Terminal Point (35 page)

Samantha turned her head to look at Kerr. “See if you can't mindwipe your pilot into landing in the rear of the launch area, behind the Command Center. It's the area with the least amount of security feeds, though that's not saying much.”

Kerr nodded as the shuttle locked into a docking cradle with a heavy shudder. “We'll take that under consideration.”

He and Threnody were the only ones to disembark, leaving the confines of the shuttle with the carrying case held between them. Samantha watched them leave until they were out of sight. The hatch closed again and ten minutes later the shuttle got the all clear to depart.

Whatever hack Jason was able to perform, it must have been good. They weren't challenged at any point during their flight across London. When the shuttle finally landed with a heavy shake on the cleared street, everyone undid their harnesses and got to their feet. The group disembarked in an orderly fashion, with Samantha pulling Kristen after her. Jael greeted them outside in the street.

“Can't say I'm happy about this,” Jael said as the pair stepped off the shuttle.

“Considering what's going to happen, no one really should be,” Samantha said as she studied their location.

The Strykers had taken over a single block of tenements in an outer city zone. It was night and the streets weren't lit. The building they were working out of had light escaping around the edges of badly boarded-up windows. A quick scan of the place told Samantha no humans were in the area. A lot of psions were, however, and she frowned at the way all those Stryker minds pinged on the mental grid.

“Right, first thing I'm doing is teaching you lot how to read like humans on the mental grid,” Samantha said. “We don't need to be advertising our presence to the Warhounds still here.”

“Lucas said all the telepaths involved in this merging venture aren't to exhaust themselves,” Jael said as she gestured for the two younger girls to follow her.

“This trick of the mind is fairly simple and needs to be done if we're to stay safe.”

“We're using the street as an arrival area for those telekinetics in Paris and the ones nearby to pull the wounded out of the way. We've got 'kinetic-oriented psions guarding the area along with empaths and psychometrists. We'll be safe.”

“Against a city dead set on burning itself to the ground?” Samantha shook her head as they walked into a musty-smelling building. “No, we can't take any chances.”

“The riots won't reach here. We won't let them.”

Samantha still retained her uneasiness. Blinking her eyes to adjust to the bright interior, she took in the space that was their safe house for the time being. Strykers wearing the white scrubs of doctors and psi surgeons milled around inside, handing out bunks for the telepaths assigned to London. Samantha declined a bed or couch, not liking the looks of the ones she passed, and instead took up position in the kitchen. She and Kristen claimed a small table with four chairs. Kristen immediately folded her arms over the tabletop and rested her head on them, body canted at a sharp angle.

She gave her sister a sharp smile before closing her eyes. “It'll be brilliant, Sammy-girl.”

Samantha sat down under Jael's watchful eye, not protesting when a nurse started to hook her up to a monitoring machine. “Remember your orders, Kristen.”

“Don't worry. Lucas won't feel a thing.”

 

PART EIGHT

Ascension

 

 

SESSION DATE
: 2128.02.17

LOCATION
: Institute of Psionics Research

CLEARANCE ID
: Dr. Amy Bennett

SUBJECT
: 2581

FILE NUMBER
: 160

“Should we fear you?” the doctor asks.

The child shrugs and picks at the lace on her white sock. She is kneeling on the chair and hooks a finger beneath the strap of one shiny black shoe as she stares around the room. “I think you already do.”

“This is only a precaution. Do you consider yourself dangerous, Aisling?”

She wrinkles her nose at the doctor. “I'm four.”

“You don't act it sometimes.”

Aisling shrugs again and settles more comfortably on the chair, her feet swinging freely through the air after she shifts position. “I can't help that. I can't help what I see.”

The woman settles a hand over her datapad, leans forward, and offers up a smile. It doesn't reach her eyes, barely curls her lips. “You're the first person we've found who has a one hundred percent accuracy rating. We need that. We need you.”

Aisling tilts her head to the side, the way any inquisitive child would. “You don't need me, you need my dreams. But they aren't for you.”

 

THIRTY-NINE

SEPTEMBER 2379
PARIS, FRANCE

Nathan was in the launch command room, in the middle of a conversation with the head of operations, when the security grid around Paris pinged with numerous threats. The chatter in the command room picked up, growing louder with every second that passed.

“Those aren't confirmed routes.”

“Sir, no one is answering our hails.”

“Someone get those jets scrambled!”

Nathan took one look at the targeted mass of dots drifting closer to the ruined city on the hologrid map before abruptly turning on his feet and leaving the room. The hallway that separated the command room from the rest of the boarding facilities of the building was filled only with scattered government employees. It wasn't private, but it was empty enough for what he needed to do.

The four Warhounds masquerading as soldiers in a quad followed him out and stood guard when Nathan put his back against the wall. He closed his eyes and sent his mind skimming across the mental grid, picking up Warhound telepaths and dragging them into a merge. Bolstered by external power, Nathan allowed himself to reach for the cluster of buzzing thoughts that were getting closer with every second that passed. A morass of psi signatures hit his leading mental shields, and Nathan abruptly pulled back, retreating in a way that snapped pain through his head when he opened his eyes.

“Sir?” the Warhound to his left asked. “What's wrong?”

“Confirm the numbers we have on-site for Warhounds,” Nathan said in a low voice.

“The last groups are still flying in. They number a little over one hundred. On-site? We've got two hundred Warhounds still waiting to board and about fifty already on their assigned space shuttles. Everyone else is already en route to the
Ark
or on board the colony ship.”

Nathan calculated the odds. Three hundred of his Warhounds, half of them higher-Classed psions, were already in space and unavailable for this fight. Nathan had staggered the exits of Warhound teams, knowing that things would be going to hell during such a shortened transfer time frame. He ground his teeth, exhaling sharply through his nose as he picked through his options.

“Get them off those space shuttles and out of this building. I want them on the streets and ready to fight
right now
. That's Lucas flying in with Strykers and we need to be ready.” Nathan gestured at the hallway they were in. “Send me all the Class VI and higher telepaths and empaths we have on-site. Tell them to prepare for merging.”

One of the Warhounds nodded sharply at the order, and Nathan headed for the command room. He pulled his suit jacket straight as he walked back into chaos. The grating static of human thoughts beat against his mental shields as he took up his post next to the command terminal manned by the head of operations.

“Jets are confirming no response from those shuttles, sir,” someone told the man in charge. “We're starting to lose uplinks with the jets as they approach the targets.”

“What do you mean we're losing uplinks?” the government officer demanded.

“They're disappearing from the security grid.”

“Do we have a visual?”

“Negative.”

“Why the hell not? Get me that goddamn visual!” The assistant ran off to obey and Nathan took his place. The officer didn't look up from his terminal. “You shouldn't be here, sir. Grab a quad and have them take you to the space shuttle we're readying for launch. We need to get you off this planet.”

“I can't leave just yet,” Nathan said.

“If I have to haul you onto that space shuttle in cuffs, I'll do it. We need you alive, sir.”

“Yes, but that won't happen if those incoming shuttles aren't stopped. You have no clue who you're dealing with.”

The officer scowled and waved over a quad. “I don't have time to listen to politicians. They're taking you to a shielded transport shuttle and putting your ass on the next space shuttle in the launch queue.”

The first soldier to lay a hand on Nathan got his arm broken, and the breaking didn't stop until the screaming man was a mutilated mass of pulpy flesh and shattered bone lying on the floor. It took only a minute for the man to die, but it seemed like eternity to those watching. Nathan stared disdainfully at the dead man and tugged his suit sleeve straight.

“Don't presume to tell me what to do,” Nathan said, raising his eyes to meet the officer's shocked and uncertain gaze. “I don't take orders from humans. Not anymore.”

Words died on the man's lips as Nathan telekinetically broke his neck. Another body hit the floor and Nathan tossed it aside, clearing the way for him to take control of the command room. He could feel the rising panic in the large room, fear meshing into a ragged mob mentality that would have left him short of needed people for the controls.

The Warhound telepaths and empaths that entered the command room took care of that for him, brutally mindwiping the humans of their fear and panic. The mindwipe kept the basic pattern of human thoughts intact, leaving them with the ability to still function and do their duty. They were essentially puppets now, with bodies going through directed motions, all except Dalia.

She rose from her seat and crossed the room to take the second-in-command position one terminal down from Nathan. “Bringing up the visual you wanted, sir,” she said crisply, hands flying over the controls in front of her.

Nathan nodded, hands resting on the edge of the command terminal as his eyes flicked across the vidscreens and hologrid. The Warhounds settled themselves where they could, minds sliding into a pulsating merge that hovered near the back of Nathan's mind.

A visual finally came up, taken from a security feed two kilometers away. The remains of fighter jets burned in the broken streets of Paris, smoke curling black and ugly into the sky. Strykers were already on the ground, moving around the wreckage. Nathan licked sweat off his upper lip before merging with the waiting Warhounds, taking the apex position in that grouping of minds and power.

Don't let them near the launch area,
he said. The order burned across the mental grid, reverberating and branding itself into every Warhound mind he could reach.
Our priority is protecting the space shuttles. We can't let them gain access to even a single one.

“Dalia,” Nathan said. He stared through the information scrolling across his terminal, feeling sweat sliding down the back of his neck, following the curve of his spine. “Keep the launches going. I want—”

He broke off as a familiar mind spiked on the mental grid, the psi signature one he didn't think he'd ever feel on this planet again. Nathan jerked his head around, staring in anger and shock as Gideon leaned against the side of the command terminal, face calm.

“Nathan,” Gideon said.

“Why the
hell
aren't you on the
Ark
?” Nathan demanded. “I need you off this goddamn planet, Gideon.”

“I have what you need.”

Nathan stared at him in disbelief, noting the soft silver gleam that stained his son's dark blue eyes. “Lucas nearly burned out your mind. You've got holes in your memory. You don't even know what to look for.”

“Lucas didn't destroy everything.” Gideon slid a hand through his hair and pulled, the action one of Kristen's habits. “There's an echo in my head. Where Samantha used to be.”

Nathan didn't ask for permission before entering his son's mind, sifting carefully through broken thoughts for the scar that was left of the psi link Gideon once shared with his twin. Tangled through its raw layers were pieces of memory, transferred from Samantha in that moment when she saved Gideon at the Strykers Syndicate. Nathan saw it and carefully mapped out a large fragment of a psi signature that didn't belong to either of his children.

“How did I miss this?” Nathan said.

“We're twins. We can't remain apart forever.” Gideon smiled slowly, the curve of his mouth tight and forced. “You always did fear insanity, but it's all that's left for you now.”

Nathan couldn't deny that fact. “Suit up, Gideon. You're right. I'm going to need your help to stop Lucas.”

 

FORTY

SEPTEMBER 2379
PARIS, FRANCE

The shuttles landed in the streets of Paris, between the remains of bombed-out buildings and away from the wastewater that flowed through the Seine. It was as close as the Strykers could get to the launch area without running up against Warhound telekinetic shields. If the Strykers didn't land, they risked ending up like the military jets, blown to pieces after hitting a barrier their instruments couldn't pick up.

The rest of the fighting was taking place on the ground, in the middle of a deadzone with toxicity levels that were still dangerous, even to psions. The two-pronged push came from the west and the north, both Stryker groups filled with telekinetics, pyrokinetics, and a few dozen telepaths not drafted into the Stryker merge.

They outnumbered the Warhounds by a decent margin, but that didn't mean anything. Most of the Warhounds were higher-Classed psions than the Strykers, and all of them knew how to merge. The crushing telekinetic blow that slammed into the Stryker ranks coming from the west tore through weaker shields, throwing people to the ground with bone-breaking force.