The Price of Conquest

Kressa struggled against the effects of the tranquilizing drug. Her body ached, and her head swam. She scanned the room, moving only her eyes, and wondered what had roused her from her drug-induced sleep.

The door stood open, a slim figure silhouetted within the opening.

Kressa lifted her pounding head from the floor. "Saunorel?" She recognized the woman not only by her slight build but by the powerful psychic presence that existed as part of the th'Maran's being and now seemed a small part of her own.

Saunorel stepped forward with a nod, and the door slid shut behind her.

A mixture of fear, concern, and grim resolve hardened the th'Maran's woman's features and flowed from her mind.

Kressa wondered at it. "Why are you here?" she asked.

"I want to help you." Saunorel stepped past Kressa, then knelt behind her, unfastened the security cuffs, and cast them away.

Kressa sat up carefully. The dull thrumming in her temples doubled in intensity, and a wave of nausea swept over her. She hung her head and struggled against the blackness that threatened to reclaim her.

"Kressa?" Saunorel said quietly, her voice thick with worry.

Kressa looked up to find the th'Maran woman staring at her, a troubled look on her pale features.

Hesitant, her silver eyes begging for permission, Saunorel brought one hand forward and touched warm, slightly damp fingertips to Kressa's forehead. Tendrils of soothing energy reached from them and gently encompassed her awareness.

Kressa crushed the instinct to fight the intrusion, and remained open to the wondrous contact. Saunorel searched her mind effortlessly, not for information, but for something deeper than knowledge, something more basic. Kressa marveled at the woman's skill and wondered if all th'Maran possessed such abilities.

Many. Some more so. The Triads, for instance. The answer to Kressa's unvoiced question came as a spark of mental energy.

Her wonder continued to grow as Saunorel drew a healing force from the depths of Kressa's mind and sent restorative energy throughout her body. It washed away the worst of the drug's effects and renewed some of her strength.

Kressa had learned a similar technique on Ilek, but where she could only mask pain for a short time, she knew that what Saunorel was doing went far deeper and did more than simply hide any ill effects; it wiped them away completely.

The process took only a few brief moments, and then Saunorel lowered her hand. Her mind slipped from Kressa's, and she produced Jonathan's stunner from beneath the soft gray tunic she wore.

"Take this."

Kressa checked the charge before pocketing the weapon, then she looked at Saunorel, dumbfounded. "Why are you doing this?"

Saunorel glanced away as if ashamed. "I must. My people are wrong, Kressa. They do not know what they are doing." She returned her eyes to Kressa's. "Please forgive them."

Kressa eased herself to her feet, pleased to discover her head no longer spun and the worst of her aches had vanished. Saunorel rose beside her.

"Betz will kill you if he catches you here," Kressa said.

The th'Maran nodded. "So be it."

"But—"

Saunorel touched the tips of her fingers to Kressa's lips. "Hush. Tell me what you need to leave here."

Kressa glanced at her sharply. "Aren't you coming?"

"My place is here." She spoke firmly. "There is much I must do, much my people must be told."

"Saunorel, you can't stay. Betz will—"

"Hush, Kressa. Tell me what you need."

Kressa frowned but decided to abide by Saunorel's decision, at least for now.

"Who are the th'Maran?" she asked. "Where did you come from?"

Saunorel's brows drew together and she cocked her head. "I would help you escape, and you ask me of my people?"

Kressa moved around the room, swinging her arms and stretching her legs to test the completeness of the healing. She felt surprisingly good, but she knew that what Saunorel had done would not be without its price; eventually, she would need to sleep it off.

"Where can I go?" she asked. "We're in hyperspace, aren't we?"

"We are within the corridor, yes. How do you know?"

Kressa allowed herself a small smile. "If you'd spent as much time on a ship as I have, you'd know. Look, Saunorel, I need this information. Who are you? Why are you here?"

"We are from Marasyn, a world far from your United Galaxy. We were sent through the gate by the Om-Mar to find the humans and unite with them."

So the Patrol didn't discover the th'Maran, Kressa thought. The th'Maran discovered them.

"What gate?" she asked.

"The one given to us by the Om-Mar to reach your people."

"What is the Om-Mar?"

"The Om-Mar is…" Saunorel frowned slightly. "It is our creator."

Kressa sighed, unsatisfied with Saunorel's ambiguous answers, but she sensed the th'Maran's honest attempts to help. Kressa decided to move on to what she hoped would be less difficult questions with more tangible answers. "What's a Triad?"

"It is the name the Patrol has given to a shorom, a group of three of my people chosen for their special bond and abilities. They are capable of far more than any normal three-way linking."

"Are they as bad as Betz says?" Kressa asked. "Do they destroy minds?"

Saunorel shook her head. "They do not need to. They can read information from any mind, even one as strong as yours."

Kressa smiled at the compliment; inside, her thoughts raced. So the th'Maran can read minds. Some of them can, anyway. "How many of these Triads are there?"

"Not many. But I do not see—"

Kressa waved her to silence. "Just gathering information." She gave Saunorel a reassuring smile and continued after a short pause for thought. "This ship we're on, is it one of yours?"

Saunorel gazed around with a kind of reverence. "Yes, the fralsha are ours." She paused and another frown darkened her features. "Rather, they were ours. The Patrol has taken them and armed them. They call them Enforcers."

"Enforcers, huh?" Kressa smirked. "That sounds like a Patty name, all right. Did your people give the Patrol their new comm system and stardrive?"

Saunorel nodded. "In exchange for our technology, we were to be allowed to meet your people, to tell them of our mission."

Kressa paused in her pacing and glanced at Saunorel. "What is your mission?"

"To unite your people with ours."

"Why?" Kressa asked, hoping this approach to the subject might gain some more intelligible answers.

"It is our purpose."

Kressa sighed in resignation. If anyone knew the reasons behind the th'Maran purpose, it clearly was not Saunorel. "It's not working, is it?"

Saunorel shook her head slowly. "We thought to help the people of the United Galaxy join with the Free Worlds, but all they want to do is control them."

"How well I know that." Kressa continued to pace the room. "What was this ship doing at Vsuna?"

"Admiral Gaunis ordered us to come here."

Gaunis, again? What was his involvement in all of this? "I don't suppose you know why."

"We were to scout the system," Saunorel said.

Which could explain the fighters, Kressa realized. If the ships were equipped with recon packages, they may have been scouting the Vsuna system when the th'Maran ship detected the Conquest's arrival, allowing Betz to call them back for their attack on the freighter.

"All right," Kressa said, "let's see what we can do about getting out of here. How long have I been on this ship?"

"It has been nearly three days since you were captured."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Three days? Damn. Kressa stopped pacing and turned to face Saunorel. "When will we arrive at Eminence?"

"Soon. Maybe—" Saunorel thought for a moment. "—thirty of your minutes."

"Do you know what they've done to my ship?"

"I believe they searched it."

Kressa cursed under her breath. The Pattys must have found some way around Connie's defenses. "Anything else?"

"That is all I have heard."

Kressa considered her next move and quickly realized that her previous escape plan was as good now as before, as well as the only one she had. "Take me to the storeroom where I was found."

* * *

They reached the storeroom unchallenged, and Kressa stepped inside.

Saunorel touched her arm. "I must go now."

Kressa hesitated, tormented by the th'Maran's decision to remain behind. She knew Saunorel believed she was making the right decision, but did she truly understand the danger?

"Please, Saunorel, come with me."

She shook her head. "You must save your people, and I must try to save mine." She gave Kressa a tiny smile and reached out to touch her hand. "Open your mind. I will show you the way to your ship."

The transfer of information took only a moment.

"Thank you," Kressa said, and then gave the th'Maran woman a lighthearted smile. "If you're ever on Arecia, look me up."

Saunorel placed one hand on the side of Kressa's face. "Farewell, jhal… friend." She stepped from the room, and the door closed behind her with a deadening finality.

Kressa leaned against the barrier for a moment, her thoughts and emotions churning, then she turned to the task at hand. She located the canister of anesthetic liquid-gas and a filter mask among the medical supplies. Gaunis's box was missing, but she had no time to search for it. She closed the cabinet and slipped out of the room. Moments later, the lift delivered her to the air-recycling chamber where she first came on board the Enforcer.

She listened for a long time before exiting the lift, straining to pick up any sounds of movement in the room beyond, but only the low drone of machinery reached her ears.

After several minutes spent tracing the various lines, pipes, and tubes displayed on one of the control boards, she located the main output duct. She opened the ventilator shaft door, felt a gentle rush of moving air, and peered inside.

Centimeters beyond the small portal, a tiny explosive charge and remote detonation device hung from the wall. A red-orange gas vial identical to the two in Gaunis's box rested beside them. Intrigued, Kressa leaned into the shaft, detached the vial, and pocketed it.

Her insides lurched suddenly, and the tingle of the ship's drive field faded from the air. An instant later, the lift opened behind her.

Kressa drew her stunner and spun around. Two armed Patrolmen stood in the opening. She dropped both men with a single sweeping shot. As they collapsed, Captain Betz peered around the edge of the opening. He brought up a pulse gun and fired.

Kressa dove aside, and the captain's shot burned into the wall behind her. She scurried down an aisle formed by two rows of machinery and squeezed into a crawlspace between a monitor console and a piece of unfamiliar equipment.

Betz hurried after her, his bootsteps echoing loudly in the room.

"What are you doing down here, Bryant?" he called after her. "Maybe thinking about suffocating the crew? If you do that, you'll kill your little th'Maran friend, too."

Kressa wriggled deeper between the stacks of equipment and listened to the gentle purr of the machinery around her and the now cautious shuffle of the Patrolman's footsteps stalking closer.

"But isn't that just like you?" Betz continued. "Accept the little bitch's help, and then toss her away with the rest of us. Anything to get you out of here alive." He moved closer still.

Kressa bit back a heated retort and weighed the power of her stunner against the range of Betz's pulse gun. She would have one shot; she had to make it count.

"What have you done with Saunorel?" she called, purposefully giving away her position.

Betz laughed and hurried toward her. "Would you really like to know? Come with me and I'll show you."

I'll show you, you bastard!

Using the sound of his voice as a guide, Kressa leaped out, fired, and dove for shelter beneath a row of monitor boards.

Betz reacted instantly. The blast from his gun burned behind Kressa's head close enough to feel its heat, but the beam from the Teneian stunner hit him full in the chest, and he collapsed at the base of an air filtration unit.

Kressa listened carefully for the slightest hint of movement, and then peered out. Except for the slow rise and fall of his chest, Betz showed no signs of life. Relieved, she hurried back to the output duct, affixed the filter mask over her nose and mouth, and opened the valve of the liquid-gas canister she'd brought from the storeroom. She tossed it in the open ventiduct and took several deep breaths. Her head remained clear; the mask was working. Satisfied, she closed the access door and turned away, torn by her next move.

Once it had taken effect, the gas should keep everyone asleep for an hour or more. In that time, she could find Saunorel, reach the Conquest, and get away. But as each second passed, the Enforcer was drawing closer to Eminence. It would not take long before someone recognized the ship's silence as a sign that something was wrong; they would send people to investigate, and then it would be impossible to escape.

Cruel as it seemed, she had to get off the Enforcer without delay. It was more than her life in danger, or Saunorel's, it was the safety of the Free Worlds. At this point, even a moment's hesitation could mean the difference between escape and recapture.

Hating herself for the decision she had to make, Kressa moved to the lift.

* * *

The Enforcer's docking bay consisted of two chambers. The first, a small control room, contained the unconscious bodies of two humans slumped in their chairs. Kressa moved through the room toward the second chamber, the bay itself, where the Conquest sat.

Halfway across the control room, movement flashed behind her. She wheeled and brought up the stunner.

Ciroen stood in the control room doorway, blinking slowly, as if fighting some great fatigue. Before Kressa could react, his pale eyes locked on hers. They held her rapt, immobile; she could not look away.

Instantly, she recognized the mistake she had made. She should have considered the possibility that the gas might not work on th'Maran the same way it did on humans.

Ciroen stepped toward her, and his mind slipped into hers, encompassing it, surrounding it, exploring all that she was in much the same way Saunorel had. As with Saunorel, his actions did not threaten; unlike her, he kept his own mind tightly shielded. Helpless, transfixed, Kressa held his gaze.

For how long she remained there, her eyes locked on Ciroen's, his mind linked to hers, she could not say. Finally, the th'Maran averted his gaze. He gestured toward the bay where the Conquest sat, her boarding ramp lowered, the airlock invitingly agape.

"Go." His voice held none of its former strength.

"Save Saunorel," Kressa said, her voice muffled only slightly by the filter mask. "Please, do something for her if you can."

"Go." A strong mental push reinforced the th'Maran's feeble verbal command.

Kressa dashed from the room. Ciroen's presence remained deep in her mind, driving her from him. She reached the Conquest, pulled herself up the ramp, and activated the lock cycle. She stepped inside and the doors sealed behind her.

Ciroen's mind slipped from hers, and she collapsed against the entrance corridor wall, her pulse pounding in her head, deafening in the silent ship.

"Connie?" she said after a moment.

Silence.

"Con?" Concern washed over her. The Patrol must have shut down the main computer. There was nothing to be done about it now.

With a strange feeling of weakness pervading her mind and body, Kressa dragged herself toward the bridge as if she moved through a dream; her feet heavy, clinging at every step, yet they never seemed to touch the floor.

Once on the bridge, she squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated hard to clear away the muddiness, then she started the preflight sequence. The engines reported some minor damage, but they hummed to life when she switched them on. The shield generators, however, showed red across the board.

Kressa activated the screens for a view of the bay and realized that the only way out of the Enforcer would be to blow open the doors. She checked the forward viewer.

Ciroen stood within the bay's control room. He had sealed the room, so he would be safe when the bay doors blew.

Kressa activated the Conquest's aft guns and turned them toward the barriers, but before she could fire, a hollow thud shuddered through the freighter, and the bay doors began to creep apart. Apparently, Ciroen intended to make good his aid to her escape.

She did not waste time questioning his motives. Even before the doors had opened all the way, she lifted the Conquest from the bay floor, eased her through the widening opening… and gawked.

Kressa had never seen Eminence, had only heard rumors of its existence. The sight astounded her. Formed from a dozen or more separate modules attached to a massive central pod by cylindrical beams, the space station hung majestically against the dark backdrop of stars. But the station held Kressa's gaze for only a moment before a fleet of warships clustered nearby drew her attention, several Enforcers among them.

A dreadnought was docked at one of the station's outer pods. She checked the ID readout. It was the Kinsa, Admiral Gaunis's flagship.

Eager to put as much distance as possible between herself and the guns of the dreadnought and other vessels, Kressa hit the Conquest's thrusters, and the freighter leaped away from the Enforcer.

A moment later, the pursuit warning buzzer began to sound. Kressa glanced at the rear screen, dreading what she would see. A heavy cruiser had peeled away from the fleet and was moving toward the Conquest.

The comm crackled to life. "Freighter Conquest, this is the cruiser Nile. Halt and prepare to be boarded, or we will fire."

Kressa fed the engines more power. Another buzzer whined for attention. Warning lights blinked yellow and red from the engineering board, and she cursed. The damage to the main engines was worse than she first thought. The Conquest's acceleration dropped off sharply.

Feeling uncomfortably vulnerable without Connie to back her up, Kressa routed extra power to the maneuver drive and throttled up the rear steering thrusters. Slowly, the freighter began to accelerate again.

An alarm sounded, and the Conquest vibrated from the cruiser's first shot. Behind the warship, a squadron of fighters emerged from the bay of one of the Enforcers hovering near Eminence.

Kressa took a reading on the local constellations and set the navigation computer to work comparing them to the freighter's starcharts, starting at Eminence's rumored location near the Azaran system. She got lucky. Within seconds, the computer displayed a coordinate match. She activated the hyperspace field generator and began to manually compute a jump to Arecia, mindful of where a miscalculation could send her.

Shots from the approaching ships buffeted the Conquest, and damage warning lights once again winked from every board. She cursed under her breath and kept working.

At last, she completed the computations. She entered the numbers into the hyperspace drive, checked the field readings, and pressed the control.

The familiar lurch tugged at her insides, and the Conquest dropped out of normal space. Hesitant, she glanced at the freighter's heading.

Right on course.

She breathed a long sigh of relief and collapsed back into the pilot's seat.