the same way. Some collapsed in fits, while others ran away screaming, stampeding like wild animals, only to collapse a few seconds later. Someone had released a nano virus into the crowd.

  Darius turned and ran from those silvery clouds of death as they came drifting toward him. Just then, a blinding wave of agony stabbed through every fiber of Darius’s being. He sank to his knees with gritted teeth. A splitting headache began, and he pressed both of his hands to the sides of his head, wailing in agony. He couldn’t see through the tears streaming from his eyes, or hear through the ringing in his ears. In the next instant, every muscle in his body went into spasms, and he collapsed on his back, flopping around like a fish. The pain intensified, forcing raw unintelligible noises from his lips and making him chew through his own tongue.

  He tried to fight back by drawing on the ZPF, but he’d lost his connection to the zero-point field. Darkness swirled in, promising a release from the pain, and Darius welcomed it.

  * * *

  Darius awoke bathed in sweat. He sat up, shaking with rage and echoes of the agony from his dream. No, not a dream—a vision, he realized.

  Someone was going to release a nano virus at the inauguration ceremony. He’d have to call it off. Or change the venue and double down on security. Or... maybe he wouldn’t do any of that...

  Darius recalled his recent meeting with his governors. The Revenants were turning on each other and vying for power in a self-destructive spiral of backstabbing and treachery. It was only a matter of time before they turned on him, too. If someone was planning to release a nano virus at the inauguration, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

  Yes, having someone wipe out all of the Revenants for him would be a blessing. But who was that someone? Who would want to wipe them out? There was, of course, one obvious answer—Tanik Gurhain and the Keth. It would make sense if the virus was their doing, but whoever planned the attack they couldn’t know that the Sprites had warned him in advance. The ceremony was in three weeks. He had more than enough time to put precautions in place. Afterward, it should be a simple matter to identify the pathogen and develop a vaccine. In the worst case, he’d simple isolate Tarsus from the rest of the empire and turn it into a quarantine zone.

  The trick would be taking precautions in such a way that wouldn’t scare off his enemies or alert the other Revenants to the threat. Darius smiled. If everything went according to plan, after the inauguration he would be the last living Revenant in the galaxy.

  Chapter 35

  —NINETEEN DAYS LATER—

  Everything was ready. Trista was below decks, loading supplies and the cargo of nanites into her ship, the Harlequin. The others were either sleeping or out enjoying their last few hours of freedom aboard Yuri’s flagship before transferring to Trista’s transport for the last leg of the trip to Tarsus.

  That gave Tanik the perfect opportunity to handle some last minute business of his own. He was floating above the deck, meditating, with his arms and legs crossed and his eyes shut. He cast his mind out across the light years in search of his people. It wasn’t long before he found them on the desolate, gray world where he’d left them. Keeping that planet fixed firmly in his mind’s eye, he summoned a wormhole to reach it. A moment later he opened his eyes to see a shimmering sphere of light. It rapidly expanded and cleared to reveal a dusty gray expanse of dirt and pebbles leading up to a gleaming facility of boxy metal modules and interconnecting tunnels.

  Tanik uncrossed his legs and extended them to the deck. His mag boots clicked smartly as they yanked him down and pinned him in place. He mentally checked via his ESC to make sure the door to his quarters was locked before striding through the portal to reach the other side. Gravity added sudden weight to his bones, and a sharp pain erupted in the small of his back. His knees almost buckled in response.

  A frigid wind blew across the barren gray expanse where he stood. Tanik shivered and hurried to the front doors of the facility. Once there he used the vidcom to announce himself, while simultaneously announcing his presence through the ZPF.

  The doors swished open a few seconds later, revealing both Feyra and her father, Vartok. Feyra grinned and rushed out to greet him, throwing her arms around his neck and showering him with kisses.

  Vartok remained where he was, barring entry to the facility. “Have you succeeded in defeating the Revenants yet?”

  Tanik shook his head, and Feyra withdrew, looking suddenly crestfallen. “But you’re back, and it’s been so long. I just assumed...” she took a quick step back and looked to her father for his reaction.

  “Feyra is right. It has been far too long. We have waited patiently for your return, and I believe I made myself clear the last time we spoke. If you failed again, you would have no place among our people.”

  “I have not failed,” Tanik replied. “I have come to report my progress. I have finished developing the virus that will wipe out Darius and the other Revenants once and for all. I will release it at
the inauguration ceremony, and I have foreseen that it will succeed.”

  “Foresight does not guarantee success,” Vartok chided. “There are too many moving pieces to ever see the future with certainty.”

  “I am a master of seeing how those pieces fit together. You already have the proof of this. I used my Foresight to lure the Augur to his death, and I will use it again to lure Darius and the Revenants to theirs.”

  “Time will tell, but I fail to see why you would come here just to tell us that you are about to succeed. What is the purpose of that?”

  Tanik shook his head. “I came because I need your help. I am infected with the virus—”

  Feyra recoiled from him and ran back to her father’s side. Vartok flinched and scowled. “So you came here to infect us, too?” he demanded. “Have you lost all capacity for reason?”

  “The virus is dormant,” Tanik said. “It’s no threat to you or even to myself. Yet.”

  “I see. I thought you were supposed to develop a vaccine.”

  “And I will, in time, but for now I need the people around me to trust me. The easiest way to earn their trust is to make them think that they’re the ones in control. The virus inside me is set to activate itself automatically in just a few days. I can delay that timer by freezing myself in a cryo pod, but there’s an android who has the activation codes. He’ll activate the virus as soon as he realizes that the timer failed to do so. That’s where I need your help. Once Darius succumbs to the virus, and his wormhole collapses, I need you to open one of your own and come join me. Find the android and destroy him, and then we’ll finish whatever is left of the Revenants together.”

  “You seem to have forgotten that none of us can open portals anymore.”

  “That will change when the Revenants are knocked out by the virus.”

  “Assuming you are right, why would we risk exposing ourselves to your virus?” Vartok asked, his eyes narrowing to thoughtful slits.