Telepath (Hive Mind Book 1) (31 page)

There was another minute
or two of preparations involving lights, harnesses, and ropes. I moved across
into Forge’s mind as he entered the great, hollow column, feeling his satisfaction
as he balanced easily on one girder, while reaching up to clip a rope to another.
This was a golden chance to demonstrate his skills and his worth to Adika.

A second later, he was
climbing, swinging himself effortlessly upwards from one girder to the next. Pausing
to let Adika catch up. Rejoicing in the response of muscles that had never been
this strong before the hard regime of Strike team training. This was what he’d
been born to do. This was his perfect life.

Forge swung up to the next
girder, then abruptly stopped. “I can see a ladder above me, and a sort of
platform across a couple of girders.”

“Elden’s nest,” said
Lucas. “He would have built a platform so he could store things and sleep.
Still no sign of him, Amber?”

I left Forge’s mind and
reached higher up, searching. Someone was thinking about production run
figures. Someone was running her hand over the soft down of young fledgling
birds. Someone was cursing over the foul stench of a failed batch in a protein
vat.

“Elden’s not there.” I tried
not to let my voice show my bitter disappointment. “Do we wait for him to come
back?”

“If Elden’s gone then I
doubt he’s coming back,” said Adika grimly. “He’ll have seen Amber’s transfer request
four days ago. He must have decided his work here was done and headed home to
Hive Genex.”

Lucas’s voice sounded surprisingly
untroubled. “Climb up and take some images of the platform, Forge, but don’t
touch it.”

The platform turned out to
be made of several sections of flooring, wedged into place on the girders and
bolted together. There were three sealed boxes on it, as well as a weird object
with glowing lights.

“Is that a bomb?” asked
Forge.

“Bodyguard team, get Amber
clear of this area!” snapped Adika.

Arms snatched me up. I was
being carried at a flat-out run. I kept my eyes closed and my mind linked to
Forge.

“Bodyguard team evacuate
to Yellow Zone using the express belts but not the lifts,” said Lucas calmly. “Adika
and Forge, get out of that column and follow them. Liaison, we need an electronics
expert to take a look at those images.”

“Do we evacuate that area
of the Hive?” asked Nicole, her voice rising in panic. “The evacuation protocol
for a possible structural column failure is massive, Lucas. We’d have to evacuate
all ten million people from Orange Zone, and close all its bulkhead containment
doors to seal it off from the rest of the Hive!”

“There’s no need to start
a general evacuation yet,” said Lucas. “Elden came here with an elaborate plan
to steal a telepath. I could believe he’s planted a small booby trap device to
destroy his nest if it was discovered, but it doesn’t make sense for him to set
up a bomb on a scale that could damage a structural column and cause massive
destruction. It doesn’t make sense for him to go back to Hive Genex before our
Hive agrees to Amber’s transfer either. He might need to give Amber extra
orders.”

Forge was dropping down
from one girder to the next, pausing to help Adika. I tried to stay with their
thoughts, but my group was on an express belt now. The distance, and more importantly
the number of minds, between me and Forge kept increasing until I lost him. I
finally heard the familiar recorded voice from overhead.

“Warning, bulkhead approaching!”

I felt the lurch as
whoever was carrying me made the jump from the Orange Zone express belt to the Yellow
Zone express belt. A couple of minutes later, we left the belt system, moved
into a secluded area between two storage tanks, and my bodyguards gathered
round me.

“Bodyguard team are now at
a defensible location in Yellow Zone.”

That was Kaden speaking.
At the sound of his voice, I automatically linked to his mind, and was caught
in a fog of grief.

… my last run with
the Strike team. I’d hoped this would be the run where Elden was captured,
hoped to leave with something good to cling to, but there’s nothing but failure
to take with me to …

… if Adika would
just let me go Outside again, give me the chance to prove …

Waste it, how can I tell
my parents that I was fired from the Strike team for cowardice? My father will
…

I fought my way out of
Kaden’s mind just as Adika spoke. “Forge and I are out of the structural
column,” he said. “Bodyguard team, wait at your current position for us to
regroup. Rothan’s group, come and rejoin us too.”

“We’ve got expert information
on the device now,” said Nicole. “It’s not a bomb, but some sort of communications
relay.”

“Which explains everything,”
said Lucas bleakly. “Elden’s done exactly what we expected, gone into hiding to
wait for us to agree to Amber’s transfer, but he’s not using his nest in 600/2600.
He’s set up a device to relay information to him, and gone Outside.”

There was dead silence for
the next thirty seconds.

“Waste it!” said Adika. “Why
did Elden go Outside? If he has to wait around for weeks while Amber’s transfer
is processed, he’d surely be more comfortable inside the Hive.”

“Remember that Elden’s
done a lot of travelling Outside,” said Lucas. “He’s used to the conditions,
and could always come back to the Hive if he needs to do something to progress
Amber’s transfer. I suspect there’s an extra incentive for Elden to do his
waiting Outside. He’s expecting Hive Genex to send an aircraft to collect Amber,
and hoping it can pick him up on the way home and save him a long swim.”

“Hive Defence can try to
hunt Elden down,” said Adika, “but searching a vast area of countryside is
nothing like patrolling a concrete border strip. The second Elden sees our aircraft
or drones on a search pattern, he’ll know we’ve discovered his plan and are chasing
him.”

He made an exasperated
noise. “Elden will have been imprinted with all the ways to beat heat sensors.
He may even have a stealth cloak, designed to block his body heat and
camouflage him into near invisibility. He just has to stay hidden while the
search pattern passes over him and then make a run for the coast. Once he’s
made it offshore and called Hive Genex to send an aircraft to pick him up,
we’ll have no evidence to give to Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement.”

I opened my eyes, wriggled
out of Kaden’s arms, and stood up. “We can’t let Elden escape. If he’s gone Outside,
then we have to go there after him. He may be able to hide from heat sensors,
but there’s no way for him to hide from a true telepath.”

“What are you suggesting,
Amber?” asked Lucas. “That we send you Outside in an aircraft to search for
Elden?”

“No. Even if I could work
from an aircraft, Adika’s right that Elden would start running the moment he
saw the aircraft hunting for him. I’m thinking of us going Outside to search
for him on foot. We could pretend to be one of the rambler groups that Rothan mentioned.”

Lucas sounded startled.
“You can’t have thought this through, Amber. Elden could be anywhere between
our Hive and the nearest stretch of coastline. Hunting him down would take days
or even weeks.”

“You said that my
imprinted fear of the Truesun has been removed. The natural fear that remains
should be easier for me to overcome. If I can’t manage that, then I’ve already coped
with being Outside at night. I might be able to shelter somewhere when the
Truesun is out.”

“That would mean doing all
the travelling after dark,” said Lucas, “which would be very difficult.”

“It would be virtually impossible,”
Rothan’s voice joined in the conversation. “Once you’re away from the country
parks, Outside is a complete wilderness, with narrow winding tracks that are
often overgrown with stinging plants and brambles. The further away from the
Hive you get, the worse the conditions become. We couldn’t travel at night
without using lights on a scale that Elden would see from a huge distance
away.”

“Perhaps one of the other
telepaths would be willing to try going Outside,” said Adika.

“Sapphire might be able to
handle both the physical and mental demands of hunting Elden Outside,” said
Lucas, “but we can’t put the Hive in the situation where only Morton, Mira and
Keith are available to handle emergency runs.”

“Amber could help with …”

Lucas interrupted Adika before
he could finish his sentence. “If Sapphire was away hunting Elden, then Amber
couldn’t help with emergency runs or anything else. Remember that Elden’s still
able to eavesdrop on our Hive using his communications relay. If he spotted any
indication that our Telepath Unit was still operating, he’d know he’d lost
control of Amber and run for the coast.”

Adika groaned. “I suppose
that cutting off his communications would send him running home too.”

I took a deep breath. “Then
it has to be me that hunts down Elden. We can do some test runs Outside and see
how well I cope with daylight.”

“You can’t try facing the
Truesun yet, Amber,” said Lucas. “You’ve been through a huge amount in the last
few days and need time to recover.”

“If we’re going to stand
any chance of catching Elden, then we have to do this now,” I said. “We’ll only
have two or three weeks before he gets suspicious, and we could need all that
time to locate him Outside.”

There was a moment of
silence before Lucas spoke. “I admit that’s true. You’re quite sure you want to
try this, Amber?”

I didn’t want to try it. I
had to try it. “I can’t just sit around and let Elden escape after everything
he’s done. I can’t let his Hive carry on kidnapping other true telepaths. I
have to try to hunt him down. If the only way I can do that is to go Outside
and face the Truesun, then that’s what I’ll do.”

The next evening, everyone else in
the unit seemed to be incredibly busy, but I was under orders to rest, sleep if
possible. The plan was that there would be a meeting just before midnight,
followed by another trip Outside.

I couldn’t sit still, let
alone sleep. My mind was overloaded with thoughts and emotions, nervously anticipating
tonight’s trip. We would be staying Outside until dawn, when I’d find out how
much of my old fear of the Truesun remained. I didn’t know if I’d just be
scared, or be hit by total blind panic. Whatever I felt, I had to control it if
I was to have any chance of capturing Elden.

I walked three times round
my apartment, and then headed to the shooting range. I’d begun my weapons training
by firing at stationary targets with a genuine gun. Now I’d graduated to using
holo guns in the bookette style, friend or foe scenarios. I had to explore randomized
locations and kill enemies before they killed me, while trying not to shoot my
own team or innocent bystanders.

Today’s scenario had me navigating
the vent system, and I ended up scoring an abysmal 21 per cent. When the friend
or foe programme shut down, the holo of the vent system vanished, leaving just
a featureless hall around me. I was surprised to find Adika standing in the
doorway, watching me critically.

“You’re incredibly slow on
the friend or foe decision,” he said, “which is why you’re scoring so badly, but
your accuracy is good when you finally decide to shoot. Of course there’s the
point that you can’t read the minds of holo targets. You’d have a huge
advantage over a genuine human opponent. We should try you in some duels.”

“What are those?”

He smiled. “Two of you in
there, trying to get a kill shot on each other. I’m betting you could take down
half the Strike team. I’m hoping we never need you to fire a gun in reality,
but it would be excellent practice for my team. Let’s give it a try ourselves.”

“But …”

He took a holo gun from
the rack, and made some adjustments to the scenario control panel. Our
surroundings suddenly changed to be a park at night. The moons and stars
programme was running, providing just enough light for me to see the shadowy
outlines of trees. I took one wild look round and dived into the nearest bush.

“I wanted a chat with you
about the unit security system,” said Adika, from somewhere in the darkness. “After
your speech in the park, I went back to my apartment to rest. While I was
asleep, someone used my passwords to access the system.”

I could feel myself
blushing. “I just wanted to lock the park doors for a few hours. It didn’t seem
worth waking you up for that.”

“Another time, I’d prefer to
be woken up.”

I slipped into Adika’s
mind. He was in amongst some trees, with his back to one of them. He was amused
by me locking the park doors, but he didn’t want me messing with the unit security
system again.

“I apologize,” I said. “I’ll
always call you in future.”

Adika accepted my promise,
and moved on to another issue. “You’ve also blocked my request for Kaden to be
transferred out of the unit. You’re too kind sometimes, Amber. You didn’t
reject Fran and look what happened.”

“Keeping Fran was a
mistake. This isn’t.”

“Kaden has to go. I admit
he seemed an excellent Strike team member, I was seriously considering him for
one of the two deputy positions, but I can’t keep him on the team after that
screaming incident Outside.”

“I’d like you to let Kaden
come Outside with us tonight,” I said. “Give him a second chance to prove he
can face the conditions there.”

Adika had been listening
to me talk, worked out my location, and was moving through the trees to get a
clear shot at me. “The primary purpose of the Strike team is to protect the
telepath. I can’t have a man on the team who is afraid to go where you go,
Amber.”

I rolled sideways,
reaching the refuge of a holo rock just before Adika shot the bush where I’d
been hiding. “Yes, the Strike team protect me, and I protect them in return. I
don’t want to discard Kaden over one moment of weakness. You’ve just said that he’s
been an excellent Strike team member. When you found out how fast I could swim,
you didn’t fire all the men who couldn’t keep up with me in the water.”

Adika knew I was behind
the rock, and was working out his best way of outflanking me. “The men just
needed to have extra swimming training to be able to deal with that situation. Giving
way to fear, having a panic attack, is a very different issue. It’s completely unacceptable
in a Strike team member.”

“I’ve seen the whole of
the Strike team thinking about this. Most of them were scared when they were
Outside in the dark, remembering all the frightening childhood stories of the
hunter of souls. Kaden was just unlucky that the mouse or rabbit or whatever it
was ran over his foot while he was lying in the bushes. A lot of the others
know that they’d have screamed too if it had happened to them.”

Adika started creeping
along the ground, invisible to my eyes but glaringly obvious to my mind. His
aim was to circle round to my left while I was busy arguing with him, and then
shoot me.

“Rothan has been pleading
Kaden’s case to me as well,” he said.

“The others daren’t talk
to you directly about this. Rothan can. He’s been going Outside all his life,
so you know he isn’t scared of anything out there.”

Adika didn’t reply. He was
approaching his destination point, and didn’t want to give away his position.

I shuffled further round
my rock to keep it between me and Adika. “You’re worried that you’d have
screamed yourself in Kaden’s situation.”

Adika was silent for a
moment. “You’re telling me that I’ve been trying to hide my own fear of Outside
by being brutally harsh to my men, so they’re taking their problems to Rothan
instead of me?”

I really didn’t need to
reply to that. “The Strike team weren’t selected or trained for going Outside. They
have to learn to cope with conditions there just as they had to learn to swim. I’d
very much appreciate you giving Kaden a second chance.”

Adika was huddled behind a
tree, brooding over the twin difficulties of either catching me by surprise or
arguing with me when I was reading his mind. “All right, but Kaden’s no longer
a contender for one of the two deputy positions. I can’t ask men to trust his
leadership after they’ve had to pin him to the ground to stop him screaming.”

“Accepted,” I said.

“Eli’s a good man, but he’s
been playing the comedian too much for me to make him a deputy. Humour can be
useful to a leader, I use it myself to calm the team down when the tension gets
too much, but Eli’s misjudging the balance.”

“Also accepted.”

“Matias was unlucky
getting appendicitis,” continued Adika, “but I’d already decided he was more interested
in his girlfriend than his career. That boy needs to get his hormones under
control. They all do. I’ve got Eli having angel fantasies about you. I’ve got
Rothan meeting his secret love in the park after dark. I’ve got Forge going
round mourning for some girl he was involved with on Teen Level. They need to
stop thinking about their love lives and concentrate on their work.”

“You aren’t doing too well
at stopping thinking about Megan.”

Adika hastily moved the conversation
on. “I’d like to appoint my two deputies now, so I can work with them on
choosing candidates for our Beta Strike team. Things will be much easier when
we have two fully trained teams. I’ll be able to give my men proper rest
breaks, and assign temporary cover for injured personnel.”

He was moving rapidly
through the trees towards my rock now. He’d worked out that keeping quiet
didn’t hide his position from me, and was trying to use speed instead. I scurried
furtively away through the bushes.

“My preference is to put
Rothan in charge of Alpha team, and Forge in charge of Beta team,” said Adika.
“That would flag Rothan as my second in command and eventual successor. I’m
aware that Forge is your friend though.”

“Forge is my friend,” I
gasped, “but I agree that Rothan is the better leader. He’s won the confidence
of the men, and should take charge of Alpha team.”

Adika heard me speak, and
turned to fire at my location. I saw the thought in his head, and rolled
sideways so his shot just missed hitting me. I ran through more bushes, sending
a holo rabbit running wildly, and dropped to the ground. The poor holo rabbit
got shot, and I struggled to my knees and fired back at Adika. An instant
later, I was hit right between the eyes.

“Excellent!” shouted
Adika. “You winged me!”

The programme ended, the
fake park vanished, and the scores flashed up on the wall. “You have a superficial
arm wound, but I’m dead,” I pointed out.

“I’ve had seventeen years
practice at this.” Adika gave me a smile of delight. “You’re definitely ready
to wear a gun when you’re out with the Strike team. There isn’t time for
another duel before the meeting, but we must do this again soon.”

We walked across to the
meeting room together, and found Lucas, Megan and Nicole there ahead of us. There
was a stranger too. I took one look at the man’s mind and took an instant
dislike to him. He’d done some research on my team leaders, and was literally
putting a price on their heads.

Once Adika and I had sat
down, Lucas started talking. “Telepath Unit imprints don’t cover external Hive
affairs, so Hive Trade has loaned us an expert to assist us with information on
Hive Genex. Over to you, Barrett.”

Barrett gave up trying to
decide how he’d price Lucas on the trading system, and started talking. I forced
myself to listen. I found Barrett’s mercenary nature unpleasant, and if he’d
been suggested as a permanent member of the unit I’d have rejected him, but he
was just on loan to give us some vital knowledge.

“There are 107 Hives at
the moment,” said Barrett. “All Hives are included in both Treaty and the trade
system, but our Hive only trades goods with nineteen other Hives. That’s partly
due to the geographical difficulty in reaching some Hives while avoiding territory
infringements. We have little need for physical goods from other Hives anyway,
since we’ve opted to limit imported luxury goods in the interests of maximizing
self sufficiency.”

He paused. “We trade people
with only fifteen other Hives, and where possible with only seven. Those have
similar language and social structures to our own, which eases the transition
for traded personnel. Adapting to a new Hive can be difficult, as you’ll know
from personal experience, Lucas.”

I gave Lucas a startled
look. He surely wasn’t from another Hive. He couldn’t be. If he was, I’d have
seen it in his mind long ago.

“My father is irrelevant
to this.” Lucas’s voice betrayed the fact he was struggling not to lose his
temper. “Can we concentrate on Hive Genex, please?”

Lucas’s father was from
another Hive. That made far more sense. I wouldn’t have seen that in Lucas’s
mind, because I’d never seen him thinking about his parents at all.

Barrett nodded. “The
relevance of my comment is that we never trade people with Hive Genex because
there would be serious cultural adjustment problems. We don’t trade goods
directly with Hive Genex either, but we do receive some goods that originated
from Hive Genex through secondary trading with other Hives. This means any
items left here by Elden can’t be used as evidence for Joint Hive Treaty
Enforcement. Hive Genex would just claim we’d obtained them through legitimate
trading.”

He paused. “We could have
offered our telepath’s imprint in evidence, but unfortunately it has already
been removed. It might have been wiser to delay that process for a few weeks, so
that a deputation from Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement could be present.”

Barrett would have left me
trapped in that crystal cage for weeks! How much of the true me would have been
left after that? Would there have been anything at all? Before I could put my anger
into words, my team leaders burst into simultaneous speech. Nicole was among
them, but her shy voice was completely drowned out by three louder ones.

“The risk of brain damage
on removal, with consequent loss of telepathic and other abilities, increased
with every hour the imprint was active,” said Lucas.

“The danger of including
so many people in an imprint removal would …” Megan was practically incoherent.

“You think we should have sat
around doing nothing for weeks?” Adika was standing now. He placed both hands
flat on the table, and leaned across it to bring his face closer to Barrett’s apprehensive
eyes. “If Amber had got loose with an enemy Hive controlling her, just think
how impossibly hard it would be to hunt down a telepath.”

Adika’s voice had beaten
the others into submission now. “Amber wouldn’t just have the advantage of
knowing our every move before we made it. She’s had months to learn all my
knowledge of Hive security defences and my passwords. She’s familiar with every
hiding place in the Hive, she knows the strengths and weaknesses of my entire
Strike team, all our tactics, and can move nearly as fast as us.”

He paused a bare second
for breath. “Amber’s utterly deadly with a gun too. She just scored a hit on me
in her first ever duel. Only two other people have ever managed to hit me in a
duel, and they were both experienced Strike team leaders.”

Barrett hunched defensively
in his chair. “Clearly there were strong arguments in favour of removing the
imprint quickly.”

Adika slowly sat down, but
still oozed menace. I stared at him for a blank moment. He’d really meant what
he said. He thought I could be a more deadly opponent than any of his Strike
team.

Barrett pulled himself
together and started speaking again in a subdued voice. “We need to capture Elden
and submit him as evidence to Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement. Systematic interrogation
will force him to confirm our story. Tissue and bone trace analysis will be
even more useful, providing a record of his physical location throughout his life.
That will prove both his origin from Hive Genex, and the periods of time he’s spent
in our territory.”