Chapter 8

There was a sudden knock at his door, making him just the slightest bit. His dealings with the Drej and Preed had left Korso a little on edge. However, if someone was waiting on the other side of the soundproof door, then he had to act as if nothing was going on.

"Enter."

Akima poked her head through the door. I just finished on the commlink. He says it's possible, but it depends on the extent of the damage. He said that he'd have to see her before he can make any final decisions."

That would take more time, time I don't have, he thought. Then again, she might prove valuable to them. "Then you had better get Kenji, see what her thoughts are."

"Right," she replied with a slight nod of her head.

When the mechanical door ceased its hissing, Korso slumped onto the edge of his cot, his head sinking into his hands. He sat for a moment, his mind reeling with everything inside it. His nostrils flared slightly, and he brought his head up sharply. Perhaps a little too sharply, for he struck his head on the overhang. Wincing, he ran his hand over the injury, checking for blood.

"You're in too deep for second-guessing, Korso," he breathed, addressing himself, as he made his way to the control room.

Akima panted as she caught up with Lanzer. "Any sign?" she asked between breaths.

"None. She hasn't returned to her room since you checked.

"How the hell does she get around? She's blind!"

Lanzer shrugged. "I guess maybe the way she pilot a ship without paying attention," he answered, smiling.

Akima gave a questioning look, but wasn't given the chance to ask.

"She's in the docking bay."

The assuredness in his voice made Akima question even more. She turned after him, running double time to catch up.

"What make's you so sure?"

"It the same reason as to why we're running." He kept his eyes trained ahead on the door at the end of the corridor.

"Can I ask that question then?" Akima asked glancing across to him, studying the concern etched on his brow.

Lanzer looked down slightly, before retaining his raptor like gaze. "I don't know if I should tell you this, but it might help keep her alive."

Akima felt icy tendrils sink into her knees, but she let Lanzer go on at his own pace. He said nothing, but stopped at the door, and punched in a code he wasn't supposed to know.

"Clones tend to have special abilities, but for every ability, there's a down side. Kenji can sort of see things without looking. It's not exactly like the seeing you do with your eyes. It's more just feeling with your mind. It sounds stupid, but that's how she explains it."

Akima felt as if she were sliding down a ladder into a pit she wouldn't be able to find her way out of. All she had to do was grab a rung, then she would be safe, but like a half starved shark, she hungered for more.

"What's the downside?" she questioned as they rounded another corner.

When Lanzer didn't answer, she cursed herself for stepping one stone too far.

He didn't talk until they were waiting for the elevator to reach the bottom level. "She has horrible night mares. She can 'see' things from the real world and somehow they incorporate themselves into her dreams. Sometimes she can have night mares that are in some ways true." His last sentence hung in the air for what seemed and eternity. "Usually when they are true, Kenji tries to run someplace that's vaguely part of her dream, get some more information, and kill herself."

Akima steadied her voice before she made a comment. "Apparently you're just one step ahead of her every time."

Lanzer half-smirked at her attempt to lighten the mood. Akima found herself being drawn to him, despite the warnings Korso had given his crew. Lanzer was a lot like her younger brother. Akima fervently hoped that Lanzer wouldn't meet them same fate.

They found Kenji sitting in the battered spacecraft, trying her best to mend two wires together. Every time they touched, a blurred image faded in and out on the cracked screen behind her. Snippets of conversation echoed from a remaining speaker situated before Kenji.

Lanzer put his hand around Kenji's wrist. "Tell me," he simply said.

"Something about Nego. Something from the last moments is a clue."

Akima felt like she was falling into the pit again. She felt lightheaded, and put her hand out on the edge of the blast-hole to steady herself.

"Why'd you bring her?" Kenji asked. Akima was slightly shaken, but Lanzer's explanation swept to mind.

"We can trust her. Here, give me the wires." He wrestled them away from her, twisting them together, and adding another to the combination. The screen blinked a few times before coming in clear, if a little blurred near the cracks. The speaker rattled.

A Drej appeared, filling the screen, giving the order to surrender or be annihilated. There was shouting in the background. It sounded like Lanzer. The Drej continued to order surrender.

"What am I looking for, Kenji?" Lanzer asked, not taking his gaze from the screen.

Akima was breathing sharply, and trembling, and it wasn't because of the Drej. Who are they?

"A small jump in the picture, near the Drej's eyes. I noticed it before they fired. It was too regulated to be normal."

Akima trained her eyes on the area, and was surprised to see the eye itself jump. Staring closer, she told herself it was her own eyes. The Drej were perfect energy compositions. They weren't troubled by muscle spasms. They stayed one shape their entire functioning lives, unless shot with a laser gun, or if something was manipulating the entire Drej colony.

The lurching continued, however. Akima felt even dizzier, and the loose electrical charges were prickling the sides of her eyes, making them throb. She blinked them shut, squeezing the lids together to clear them.

"It's a message, isn't it?" Kenji asked. Akima wondered why Kenji didn't just look with her 'eyes'. Then again, maybe Kenji couldn't 'see' that way.

Lanzer grunted his assent, but continued to watch. "It's some sort of code, but none of the universal ones."

"Maybe a human one."

Lanzer watched intently.

"Hurry, the recording's almost through. I don't know if it can handle much more than this."

Lanzer was silent for a moment longer. "It's Morse code."

Akima looked at him, incredulity in her gaze. "But it's an almost forgotten code."

Lanzer furrowed his brow as the message blurred and went blank with a huge bleep. "Exactly. Whoever sent the message didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands."

"Can you make it play again?" Kenji asked, the cold edge to her voice once more.

Lanzer mumbled something that Akima didn't hear, but it seemed to satisfy Kenji, for she didn't press him again. Lanzer turned and fiddled with the wires again, this time adding a few others. Contented with whatever he had accomplished, he crouched beside Kenji near what was left of the control panel. He pressed a few buttons, and the picture reappeared, but it only showed the incredible disruption as a Drej blast rocked the ship.

"Hold on just a sec," Lanzer muttered.

He adjusted a few more dials, and the picture played in reverse. Akima saw the Drej disappear from view just as Lanzer reversed the play. She watched as the ship shook from a Drej blast just as the spokesman appeared on the screen. Its incessant demands for surrender had to fight over other disruptions. Akima saw Kenji leap across the room to some other control panel as another blast held the ship. She stared as Kenji dragged an unconscious Lanzer away from a blue shockwave that laced the control panel. Her attention was drawn back to the Drej as its eye started to twitch. Not knowing the code, she studied the face of Kenji, her sightless, burnt eyes fixated on the screen. Her lips moved with the screams of someone not seen in the screen. Lanzer watched the gaze intently, his raptor gaze daring the code to solve itself. Akima turned her own gaze back to the screen. Her heart jumped to her throat when the picture started to deteriorate, mixing grey fuzz with the blue of the Drej glow. A soft moan escaped her lips as the screen went dark entirely. She pulled at her violet forelocks, frustration balling up in her throat.

"It was a warning from him," Lanzer said quietly.

"What about?" Akima couldn't hold her curiosity anymore.

"Nego was warning us of humans who had traded their loyalty to the Drej. He warned that the Drej are working with the UIA to finalize their death grip on us. Nego was about to give some names of those certain people right before the recording gave out." Lanzer ran his hand through his hair, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

Akima was caught off guard when Kenji rose abruptly, snatching the pistol from Akima's holster. Kenji's sightless eyes bored right through Akima's skin. "Fuck, I knew this was too serious for me. What the hell to you want?" Akima asked vehemently.

"The truth." It was that cold voice that shouldn't emanate from a living, breathing human. "Don't try and move, your pistol has the added feature of following body heat. Fortunate for me, unfortunate for you."

"What kind of truth? Truth like what I want from you two, an unlikely couple of refugees hiding from both the Drej and the UIA! Oh, sure, I can use you too to try and commit mutiny on this ship." She tried to make her voice drip with sarcasm at her last comment.

"Keep talking," ordered Kenji.

"I know you're both running from the UIA for stealing any information about you both, but I have no fucking idea about why you're running from the Drej. Believe me, I don't want to know anymore. I have my own problems and I don't need your bullshit as well."

Kenji gave her characteristic half smile. She dropped the gun from under Akima's chin, pointing the handle at her instead. "I trust you. You're one of the few that earn that right."

Lanzer stepped forward from the shadows into the light of the gaping hole. "I hate to break this up, but the captain did order us to the central command center."

Trying to conceal a deep breath, Akima nodded in his direction. "Right. Kenji, I know you can still see with your sort of mind power -"

"Is that what Lanz told you?" She gave her half smile again before continuing. "It's more like trying to see through a brick wall. Sometimes the sounds that seep through give you an idea as to what's happening on the other side. It's not very reliable."

Akima nodded slightly, looking at the floor. "So then maybe you'll agree to our offer."

"Our?"

"Korso and mine."

"Then let's go."

Even with her 'sight', Kenji still needed Akima to guide her through the hallways. Once or twice Kenji ordered them to stop. Lanzer saw that Kenji was dizzy from trying to exert her 'eyes' to beyond their normal limits. She had been trying to do it ever since she realized that she was blind. Whatever this proposition was, it was better than Kenji giving herself even more nightmares. Lanzer mentally shuddered to think what would have happened had he and Akima not been there to puzzle out the message, giving Kenji something else to focus on.

He glanced slightly over his shoulder at Stith. Poor thing, he thought. She's half a universe away from any of her own kind. It was the first time that he had met anything like Stith, and in the few days that he and Kenji had been on the ship, he had grown fond of her. She certainly wasn't family material, but that didn't stop him from wishing that she had been his mother, not Kenji, even if it was only through DNA.

Though he and Kenji shared a bond, there were times when he loathed having to put up with her unintelligible intellect and cold, abrupt manner. From the first day, Lanzer had thought of Kenji as an explosive waiting to go off; and explosive that no one knows how to detonate, or prevent from detonation.

Feeling guilty for his thoughts, Lanzer tried to remember how she had saved him from the electric jolt that had spiked his controls, and then how she threw her arm over his eyes to protect them from the flash, sacrificing her own.

Shaking himself free of such thoughts, he waited as the lift door opened up into the command center, opening up into Kenji's second chance at sight.