"No, I do not require tea!" Saran snapped the words out icily, gesturing the maid away with a sharp hand flick.
He focussed his chillingly angry gaze on the computer screen in front of him, which surprisingly didn't instantly melt into slag. Why was this planet the home of every windbag in the Inhabited Galaxies? Was there no one capable of stating their case succinctly and briefly? Apparently not – with disgust he tossed the report on his desk into his out tray. It was an expanded version of the one on the VDU, and basically spent five pages trying to weasel out of admitting blame for the current mess Saran had spent two hours dealing with. Gerrick Majiri was – or rather had been - the biggest vibe dealer in three galaxies and they'd caught him red-handed with agents of the Ateuam Empire, but because a couple of lawyers couldn't be bothered with the proper paperwork, the slime had come within an inch of getting away Scot free!
Saran's glower lessened slightly as he looked at the messages in his in tray. The filing job in Admin kept Trey usefully occupied and out from under Saran's feet, but Race Keegan's Guide, Gage Butler, had been tight-beaming Trey almost daily as if convinced that Saran would kill the other man and bury him under the patio if not constantly checked upon. Thank goodness the man had found that new installation on Hyperion and dropped the constant messaging off! Saran leaned back in his chair and sighed to himself. This desk in his private study at the LEO Commissioner's Residence was an exact replica of the one in his office at the LEO Commission Palace because he often came "home" to his official residence and worked late into the night. Again, Trey Logan had kept out of his way, which pleased Saran. He had no idea when he would have opportunity to fully bond with the empath and wasn't particularly interested in making time. His initially illuminating conversation with his Guide at Mariette's had fizzled into nothing. No security checks had brought up anything. Perhaps he had been a bit paranoid, Saran acknowledged to himself. If the blanks in Logan's life had been anything that major, surely they would have been setting of bells and whistles all over the place?
Standing up, Saran stretched till his joints popped and walked over to the almost floor-to-ceiling French windows overlooking the precisely manicured gardens. He preferred the less regimented view from his ziggurat on Eden, but considering how little he got to go there, he'd take what he could get. Once more his lips thinned with displeasure. William Ellison's birthday ball would start at lunch and continue into the small hours of the night. As LEO Commissioner, Saran would be required to endure every tedious second of the event; wasting hours he could spend doing actual work. There was also the possibility of unimaginable violence, for the gossip columns were full of nothing but the fact that not one but both of William Ellison's long-estranged sons would be attending.
"Miss Suiko Taisuke to see you, Commissioner."
Saran turned, but Singh was already bowing out, his genuflection precise but somehow hostile, in the same way his voice had carried a subtle inflection of displeasure.
As LEO Commissioner, Saran had made it a practice to never receive people on "business" once he had left his office at the LEO Commission Palace unless they had come to report the commencement of the Apocalypse or an alien invasion or both. With a smile that went no deeper than the muscles required to create it, Saran ushered his guest to sit, knowing that he was being punished in Singh's own inimitable way. Saran hadn't had any of Trey's possessions sent on from Halfway because he had assumed that Trey would simply use Saran's Guide Allowance – extremely generous as befit the LEO High Commissioner's – to purchase clothing far superior to the off-the-peg items he'd previously owned.
Two days after the lunch at Mariette's, Singh had entered the solar during Trey and Saran's breakfast and coolly informed Saran that he had had Logan's belongings brought from Halfway and had them put in the Guide's room. The expression of pathetic relief on Logan's face before he transmuted his expression back into its customary bland meekness had spoken volumes even before Saran's surprised questioning had established that Trey had no knowledge of any such thing as the Guide Allowance's existence. Saran's household staff had clearly taken a liking to the youth and in his own obliviousness Saran had made an elementary mistake and forgotten his mother's advice: never annoy the hired help, for their retribution is timeless and terrible.
To Saran's relief, the upshot of Suiko's visit was that her father the Patriarch Hanzai Taisuke required an urgent meeting with Saran. The fact that the Patriarch had not entrusted the request to artificial communication channels indicated the urgency of the request. Saran took it seriously. The current Patriarch of High House Taisuke was an eminently calm and sensible individual, not given to creating an atmosphere of clandestine intrigue to boost his ego. He had also sent his favourite child to deliver the message, even though Suiko was not the Body Heir. Taisuke Technologies were the cutting edge of scientific development, especially in space travel and anything that could hinder humanity's ever-expanding colonisation of space was something that needed to be addressed.
Setting up the required appointment, he personally showed her out of the Residence then came back in. It was time to make nice with the Guide - thereby showing a properly apologetic attitude to Singh and the rest of the staff - otherwise Saran knew his sheets would be over starched from here to eternity, his coffee would be served too strong and cold and they'd probably even put salt not sugar on his cereal. Striding purposefully up the stairs, he dialled up his sense of hearing and picked up Trey's heartbeat coming from his Guide's suite. As he walked along the corridor, his other senses going "up" slightly in response to his Guide's close proximity, it gradually dawned on Saran that he could detect Logan's scent in none of the rooms he passed and only on the corridor that led to Logan's suite. The familiar irritation rose again – for goodness sake, did the man do anything other than scurry straight to his room like a frightened rabbit the minute he set foot through the door?
The line of thought was instantly forgotten as Trey's heartbeat suddenly accelerated. Automatically Saran surged forward – his Guide was in distress! Reaching the main door to Trey's suite on the outer corridor, he unceremoniously thrust it open and went in.
Trey was sat on the bed, a hard-copy newspaper in his hand, his face clearly upset. Jumping as Saran barged in, he scrambled off the silk bedcover and stood facing Saran, confused anxiety in every line of his body. "S-S-Sentinel?"
"What happened?" Snapped Saran more curtly than he intended.
Trey looked more confused than ever, his eyes flicking about as if expecting a murdered body to suddenly appear on the floor or slavering alien monsters to burst through the windows. "Uh…?"
"Your heart rate shot up," clarified Saran tartly.
"O-oh. Sorry," Trey apologised instantly, but did not answer the question.
Saran had automatically taken in the details of the suite that he had not entered since before Trey had received his belongings, as his Guide usually met him at the breakfast table. It looked exactly as it had, only less dusty,during the long years it had remained empty when the LEO Commissioner had not been a Sentinel and the current one had had no Guide. There was nothing to show it was inhabited, except for the bedside table nearest the French windows that led to the balcony overlooking the gardens. That had a "Teamaid" on it, next to which there was currently a small plate that had a half eaten sandwich on it. Saran could clearly smell lemons.
"What is that?"
"Lemon cheese sandwich," Trey replied promptly, still watching him like a rabbit watching a fox.
"I meant that newspaper you're hiding behind your back."
Bingo, Logan's heartbeat shot up again.
Wordlessly Saran held out his hand. Swallowing Trey slowly held out the "newspaper" – nowadays clear plastic flimsies with the text and graphics printed on them that could be reused repeatedly to conserve resources - and Saran took it, his eyes scanning down the page. The Galactic Herald was actually a fairly reasonable newspaper, both in its hardcopy and cyberspace formats, more or less unbiased and impartial. Unfortunately what let it down was its gossip column The Party Line by D. N. Rennac, which was vicious, salacious and often just a breath away from libel, slander and hard-core porn; since the controversial column generated a great deal of sales and income for the paper, the savage columnist was reasonably assured of being able to spew his bile with impunity. Saran's eyes hardened as he read the column – Rennac had waxed lyrical on William Ellison's upcoming party, speculating in the very crudest and sexually explicit terms on how the Dark Guide had "persuaded" both Detective Lord James Ellison and his elder, illegitimate half-brother Captain Ellison Vincent Hunter to attend their estranged sire's celebration. Lurid details of Blair Sandburg's sexual abuse and torture at the hands of Alexandra Barnes were also printed.
He looked up; Trey's face was white, his lips bloodless. "I-I-It's lies. B-B-Blair's not like that," Trey whispered hoarsely.
Saran gave an irritated snort. "I know that, Jim would never have bonded with him if he was!" He bit back an urge to snap as Trey flinched and dropped his eyes to the floor. "Look, leave this with me. I think it's high time that D. N. Rennac retired – permanently."
"You can do that?"
Saran felt a surge of satisfaction as Trey's cringing expression changed to a mixture of hope and surprise. He smiled wolfishly at his Guide. "I'm Saran Van den Mikhail. I can do pretty much anything."
Aware he was making a bit of a grand exeunt stage left, Saran marched out with the "newspaper" in his grasp, slowing his pace as he took the offending flimsies back towards his study. Yet again, indecision stirred within him and he paused on the grand staircase, wondering if he should just forget everything else and initiate Full Bonding with Logan. He had gone beyond annoyed at the way Logan persisted in keeping up this frightened rabbit routine…
No. Saran's inner steel asserted itself. Saran Van den Mikhail wasn't going to be one of those sappy Sentinels wrapped around his Guide's little finger. Trey Logan was the subordinate and he would obey Saran promptly if he knew what was good for him.
Saran continued on his way, knowing that his vacillation was a by-product of his meds. The medication currently being taken by Saran and Logan suppressed the bonding chemicals in their bodies and prevented Bonding Heat from progressing beyond the initial stages, but it only suppressed not eliminated. Underneath the medication, Saran knew his body chemistry was simmering away with a need to get at the Guide. Well, tough. He was the LEO Commissioner and he had work backed up to the middle of next week even before Patriarch Taisuke started being all mysterious. Logan could wait…
LEO Commissioner's Palace, Federation, a few days later…Saran carefully replaced the wafer-thin delicate porcelain cup decorated with blue flowers on the equally fragile saucer as he finished the lightly flavoured tea, a signal to his three guests that it was time to get down to business.
Communication on several levels had already been going on. The presence of the Patriarch's Consort, Keiko, and Body Heir, Hanzai's daughter Hamiko, with the man himself indicated whatever was troubling Hanzai was serious, but not immediately disastrous, otherwise the Consort and Body Heir would have been safely far from Federation. Their presence was also an excellent diversionary tactic. Patriarch Taisuke of High House Taisuke suddenly making a visit to the LEO High Commissioner would have sent alarm bells ringing throughout not just Federation but the Inhabited Galaxies. However, he, his wife and Body Heir making a courtesy call to the Body Heir of the Matriarch of High House Akureyri excited not so much as the blink of an eyelid, particularly in view of the rapidly impending Birthday Ball for Patriarch William Ellison of High House Ellison. Due to Saran's friendship with William's albeit estranged son, the Body Heir Lord James, it was probable that Patriarch Hanzai and his family had just come to discreetly sound Saran out for advice on gift giving.
Seated on her father's right due to her rank as Body Heir, Hamiko lowered her eyelashes briefly in a signal that did not go unmissed by Saran. Hamiko had decided that her successor would be a Patriarch – a male child, and she had, as was customary, dropped a circumspect "hint" inviting Saran to be co-parent of her intended first child. The deliberately slow lowering of her eyelashes was asking whether Saran had made his decision. Despite the gravity of this current meeting, Saran was still able to seriously consider the ramifications of the proposal with one part of his keen brain.
The continuing popularity of co-parentage came about because the Designated Parent bore the "duty of care" to the offspring; as co-parent a person could have genetic successors without having to bear any burden of financial responsibility or investing of time, etc., etc., unlike a Spousal Parent, who bore equal responsibility for the offspring with his or her spouse. Co-parentage Covenants were frequent amongst celebrities, such as a famous movie star who might agree to be a co-parent for a dedicated fan who wished to be the mother or father of their child, and also amongst by monarchs, planetary rulers and so on, such as a person who wanted or needed their offspring to be the child of a king or queen.
Now the notion was up close and personal, Saran wasn't entirely sure he liked it. While it was true that a Co-parent bore no responsibilities for his or her offspring, neither could he or she claim any right to it – and considering this potential child would have the LEO High Commissioner as it's genetic sire, Saran considered having the right to kick it's butt or enforce corrective measures should he or she turn out to be a homicidal maniac or intergalactic criminal pretty important.
There were also other issues to consider. In co-parentage the resulting child or children were the heirs of the Designated Parent only, the child could lay no claim to any of part of the co-parent's estate, such as wealth or a title like "Empress", any and all of which went to the co-parent's official children, in the same way that illegitimate children – for example, Captain Hunter – had no claim on the parent's estate. The reverse was also true – a co-parent could not suddenly appear for a slice of the pie if the child abruptly became wealthy or famous. Unburdened by not having to give the child money or time, conversely the co-parent had absolutely no rights over any part of the child's life – it's name, place of birth, type of education, religious faith, career, medical records et al – were closed to the co-parent. If the Designated Parent died while the child was in infancy, a minor, or still below his or her "majority" - the legal age of adulthood in whatever culture they resided in - custody of the child automatically went to the Designated Parent's nearest biological relative, not the child's, or whoever the Designated Parent listed a Guardian in his or her will.
Problems arose because, of course, Real Life was never that neat and tidy. Back in the 20th and 21st Centuries, the medical practice of fertility treatment had been like having a racehorse pulling a coal cart, or having Cavemen piloting the USS Enterprise in battle against the Klingons. Great Britain's Foetal Rights Act, personally produced by the dying King William V, was the first step that eventually led Science to Uterine Replicators – the Holy Grail of fertility that prevented the killing of unwanted children (made a capital offence under the United States of America's Foetal Homicide Bill of 2113) and also ensured that every single human being could have a child of his or her own, even if a biological pregnancy would normally have killed a woman or her child, or a man was incapable of impregnating a woman due to biological injury or sexual orientation.
However, William had only introduced the Foetal Rights Act to the House of Lords in 2082, and the king was driven as much by political ambition as humanitarian concern. Due to vigorous investment and campaigning in the early 21st Century, Britain once more came to be outstanding in the field of medical research and development, but the decades of fertility practitioners using "anonymous" sperm and egg donors had come back to bite them in the ass.
The first case had been brought in 2009 by, of all people, a Luxembourg banker. Developing cancer, the banker's best, indeed only, hope for survival was a bone-marrow transplant from an "immediate" family member. The banker had no siblings or any "official" children, but had fathered eight offspring through sperm donation. He wished to locate the children in the hope that one would prove a match. While that case was still being argued in the European courts, the second case had arrived – a well-to-do Spanish woman who had lost her husband, son and daughter in the same car accident. The biological mother of four children through egg donation, the Spaniard wished to make them heirs to her estate in the absence of any other family. Shrewd King William and his brother, Prince Henry, could see the brewing political, financial, social and ethical storm on the horizon and were aware of the potential devastation, particularly as they had family knowledge of the issues; a childhood back injury meant that their cousin Princess Beatrice had been "strongly advised" that pregnancy was not a good idea, something that had caused the Princess great emotional pain, and their cousin Louisa, the Queen Consort of Spain, had suffered several miscarriages before successfully producing the Infanta Isabella, later Queen Isabella II the Great.
Such had been the direction of Saran's concerns. Nor was there just himself to consider, but his family too. Contrary to most peoples' beliefs, the High House members rarely designed their offspring's exact physical features other than ensuring they were generally pleasantly aligned. Assuming Hamiko designed the child to be a boy, there was a good chance it might resemble Saran's long dead father Aleksandr Van den Mikhail, something that would cause his mother the Vicereine emotional distress. The formidable Vicereine would also want to be involved in the life of what would be her first grandchild. On top of that, there was the child itself. Saran's half-brother Daniel was the result of a Co-Parentage Covenant, and while he was secure in the love of his maternal family, Daniel had never had anything good to say about a father who had been interested in nothing other than the prestige of having the Vicereine of Olban be the mother of his child.
Carefully, Saran set the delicate cup and saucer on his desk, turning the cup's handle to the left as he did so, knowing Hamiko would understand his negative answer. In such matters, nothing was ever uttered aloud so any offence could ever be taken. Offence was a dangerous thing to cause to powerful, wealthy people who had entire personal armies with the firepower to wipe out solar systems at their command.
As if oblivious to the few seconds of Saran's distraction, Patriarch Hanzai spoke clearly. "Two issues are of concern, Commissioner. I mention both because they may be connected, or they may not, as I myself happen to believe they are not. The first is incidents of disruption and attempts at sabotage at our shipbuilding yards, and also attempted arson at the Lab."
Saran frowned. Taisuke Technologies manufactured key components in a wide range of spaceship computer systems and the many transport systems humans used to travel interstellar distances in hours and days instead of millennia. Taisuke Technologies R&D, Research and Development, unit was also of such superiority that it was referred to simply throughout the Inhabited Galaxies as "the Lab."
"The Lab" was how Taisuke Technologies had become High House Taisuke in the first place, so long ago. An avid fan of old 20th Century Western sci-fi shows, the first Patriarch, Honshu Taisuke I, had been bankrolled by High House Ellison and invented the first reliable Stargate big enough to transport human beings and motor vehicles. The first small Stargate network, named like the invention itself after the characters and actors in an American TV show called Stargate SG-1, had revolutionised space travel in Earth's spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. The first four Stargates now formed the North, South, East and West entrances to the Smithsonian's Interstellar Museum – O'Neill, Jackson, Carter and Tealc. The next four, Anderson, Shanks, Tapping and Judge, were on display in the Museum itself and one was activated daily in rotation for visitors. Hammond, Fraiser, Quinn, Davis, Rothery and Nemec Gates were all on display at the Taisuke ziggurat on Eden, despite the family being offered fabulous sums for them over the centuries.
"These criminal activities have increased since Dr Butler verified the sentience of the aliens?" Saran discerned.
Hanzai inclined his head. "Indeed, upon capture, every one of the would-be saboteurs and arsonists has proved to be affiliated with Humanity First or one of the other pro-humanist crackpot groups. I have great confidence in Taisuke Technologies security systems, but it only takes one idiot to get lucky once and thousands of innocent people could be killed."
Saran nodded agreement, aware that stress was making Hanzai blunter in speech than usual for a man of extremely exquisite diction. High House Taisuke was the most reserved and formal of the High Houses, a situation increased by the fact that Hanzai's Consort Keiko was the sister of the Japanese Emperor. Taisuke's concern for the welfare of his employees was genuine, and a shipyard building spaceships was the very worst place for a disaster to occur, as the death toll could reach six figures in seconds.
"This situation is also irritating my employees," Hanzai continued. "This is a time of great potential for us, yet we cannot work unhindered."
Saran carefully bit back a smile. The ultra-conservative Hanzai was a little boy when it came to spaceships; Saran had been one of the few allowed to view the Patriarch's personal collection of uncut-tape 20th Century science-fiction shows, a collection worth billions of galacs. The Doctor Who episodes alone were worth several billion, and the Patriarch raked in a fortune in vid royalties from them.
Gage Butler's discovery of Hyperion as the "homeworld" and his revelation that the aliens were sentient was incredibly exciting, and various interested groups were already offering Taisuke Technologies vast sums to build interstellar exploration ships – that had been in use for decades had they but paid attention. Saran was one of the few who knew that the IFP had commissioned Taisuke Technologies to build a new kind of deep-space explorer spaceship, the prototype of which was now sitting – vulnerably – in the company's main space dock, awaiting completion.
Its maiden voyage would now be simple. The aliens had been sentient and had left their home galaxy in an orderly, organised fashion. Therefore the aliens had had a plan, a purpose - that could be deduced. A few days ago, Dark Angel Race Keegan had received very specific orders for his Guide. Dr Butler was to examine the alien pictographs, whatever records he could get his hands on, and look for a flight plan. The prototype's first mission would be to follow, and hopefully find, the aliens.
The point being that the boffins at Taisuke couldn't get on with inventing new and fun stuff to play with if they were being harassed, hindered and generally hassled by what were this era's version of neo-Nazi groups. "I will direct the attention of the LEO Commission on these groups," Saran assured Hanzai. "They have already brought unwelcome light upon themselves by attempting to discredit Dr Butler and have him replaced. Race Keegan was most upset by such disrespect towards his Guide, and I don't like it when my friends are upset."
Hanzai allowed himself a faint smile, which quickly disappeared. "The second issue is of much greater concern to me."
Saran raised his eyebrows at Hanzai's sombre tone. The Patriarch was not given to histrionics, dramatics, or I've-got-a-secret-grandstanding.
"There are rumours that an assassination attempt will be made of a member of a High House family."
Saran blinked. He stared for a long moment at the three po-faced people in front of him. Coming to power and riches during the unstable, tumultuous decades of global unrest on Earth and fractured political infighting on the colonies, the Houses – High, Lesser, Associate and Name – had retained their position due to a ruthless pragmatism. In the early days murder of a House family member, or someone acting in their official stead, or as their acknowledged representative, had resulted in spectacular massacres until the point was driven home that such would not be tolerated.
The willingness of a House to remorselessly hunt down such assassins for however long it took and however much it cost eventually got the point across. No member of a High House had died because of murder in four hundred and twelve years. The last victim had been the fourteen-year-old only daughter of High House van Zant Matriarch Isolde van Zant, shot by a group of terrorist guerrillas on a school trip, who had sneeringly decided that over two centuries of peaceful, co-operative power must have rendered the High Houses weak and indecisive. They had had only a few minutes to regret their mistake before the van Zant warships vaporised their entire planet from orbit.
So, in the civilised areas of space such as the Oligarchy, Altair Confederacy, Intergalactic Federation of Planets, etc., such a notion as assassination was universally understood to be insanity. Who would be stupid enough to murder someone loved by people with the power to incinerate worlds? However, not for a minute did Saran smile, laugh or pretend that Hanzai was joking. The Patriarch wouldn't joke about something so distasteful.
"The targets…?"
"Rumours only, but I have heard either Lord James, or yourself, or possibly both. Other rumours include William Ellison, your mother, or others. To be honest, Lord James seems to be the most likely target from what little I have been able to gather; the other potential victims seem to be later speculations that have taken a life of their own, as such things are wont to do. These rumours are like smoke. They disappear and then reappear, embellished with all sorts of nonsense."
"Hmmph." Saran leaned back in his chair; himself a target? He discounted such an idea almost immediately. He had many enemies, but none crazy or stupid enough to contemplate such lunacy against the Vicereine of Olban's favourite child. His mother would reduce this galaxy, hell the universe, to fine ash in her hunt for his killer.
What if Jim died…? Stephen would become the Body Heir, but Saran would stake his life on the fact that Stephen had no ambition to step into his elder brother's shoes in that respect. There were all of about a dozen people in the universe who knew Jim Ellison was a Dark Angel, so it was unlikely that his "real job" was the cause. However, Jim was a Dark Sentinel, an already powerful man whose abilities had just been increased exponentially now he had captured the only known Dark Guide – Blair Sandburg. Saran remembered Sandburg from the corridor with Grokk. Even though he had had no interest in Sandburg as his Guide, he had still felt the tug of power from the young man. "When…?"
"Soon – within the next week; the assassin apparently has no qualms about trying to commit the murder wherever his intended victim is. What concerns me is a persistent rumour that if the assassin fails to kill Jim then…he or she will have no problems doing so at his father's birthday celebrations."
Ah-ah. Saran met Hanzai's eyes; everyone in the room acutely aware of what Hanzai was not saying. Murdering Jim Ellison was going to be a tough enough nut to crack under the best of circumstances, but if the killer had no fear of trying to pursue his prey in no less a place that the Ellison family's own ziggurat on Eden, some ugly conclusions had to be drawn. The ancient phrase used by British police - "inside job" – being the major and most unpalatable one.
The heads of Houses, indeed, most planetary or system rulers, nowadays operated a three-to-six person "command structure" gradually developed during those long gone days of assassinations and socio-political instability. Top of the tree was the Matriarch/Patriarch, then their Body Heir, the Matriarch/Patriarch's Advocate, equal in rank to the Body Heir, "The Third of House…", appropriately third in rank, plus the Consort and sometimes one or two other people.
The system was designed so that if one or more of the command structure was suddenly incapacitated or killed, someone else could simply step straight in and carry on as normal, as if nothing had happened. Thus, if William, James and Stephen Ellison collapsed dead at the same moment, the Ellison Advocate would calmly step into the breech, or William Ellison's designated Third of House Ellison, or his Consort, Ehlan of Lesser House Van den Gaerde, or whoever was left standing. For William Ellison's birthday party for example, the Patriarch, Ehlan, his Body Heir Jim and The Third – Stephen Ellison – would all be present, while the Ellison Advocate and the other two in the command structure would have been sent off-world, each to a different, widely separated destination from the other two. The party's attendees would do exactly the same within their own command structures before arriving.
Eden was the second most secure planet in the Inhabited Galaxies, and you could probably paper several city blocks with the list of dignitaries and VIPs attending William Ellison's birthday party, meaning that security at the Ellison Ziggurat would be so far beyond paranoid they didn't have a word invented to describe it yet. Assuming that the would-be killer was confident about being able to murder – or attempt to murder – Jim Ellison right inside his own family's heavily secured ziggurat meant that the assassin was either totally crazy or so deep inside the Oligarchy's social structure that he or she was practically part of the furniture.
Saran's stomach flipped over unpleasantly. The thought that someone he trusted, someone he thought of as a friend, or a family member, could be smiling to his face while planning such a terrible thing was not something he could view with equanimity. Such a betrayal was beyond Saran. He saw the same dark clouds in the eyes of the three people sat across from him, and knew that they were already placed in the invidious position he now found himself in - of looking at people he cared about with suspicion.
"I – "
Saran's words were lost to posterity as with a soft "ping!" the discreet "back door" to his office slid back, and a small figure stepped inside. The four people already within stared in absolute astonishment at the figure, whose appearance was one of those fabulous occurrences that would be dismissed as too incredible in a work of fiction but which happen every day in real life. It was a child, a pre-adolescent boy wearing glasses and bearing in front of him a large potted shrub.
"Senji!" Patriarch Taisuke and his family rose to their feet, as did Saran, still too astonished to speak.
Moving the pot to one side, the boy finally looked through his spectacles at the inhabitants of the room and gave a deep bow, speaking flawlessly Japanese. "My most humble apologies, Commissioner. I have come to the wrong room." He bowed again and made to withdraw.
Trying to shake off the feeling he was in some bizarre dream, Saran forestalled him. "Whom are you trying to locate, Sir Taisuke?" He felt rather than saw the way the other three started at the formal title for the male child of a Patriarch.
The practice of styling all the sons of a High House "Sir" and the daughters "Dame", with the Body Heir being accorded the title or Lord or Lady, originated with the oh-so British High House Stantley, and the anachronism had remained. Senji Taisuke was the youngest of Hanzai and Keiko's children and of all of them, Saran and indeed the average man on the street could have told you exactly when his seventh birthday would be, for a very unpleasant reason.
GenHome had been Federation's pre-eminent foetal clinic, the place where the great and good came to design their progeny and place the blastocysts in the Uterine Replicators. What nobody knew six years and ten months ago was that one of the genetic lab technicians was a compulsive gambler heavily in debt to the sort of people who broke bones and removed bodily appendages without anaesthetic when they were not paid their dues. Though doing most of the basic genetic modifications outlined, that particular technician had instead pocketed the money for many of the more complex, and therefore lucrative, DNA modifications.
The scandal when the batch of defective foetuses had been "born" had rocked IFP society to its foundations. While few could afford the "totally designed" children of the very rich, all embryos on IFP ruled worlds had such things as myopia, asthma, Spina Bifida, Down's Syndrome, dyslexia, dyspraxia, schizophrenia and a whole host of other problems removed from their genome prior to placement in the URs.
Saran had not long been Commissioner of the LEO when the situation erupted in a media blast of outrage and shock. The guilty technician had committed suicide and so there was nobody left to savage and heap with blame. Saran remembered one of his first "official" meetings as Commissioner. It was how his friendship with Race and Jim, previously "nodding acquaintances", had, incongruously, begun; facing a very angry James Ellison and several other Dark Angel Sentinels, including Race Keegan, after certain "interested" parties in the IFP and Oligarchy unsubtly suggested that the Dark Angels could be used to kill the imperfect infants under the guise of them being "too impaired" to survive, despite the fact that such an excuse would hardly be plausible for the entire batch of forty-eight babies. Sentinels were protectors of the tribe; neither they nor their non-Sentinel Dark Angel colleagues took kindly to the idea of killing children.
The defective children had finally been placed in a residential school on Federation, paid for by GenHome. Senji Taisuke had "escaped" with only myopia and mild asthma. Were it not for the glasses, he would look no different from Keiko and Hanzai's normal children.
"I was seeking Detective Logan. I believed that he was your Guide."
He is my Guide - well, not Bonded Guide…yet…if he were my Bonded Guide, of course he would be here, with me, but, well – Saran broke off his internal soliloquy as he realised his brain was starting to hurt. "Det- Trey Logan works in the Repository," he simply stated, determinedly not looking at Hanzai, Keiko or Hamiko. He was the Sentinel here and if it had pleased him to have his Guide work as…as…as a unicyclist in a circus, it was nobody else's business!
Hanzai spoke, finally seeming to find his voice as he looked at the child he had seen once for about a minute and a half as the defective infant and his peers were removed from the Uterine Replicator and away from the many distraught parents. "That's a Hybrid Sapphire Tea Rose."
Senji blinked and bowed. "Yes, Patriarch. It is a gift for –"
" - My Guide?" Saran couldn't help the bit of snap that went into his interjection. It came straight from the bit of his brain hardwired into his basic instincts and bypassed the controls on his mouth.
Senji and his forty-seven "batch mates" might not be physically flawless, but the technician had left their sky-high IQs intact. He knew a warning bell when he heard one. Bowing exquisitely low in a perfectly executed genuflection of total subservience, he explained, "I and my friends are deeply in the debt of…Your Guide, Sentinel. Your Guide saved us from…great unpleasantness. Your Guide has admired my humble efforts at rose cultivation, so I thought he might like a token of our appreciation."
Saran kept his face bland, but winced inwardly at Senji's carefully placed word emphasis and overt deference. Good grief, this child was no threat to his possession of his Guide. Way to go, Saran, now you know why Trey looks at you like you eat babies for breakfast. He pasted a look of enquiry on his face. "How did Trey help you?"
Under other circumstances, he would have laughed at the little boy's "caught between a rock and a hard place" expression as the child realised that whatever Trey had done had not even been known about – never mind sanctioned by – his Sentinel. Taking a deep breath, Senji explained, "Det – Trey customarily eats his lunch in the public gardens of the school. I have managed to get a few of my flowers to take root outside of the nurseries, and he…likes them. One day, he…noticed a bruise on my arm…"
"Someone hurt you, Senji?" Keiko's tone was quiet, she was the most self-effacing of all the High House Consorts, but one look at her eyes brought Saran immediately to mind of Samurai and warrior-Emperors. There were centuries worth of Imperial Steel glittering there.
Senji bowed towards his mother. "Our school had a caretaker who was…not nice. He attempted to…" Senji made a vague gesture, the too adult words incongruous when spoken by a six-year-old boy. "…hurt some of the girls. Some of us boys tried to fight back, but he hit us with a broom. He said that he could do what he liked as nobody would care about…a bunch of defectives." There was a tiny, very uncomfortable silence. "I told Trey what was happening…he said he would fix it." Senji paused again and stared fixedly at the small shrub he still clasped. "He used to be a detective, helping children like us…his eyes were frightening." For an instant, Senji looked every inch a small boy, not an adult in a too-small frame.
"Where is the caretaker?" Hanzai's tone was the soft whisper of an approaching maelstrom.
Senji raised his head and regarded his father through the circular metal rims of his spectacles, his eyes enigmatic. "One day he didn't come to work. He just…disappeared."
There was a momentary pause, and then Saran casually dropped his pen on his desk. "How mysterious. Let us take you to where Trey is and you can give him his present."
Relief flashed across the child's face as it became clear that the caretaker's "disappearance" would not be investigated by the LEO Commission any time soon.
Nobody spoke as Saran's personal elevator shot downwards; Saran saw Senji cast oblique sidelong glances at the three adults standing protectively around him – mother, father, sister. Senji had never seen, nor interacted with, his biological family. Like the other forty-seven families, the Taisuke family had provided the very best of care – from a distance – while trying to pretend the boy did not exist. Saran got the feeling that situation was about to change as Keiko made a tentative statement about her noted horticulturist mother. Keiko's father, the previous Emperor, had been devastated when his queen died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage and now the Imperial Family allowed the public to visit the late Empress's famed "Sun Garden". Senji responded cordially if cautiously, describing his attempts to breed the notoriously delicate Hybrid Rose strains, clearly having his late grandmother's green thumb.
The Repository was as busy as ever, but Saran led his small group unerringly towards a familiar relaxed heartbeat and a unique, spicy citrus scent that he alone could smell as clearly as if it were cologne. Trey was perched at a workstation, absently sipping coffee that Saran's senses told him was lukewarm. He dialled "up" slightly and did a quick scan – low electrolytes. Logan hadn't eaten since breakfast – note to self, order him to eat elevenses.
Catching a flash of colour, Trey turned his head, blinking in surprise at the image of a small boy holding a large plant standing directly in front of him. Unaware of the presence of Senji's entourage, Trey's face broke into a broad, genuine smile that passed "Go" at light speed and zipped straight long the neurons into those cells containing Saran's primitive possessive instincts, all those mental files with labels marked "Trey – Mine, Guide – Mine, Everything about Logan – Mine".
Jealousy growled within Saran as the child was treated to a look of affection never accorded the Sentinel. Saran's nostrils flared briefly as he fought the impulse to push himself between the boy and his Guide. It would be the work of a moment to force Trey to his knees on the floor and make him acknowledge who he belonged to, before Saran claimed him right here…
Oh for pity's sake! Saran mentally castigated himself. Why not go the whole hog and started charging about in furs and waving a club going "Me Tarzan You Jane" while you're at it Van den Mikhail? I am the LEO High Commissioner, not some Neanderthal who's just had a shiny toy stolen off him.
Firmly clamping down on his baser side, Saran's focussed on the situation as his intellect managed to shove itself centre stage again and point out how unlikely it was that High Imperial Japanese – another of the Earth Pure Tongues - would have been on the basic "survivalist" school curriculum taught to the orphaned son of asteroid miners out on the Frontier Worlds. Along with Earth French, Trey Logan was now demonstrably fluent in two languages normally only taught in elite schools or during diplomacy training.
Trey's eyes widened as he looked at the spindly shrub with it's dark emerald green leaves, small burgundy thorns and deep, deep, sapphire-hued blooms. He inclined his head towards Senji deeply. "I'm deeply honoured by your gift, Senji…but…my Sentinel…"
"Has no problem with it," Saran cut in more coldly than he expected upon finding himself suddenly cast as the Wicked Stepmother, experiencing a twinge of satisfaction as Trey jumped in surprise.
Finally noticing the people behind the child, Trey flushed and immediately gave a respectful bow to the foursome, this time stuttering slightly as he spoke the formal Japanese greetings.
Hanzai reply was smooth and soothing. "My family is grateful for your…decisive…action in protecting our son."
Another minute or so of polite bowing and cautious exchanges ended with Hanzai, Keiko and Hamiko taking Senji for a late lunch, leaving Saran and Trey in the Repository.
Saran rolled his eyes as Trey stood stiffly with all the animation of a store mannequin, clasping the Hybrid Tea Rose between his hands in what could quite possibly be an actual death grip. "It won't bite," he informed Logan in exasperation.
For the first time ever, Trey retorted rather than retreated, his tone laced with genuine irritation. "It's Hybrid Tea Rose! Do you realise how much these things are worth?"
Saran did – far too much to be left hanging around the Repository for the remainder of the day. "Take it home and…see…to it," the horticulturally challenged Sentinel ordered finally, and watched with some faint amusement as Trey walked gingerly away with the same care as a man trying to walk on eggshell.
LEO Commissioner's Residence, The Capitol, Federation, a few days later…Saran sat at his private desk, in his private study, in the Commissioner's private residence. Privacy was good. That way nobody could see him when he started to bash his head against the smooth surface!
Saran groaned aloud. He was the favourite son of his mother. He was tall. He was handsome. He was…what had he heard some ladies say?…ah yes, his physique was buff. His IQ was in orbit. He was so rich his bank accounts read like binary code. He was powerful. He was articulate. He was charismatic. He was witty. He was LEO High Commissioner, one of the most powerful people in the IFP up to and including the President. He was…
Jealous of a potted plant.
Saran buried his head in his arms to the extent he was virtually kissing the desk's top and groaned again. He'd ordered Trey to "see to" the damned shrub, not fall in love with it! Every morning they went to work at the Commissioner's Palace, every night they came home to the Commissioner's Residence and Trey absconded to be with his plant. He talked to it. He played music to it – hell, he probably even read it poetry! He measured soil acidity with one little white stick. He measured soil alkalinity with another little white stick. He measured water retention, causing Saran to swallow the impulse to enquire whether the damn thing was female. He had placed the thing on every windowsill of his suite to get the best sunlight before deciding his bedroom was the optimum position for it to get some rays. He clipped the thorns. He polished the leaves. He primped the petals.
Enough! Saran sat upright. He had an IQ off the charts and he was sat here trying to send telepathic instructions for spontaneous combustion towards a bit of flora, simply because some caveman part of his hindbrain wanted the Guide to adore only him. This was going to stop right now! Saran Van den Mikhail was in charge of his instincts, not the other way around!
Saran's eyes narrowed grimly. This whole ridiculous debacle had descended quite far enough into farce, thank you very much. He had had it with the preceding weeks of tiptoeing, pussyfooting, shilly-shallying, dilly-dallying, touchy-feely drivel. Right this instant he was going to march upstairs, he was going take Logan by the scruff of his scrawny neck and he was going to show him exactly who he belonged to in Full Bonding detail, and only if Trey Logan really pleased him he might, might, be merciful enough not to fling the plant out the window and into the middle of next week! And tomorrow, Saran would return to his backlog of work. "Seven-fourteen days of post-Bonding isolation are necessary" could go hang – utter psychobabble. It was simply a matter of willpower. He controlled his hormones; his hormones would not control him!
Saran stood up, having worked himself up into a full self-righteous snit, unaware of the aura of lethal menace he projected around him so intensely it was almost visible. Unseen in the corner, there faintly formed the ghostly, diaphanous image of a snow-leopard, unnaturally large, whose face bore a distinct expression of smug "finally it's about time" satisfaction as it flexed it's paw over it's pinned prey, a very small, completely see-through "miniature Jaguar" type feline that, after careful examination, could be recognised as an African Black-footed Wildcat, virtually extinct, and the smallest species of Earth's feral cats…
Ping! Ping!
Saran came close to actually starting in surprise. He looked at the rest light flashing on his desk surface for a moment almost reluctantly as deeper instincts continued to shove at his cerebellum with suggestions he go and take what was his.
Saran shoved those urgings down firmly. "The Sentinel" was only part of his psyche and was something that he fully controlled and used to his advantage; he was not at the mercy of his brain chemistry. Ignoring the nasty inner voice that had suddenly started to snigger derisively, Saran sharply pressed the light that caused a certain vidlink to pop up out of the desk. The desk was largely a computer, and had many video and audio comlinks. This particular vidlink was a very secret, very secure addition to the desk and would be removed when Saran left office or died – the position of LEO High Commissioner could be a life position if the incumbent chose. Each LEO Commissioner had been "aware" of the Dark Angels, however, their dealings with the "last line of defence" organisation had varied from arctic to cordial depending on the incumbent.
Thanks to Saran's tight friendship with Race Keegan and James Ellison, plus his characteristic realistic pragmatism, he enjoyed a much warmer than usual accord with the Dark Angels, knowing that in an imperfect universe, people like the Dark Angels were more than a necessary evil who those wearing mental rose-tinted spectacles tried to expose and destroy. Consequently, Saran was kept much more "in the loop" than some of his predecessors, since the Dark Angels knew he would give them his full support as long as they could back up their assertions or course of action with solid facts. This vidlink, installed one afternoon by polite strangers that Singh and the other staff prudently appeared not to see, was part of that closer communications loop.
Thanks to the wonders of modern bio-cyber technology, Jim's image was projected across the vast interstellar distances in crystal clear perfection, allowing Saran to easily see the cold intent below the grim humour on the other man's face. "I'm about to execute a little idea I have regarding these assassination rumours about me." Jim took it as read that Saran was fully aware of the situation. "Wanna play?"
"Need you ask? You're convinced that you are the real target?" Saran perched one butt cheek on the edge of the desk, displaying a relaxation he showed only to his intimates.
Jim nodded. "Traced back some of the stories. Most of the other potential victims were a result of the Chinese Whisper effect, someone adding a bit to polish the rumour he or she heard and passing it on to someone else who did the same. No way in hell am I waiting for this guy to try doing a Molnar Station at my father's birthday party, so I've decided to assume he or she is enough of a fruit-loop to fall for the Judas Goat With Attitude routine."
Saran nodded in agreement. Jim acting the full-on, arrogant conceited Body Heir routine: "I am a demigod, I needn't take any precautions you pathetic plebeians", some place where he was nice and vulnerable to nasty attentions should be just what was needed to push this wacko over the edge into total Gagaville and hopefully make him or her do something rash so they could be pounced on. "Where are we putting on this show?"
"Halfway Station."
Saran smiled, not nicely. "Don't start the party without me." With a finger he pressed the key to make the vidlink sink back into the desk and then glanced up at the ceiling almost as if he could see right through the upper floors to his Guide; the feral smile that curved his lips widened.
Trey whirled around so fast he almost scorched a hole in the carpet as the connecting door to his bedroom was thrown open with considerable energy and Saran stalked in, his face harsh. The larger man approached him with a stride that was unnervingly predatory, his eyes glittering oddly as they fixed on Trey.
"Shower and pack a bag. We leave for Halfway Station in thirty minutes," Saran ordered in a clipped tone. "We're going to stop this lunatic before he tries to take out Jim at his father's birthday party."
Trey nodded, his eyes wide. The hairs on his arms prickled as momentarily Saran's so-icy-they-were-nearly-silver eyes seemed to burn so fiercely they seared through him. For an instant Saran loomed too close inside Trey's personal space, and the air was thick with dangerous intent; Saran's gaze dropped to Trey's throat and his lips parted very slightly, the tip of his tongue brushing his top lip as he watched the visibly pounding pulse. From somewhere deep inside Saran somehow brought it back from the brink and he turned on his heel, leaving as abruptly as he entered.
Trey swallowed heavily and felt his gut muscles clench tightly. He had a sudden certainty that he had come very, very close to being a Sentinel Smorgasbord. Firmly slamming the mental door as his nightmares stirred and gibbered, reaching out with searing skeletal fingers from his memory, Trey hurried into the shower, and then packed essentially but lightly with the ease of long practice. A full five minutes before the allotted time ran out he was down in the grand lobby, smiling nervously at Singh as the Commissioner's private shuttle approached the Residence.
Halfway Station, a few hours after that…The Dark Guide was angry. Not throwing heavy crockery angry or impugning the virtue of your mother/other female relatives angry, but icily, internally angry, a tightly controlled but nevertheless very real rage.
This was one of the occasions when Blair Sandburg was in full accord with his Dark Guide persona. Unlike many Sentinels, including Jim, and Guides too, Blair had always had more of an ability to separate rationally detached, scientific "Blair Sandburg" from the more instinctive, emotionally responsive "Dark Guide". This ability to "disassociate", almost but not quite verging on Multiple Personality Disorder, had been vital in keeping him sane during the time when he was tortured and brutalised as Alexandra Barnes' slave.
Now however, both Blair Sandburg and Dark Guide were in full on "search and destroy" mode, provoked to seething ire over the mere idea that any creature would dare, would actually dare to threaten Jim Ellison!
This opulent, gloriously appointed suite of marble and crystal, fur and silk in Halfway's most exclusive hotel could have been a dirt-floor shack for all the attention Blair gave it as he prowled. When they found this scumbag that even thought about hurting Jim, Blair was going to crush his throat with his own fingers, then he was going to –
"Miss me?" The amused voice was a deep rumble as Jim came into the suite, casually sending a foot behind him to kick shut the door, knowing it would autolock.
With a growl, Blair came right up to him and hugged him tightly, rubbing his face into Jim's throat as he expanded his empathic abilities to check that Jim was safe. Ignoring the luxurious décor, Jim scooped him up, clasping the smaller man to his torso and lifting slightly so Blair's feet left the floor before moving a few steps and sprawling carelessly on a priceless French Louis XIV chaise longue. Jim hitched up the couch slightly, resting his back against it with Blair cuddled up against him like a child seeking comfort. Carefully Jim lightly massaged the tense muscles of Blair's back, knowing his Guide was angry on his behalf and frightened for him, for all Jim's lethal abilities as a Dark Angel, but did not attempt to initiate any deeper bonding than the lighter touches.
Blair's throat was already a blue/black/yellow/purple/red mottled mess that made it look as if someone had tried to throttle him. Each bruise was courtesy of an enthusiastic Dark Sentinel who, lacking the common sense of James Ellison, would eagerly Bond as many times as he could subdue his Dark Guide, and worry for Jim's safety had rendered the Dark Guide too submissive. Just one of the many issues Jim and Blair were working through.
On one level, the assassination threat situation had helped speed up the process of more profound bonding, the deep emotional rapport a Sentinel and Guide built up over time, bringing to light problems that would have stayed hidden longer under other circumstances. Since Bonding with Jim Ellison, Blair was gradually working to reintegrate the two vastly disparate sides of his personality – the frantically inconspicuous, ordinary "Mr Nobody" Blair Sandburg and the powerful impulses of Dark Guide.
Helped by Dark Angel counsellors and the very discreet therapists eagerly supplied by William Ellison, there had still been difficulties as the pacifist, free-thinking side of Blair tried to mesh with the often homicidal, definitely opinionated Dark Guide side. The already pre-existing prelidiction toward internal conflict only aggravated the nightmares and psychological trauma from being the victim of long term torture, rape and mental abuse by the only other Dark Sentinel to exist in modern times, Alexandra Barnes.
Now accepted by the inner circle of Cascade PD's Major Crime Unit, Jim's "cover" life as a Lieutenant Detective Ellison had been very satisfying. Since he owned the entire block and had oodles of cash, it had been the work of moments for Jim to get the guy in the apartment below the loft to vacate towards warmer climes. Then Jim had had a spiral staircase put in and turned the whole thing into a two-level apartment. His and Blair's ferocious Bonding right here on Halfway had found equilibrium as they worked alongside and with each other in their "normal" lives.
Jim and Blair had become attuned to each other intellectually and emotionally besides chemically and empathically as they did normal, everyday things like buying groceries and decorating their home. There had been bickering and good-natured laughter as Blair decried Jim's "limited" décor of fishing, baseball and contact sport memorabilia plus his "anal retentive" neat freak approach in the original loft, while Jim had retorted by taking issue with the "weird and way ugly" tribal stuff adorning Blair's walls downstairs, plus the general disarray that made the place look like "several tornadoes fought to the death in here".
When the first whispers of someone planning to kill Jim had come through they had been treated with incredulous scorn due such insanity, but the rumours were too persistent to be easily ignored, and too specific in their assertion that the killer could strike at Jim even in the very heart of the Oligarchy. That someone he knew personally could be a killer had not sat well with Jim, and when some assholes began to speculate on whether the "unstable" Dark Guide would be the culprit, well…murder had been very close to being done in the precinct.
To say that Blair had been distraught was an understatement. Jim had found him one afternoon in Hunter's office, no less, after inadvertently hearing some pretty vicious gossiping while in the restroom. Suddenly knowing his Guide was acutely distressed, Jim had left Simon's office abruptly with the big Captain close behind him, and he had been far from happy to find his Guide in the office of Bondless Sentinel Ellison Vincent Hunter, who had his arm round Blair's shoulders. Violence was averted – at least temporarily – when Blair threw himself into Jim's embrace shaking like a leaf in an autumn gale. Retreating to the loft, Jim had finally got the tangled story from Blair, who could talk solidly for at least an hour seemingly without needing to replenish oxygen, before the anthropologist begged Jim to believe that he would never, ever, try to hurt Jim.
Jim had gathered him up, soothing, calming, even as part of his brain worked on the problem of where to dispose of the corpses of those that had upset his Guide. Blair had only killed Alex Barnes after persistent, long-term abuse of the worse kind, and still went on guilt trips about it. The idea that he would willingly or knowingly harm Jim, with whom he had a positive relationship, was utterly ludicrous! Jim had soothed and Blair had calmed down, externally at least. That night, an almost intangibly faint scent of blood roused Jim from slumber. It was so negligible as to be like that caused by a mere razor's nick or scrape. Nevertheless, it was his Guide's blood. Having already become accustomed to Blair's frequent albeit entirely understandable nightmares, Jim had been subconsciously hyper alert since retiring for the night.
Already uneasy with the idea that Blair was far less sanguine that he'd earlier appeared, and again having been abruptly introduced to Blair's penchant for severe anxiety attacks, Jim had silently slipped downstairs. The shallow, thin white scars on Blair's forearms that had been subconsciously nagging at Jim since their wild Full Bonding were explained completely as his Sentinel sight cleaved the darkness to see Blair deliberately press a razor blade against his skin again. The Dark Sentinel had reacted immediately to the threat and secured the Guide so he couldn't harm himself, then Jim Ellison had gone ballistic. Essentially Blair was punishing himself for causing "all this trouble" to Jim.
There were more counselling sessions, at which Jim insisted on being present, before Blair began to make his way back to full mental health. The therapists had made a point with each session to take Jim to one side and emphasise the need for him to be both verbally reassuring and physically tactile with his Guide so as to reinforce Blair's fragile feelings of "worthiness" in being the Dark Guide. Each of the therapists had also made the point that Blair's actually reasonable mental stability was nothing short of miraculous. Considering what Blair had suffered physically, mentally and emotionally with Alex Barnes, it was nothing short of amazing that he wasn't an out and out basket case, or at the very least seriously addicted to drugs/alcohol. Zero self-esteem, panic attacks, a relatively minor dependency on sleeping medication and a tendency towards self-harm were, Jim was sternly assured, actually a very small price he was paying in getting his Dark Guide.
However that situation had meant that when Jim first came up with his plan to use himself as bait on Halfway Station to try and draw out the assassin to do something stupid, his tentative suggestions that Blair stay with Simon – i.e., safe – on Earth perished almost instantly. Blair had looked at him with big, devastated eyes that clearly telegraphed his belief that Jim wanted him to stay behind because he thought there was some basis to the slanders and didn't trust Blair. With nightmare images of a left-behind Blair fatally taking a razorblade to his wrists instead of just his arms, Jim had nixed that plan almost instantly. Since then however, Blair had displayed nothing but anger at the fact anyone would dare try to hurt Jim and a disconcerting Dark Guide bloodlust to eviscerate the culprit, which made Jim suspect that he had fallen for a bit of puppy-dog-eyes manipulation.
"Everything okay?" Blair asked finally, sitting up and away from Jim, though only by inches, on the end of the couch.
"Set. Race and Gage should be arriving tomorrow." Jim regretted the loss of contact, but knew it was for the best. His Dark Sentinel side had been whispering persistent, too tempting suggestions of how he could twist his body just a little bit that way and pin his Guide down to be claimed.
Jim's working theory, which he sincerely hoped to be true, was that the "Murderer Presumptive" as Blair christened the would-be assassin was seriously mentally deranged. At least so loony he could be pushed into a stupid pre-emptive strike if Jim acted arrogantly unconcerned enough, which was why they were here – Race/Gage, Saran/Trey and Jim/Blair – like sitting ducks. Ostensibly, Jim was meeting his two closest Oligarchy friends to "discuss" the forthcoming rapprochement with his father and half-brother Hunter. With three prime targets sitting large as life in some exposed café on the Promenade, Jim could only hope that the "MP" would be lazy enough to want an easy target and make the mistake of grabbing at the gift horse.
"Do you think it'll work?" Blair asked, getting up and going into the suite's spacious and space age kitchen, opening the Chill Cabinet. He smiled in pleasure at the bowls of diced fruit on the bed of ice, freshly prepared daily by the hotel's attentive staff with a Sentinel's sensitive and exacting palate in mind. Since joining Cascade PD, Jim had been far too happy to limit his diet to the "Cops Four Basic Food Groups" – sugar, salt, grease and caffeine.
Taking one out, he brought it to Jim who took it and began to pop sweet juicy pieces into his mouth. "Actually, I really do think it's got a ninety-percent plus chance of working," Jim commented after swallowing a chunk of melon, "but I'm definitely hoping so. I will not have this whacko turning my dad's party into Molnar Station!"
Blair laid a hand on one tense bicep, feeling the bigger man's muscles clench and then slowly relax under his fingers. Throughout history, the "solitary psycho" had always been more difficult to bring down than larger criminal or terrorist organisations – the Lone Gunman, Unabomber, serial killing Dr Harold Shipman, Gregory Pleat, the list went on, most notoriously of all to Henry Rothman. Rothman had placed a plasma bomb directly under the main rotunda of Molnar Space Station, which had detonated at the height of the lunch/shopping period. Tearing a gaping hole in the Station's outer hull, the blast had resulted in 27,232 dead men, women and children in under five minutes. Less than a hundred people had survived the atrocity, those in the farthermost reaches of the station who had had vital seconds to seal themselves off from the depressurised areas. Blair knew that the idea of one inconspicuous person being able to slip a plasma or neutron bomb into a vase at the Ellison Ziggurat and then just walk away while over a thousand people died horribly was giving Jim nightly bad dreams that his black ops profession embellished in gruesome Technicolor and digital sound.
Jim relaxed slowly as he breathed in Blair's unique scent and finished off the bowl of fruit, wondering how far he would get in persuading Blair to order steak not chicken or fish from room service. Jim had nothing against herbal tea and poultry, but a man needed juicy medium red meat.
Their mental connection enabled him to sense Blair's sudden suspicion of his smile and he looked up to find Blair giving him his best schoolteacher look through his spectacles. However, the combination of tousled hair and gentle smile made him look much more towards cute than stern. "What're you up to, Jim?" Blair tried to maintain the firm "Guide in charge" tone.
Jim smirked at him. "Just thinking about a return visit to the Arboretum when this is over." He laughed as Blair blushed a rosy hue and confessed, "Actually I was thinking about dinner. Two smothered steaks with baked potato, okay?" He picked up the internal comlink.
Blair, still caught up in memories of the Arboretum, nodded automatically and then narrowed his eyes as what Jim said registered. "Wait a minute, you've been stuffing yourself with Wonderburger all week –"
"You said a Sentinel needs a higher calorie intake," Jim reminded him righteously. "Besides I need a steak to take my mind of what I'd really like."
"What?" Blair asked. As long as it wasn't another Ultimate Wonderburger Meal, he'd consider it.
"You, Guide." Jim allowed a growl to creep into his voice and grinned again when Blair blushed even more furiously than before. Chuckling aloud, Jim picked up the comlink again and resolutely ignored the voice in his head that was arguing how Blair's bruised throat wasn't that bad and why not devour the steak and then his Guide too? Damn, nobility was taxing.
"…Yeah, Saran and Trey Logan are due here in the next 36 hours." Race Keegan leaned back against the headboard of the massive, silk covered bed in his own opulent suite as he spoke to Jim Ellison via the Dark Angels secure comlink, unaware of how his focussed attention made him seem even more "Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes" looking. "Then we can get this "wandering around with figurative bullseyes on our backs" show on the road. Yep…uh-uh…see ya. " Race ended the call and turned his attention back to the massive vid screen that had lowered from the ceiling on command and which was now in danger of his Guide throwing peanuts at it in disgust.
Gage's peculiar reddish-hazel coloured eyes had darkened to almost a dark green-black in disgust as he glared at the membrane thin, crystalline clear screen – or rather the game being played out thereon. As humanity spread out from Earth, many sports including Soccer, American Football, Rugby, Baseball, Ice Hockey, Boxing, Wrestling and so forth had found new and lucrative audiences amongst the stars. Race Keegan discovered his Guide was a fanatical Canadian Ice Hockey fan and found himself drawn into the game as well. Of course, his Guide was always more fun to watch especially when Gage got really into the game and started arguing with the oblivious referee, insulting the opposing players, or ranting at the screen. As a precaution, Race plucked the bowl of snacks from where it nestled between them as they sprawled out side by side on a bed so massive it needed a telescope to see one side from the other and placed it on the bedside cabinet.
"Everything in place?" Gage enquired lazily, evincing no qualm about the prospect of parking his butt in the firing line of a homicidal maniac.
But then Gage was used to danger. Race's hairs still stood to attention at the way his Guide could go from mentally incisive to mentally vacant when he got wrapped up in some exciting – to him - new discovery. That was the point when Gage would recklessly take the risk of crawling inside structurally unsound stone temples weighing many tonnes, or venture inside war zones or across hazardous Frontier Worlds for artefacts, usually merely dirty, damaged fragments of rock. "Yep." Race stretched himself. The trip to Halfway Station had been tiring and longer than normal due to a lot of traffic at one of the Stargate points. "After Saran and Trey arrive, the six of us are going to accidentally meet up on The Promenade and then go to lunch at the Café Armand. Hopefully the Murderer Presumptive, as Blair calls him, will decide to take advantage of a golden opportunity. Hunter and the Dark Angels are already discreetly entering the station courtesy of Saran's "Contaminated Bays". The Promenade will be knee deep in them by the time we're eating lunch."
Gage raised an eyebrow. "I thought Jim and his brother didn't get on, at least not enough for Hunter to risk sensory overload by coming to Halfway when he's a Bondless Sentinel?"
Race shrugged, a Bondless Sentinel being someone he could not view with equanimity. "Blair's been working some of that empathic voodoo on the pair of them, backed up by Bill Ellison himself. The Patriarch has been dying to connect with Jim and Hunter for years and he's not going to miss the opportunity Jim's Bonding with Blair has given him to build some bridges."
Gage nodded, accepting as fact Race Keegan's assessment of the inner workings of one of the Oligarchy High Houses. He was interested in Race's social background both as his Guide and also scientifically as archaeology and anthropology overlapped; Gage's chats with Blair had left him grinning as the anthropologist in Blair took over completely in the face of his opportunity to study the social structure of the Oligarchy in depth. Sandburg still bounced with excitement and waved his hands about like a startled chicken trying to take flight when he got hot under the collar about some new anthropological idea he'd had.
"Hunter had decided to come in with the last group of DAs and leave immediately after we've taken down the MP and the situation is secure – he knows how antsy he makes Bonded Sentinels," Race carried on.
"What if the MP doesn't try to take Jim out from close range or as a sniper?" Gage commented.
"We'll have to think on our feet," admitted Race, "but we've done everything possible to leave only those two options open. We can't cover every contingency." His expression clearly said he would have liked to.
Just like the six men's "accidental" meeting, the lunch at the Café Armand would be a "spur of the moment" thing, giving the MP – hopefully keeping Jim under surveillance – no chance to plant a bomb or other remote controlled cause of mayhem. Exclusive and extortionately expensive, Café Armand had been chosen for three reasons: first, the food was hand prepared in sight of the diners, ensuring the MP could not somehow slip poison into the food or drink, secondly it's broad balcony overlooking The Promenade, ideal for a sniper shot, and thirdly for the broad elevated sidewalk that allowed shoppers and celebrity spotters to walk past and gawk at the elegant and famous dining, ideal for allowing the MP to sneak up close and try a shot from a hand held firearm.
Of course Jim, indeed all six men, would be wearing Black Widow Spider Silk to protect their torsos. Unless the MP was a professional killer, in which case he would not fall for this trap, it was unlikely he would try for a headshot either by sniper rifle or close up firearm. For an amateur, it was simply too difficult to kill or sufficiently disable the target when aiming at such a small area of the body, particularly if the victim wasn't stationary.
Jim intended to fidget a lot.
"There's no chance he'll spot the Dark Angel snipers?" Gage pressed, his protective instincts towards his Sentinel having been on full alert for several days. He wasn't entirely enthralled with the plan, but the notion of just Saran and Jim meeting up on Halfway was too far out there for even the crazy killer to swallow. So interstellar playboy Race Keegan had been added to the mix to allay suspicions, and of course Gage's best friend was former detective Trey Logan, Saran's Guide. Nice and neat. Yeah, right.
"Nope," Race reassured. "We got our top men out there. The Hellhound even offered his sniper before we could ask. Somehow I don't think Donnelly has integrated well with the Hellhound," he snickered.
Gage grimaced, having met the Dark Angel known by the unkind sobriquet "Hellhound". It suited Chris Larabee all to well; Gage had recoiled from the roiling, boiling emotions seething inside the outwardly, coldly savage Dark Angel, a venomous tongued alcoholic who dressed in solid black and whose psychotic temper was legendary. Larabee was also a Bondless Sentinel like Hunter, but retained none of the Internal Affairs Captain's redeeming humanity. Fortunately, the guy's aversion to the prospect of Bonding with a Guide was almost pathological, meaning he posed little threat to empaths.
Allowing himself to relax, Gage quipped, "Yeah, well I hope this visit to Halfway is better than my last trip."
Race went utterly still and turned a stricken look upon Gage. Instantly the air became almost congealed with sudden tension. Gage suddenly realised the way his words sounded. He had meant the words as a joking aside, having completely forgotten that the last time he had been on Halfway Station, he had been attacked and beaten by Race, while Blair and Trey had been captured as Wild Empaths and Bonded - far from willingly – to Jim Ellison and Saran Van den Mikhail.
Making the command gesture that shut off the vid screen and had it retracting into the ceiling, Gage reached out a hand and laid it on Race's rigid forearm. "I was joking, Race. You can read my emotions; you can see I didn't mean anything by it!"
Race pulled him close, opening up the psychic link between Sentinel and Guide; Gage hugged him, sending waves of reassurances. The Sentinel had punished his Guide not so much for the deceit, though he had been angry at that, but for undertaking situations that put Gage at personal risk, and had no difficulties over giving Gage a beating that he would do again if necessary to discipline his Guide. The man Race Keegan was far less sanguine. The problem was that Race felt guilty about not feeling guilty.
Gage reached up a hand and gently stroked Race's hair, their close physical positions "boosting" the link so he could very easily cut through the surging and spinning whorls of distressed emotions. While the Guide accepted the discipline for his reckless actions, Gage Butler was far less tranquil. As a full-grown adult who had made his way, often alone, in some of the most dangerous and inhospitable environments the universe had to offer, his "inner self" had had quite a bit of venting to do about being spanked like a naughty child. Gage could telepathically "read" how deep, deep down Race was terrified that Gage would come to resent or outright hate Race for his empathic dependency on the Sentinel, regardless of the fact that both men were just obeying millennia of genetic imperatives.
Clasping the back of Race's head, Gage leaned backwards until he was supported by the thick bed cushions and had pulled Race down over him. "I don't hate you, Race, you know that, you can see that every time we bond!"
Race buried his face in Gage's neck, extending out brilliant flame-orange tendrils of need across the mental plane that Gage instantly met with his own soothing, grass-green hued empathic energy. The coruscating colours meshed and scintillated as the link thrummed. Like this, neither could hide anything from the other and Race calmed as he was wrapped in the empathic blanket of his Guide's emotions; he nuzzled that sensitive spot under Gage's ear and instantly Gage titled his head back allowing access to his throat. However, instead of biting to mark his Guide, Race was content to just bask in the gentle emotional warmth of the bond. Secure in their mutual devotion, the two men eventually fell asleep.
Saran strolled through Halfway's massive Promenade as if window-shopping. He was wearing plain dark-grey straight cut pants outside custom-made genuine leather boots and a tunic that gave no hint of the Black Widow Spider Silk shield underneath it. Reminiscent of an Oriental style, Saran's tunic had an all round, stiff high collar that effectively hid his Body Heir tattoo from public view. Out of "context", without the official entourage and media circus that accompanied the all-powerful LEO High Commissioner, none of the passers by were giving Saran a second glance and of course Trey's neck did not bear any giveaway tattoo, a situation Saran had finally decided to remedy immediately when they returned from this little adventure.
Saran knew he looked like just one more rich guy on a spending spree at the famous Halfway Station. However, his bland expression hid tensions that prickled deep down in his stomach and created a sort of psychic "itch" inside the base of his skull. Jim and Blair Sandburg had arrived first several days ago, and were hopefully under surveillance by Jim's would-be assassin, followed by Race and Gage Butler a few days later. The luxury liner transporting Saran and Trey had arrived late last night and, after showering and taking a short rest, Saran and Trey were ambling along waiting to "bump into" the other two.
Saran's main itch was the station itself. A general prickling unease started in Saran as the two of them left the luxury liner and it's specially shielded superstructure (for which guests were charged handsomely), increasing proportionally as obsequious Customs officials ushered them past glowering lines of waiting travellers at Passport Control. From the instant he stepped through Passport Control into Halfway Station proper, Saran remembered just why Sentinels generally, and in particular Bondless Sentinels such as he himself technically still was, avoided the place like it was a tax inspector. Dialling down his sight and hearing was actually not that much of a problem, but few people ever really understood how powerful a sense smell really was.
Hit by thousands of scents from all directions, Saran had dialled it down to below nothing. No, actually scent wasn't so much powerful as pervasive. Like spilt milk, it lingered long after you could have sworn you'd scrubbed the spot into nothing more than memory. However, the instant Saran had dialled his sense of smell down in self-defence, he'd suddenly realised that he must have subconsciously been "locked" onto Trey's uniquely individual body odour for quite some time, despite both of them taking the Bonding Heat suppressants, because his Sentinel side immediately moved up a DefCon when the Guide's scent was abruptly blocked. Of course since they had not undergone Full Bonding, there was no psychic link between them, which was what a Sentinel and Guide fell back on in situations where they weren't in close physical proximity to each other, for example, if one was on a spaceship and the other miles below on the planet it was orbiting.
Another thing that was making his primitive side twitch was the fact that he could sense the presence of Bondless Sentinels with overwhelming clarity, as if each were walking around under a big neon arrow stating: THIS IS ONE. Their presence set Saran's teeth on edge. There were at least seven alone amongst the Dark Angels currently infiltrated inside The Promenade, including Captain Hunter.
Showing deft perspicacity, Vince Hunter had arrived separately from Jim, Race and Saran with a small cell of Dark Angel Hunter-Killer agents on a transport shuttle yesterday. Like Saran, Hunter was not a Dark Angel, a situation Saran knew would probably soon change for Cascade's Internal Affairs Captain. With encouragement from Blair, an only child who had always craved siblings, Hunter and his half-brother had quickly reached détente, albeit not always comfortably. Arriving from Earth to help Jim against this threat, sarcastic, grim Ellison Vincent Hunter had slipped easily into the Dark Angels' society and most importantly, the Dark Angels liked him.
There was also the issue that Hunter was reaching his late forties, the very outer limits of how long a Bondless Sentinel could maintain mental and emotional stability. That alone told interested parties the strength of his sensory abilities, even though he wasn't a Dark Sentinel. Most Sentinels who did not manage to bond became rapidly mentally ill by their early thirties and were complete basket cases by thirty-five. The only other Bondless Sentinel to survive to a similar age and retain sanity was the Hellhound, Christopher Larabee, who was also present and whose Bondless state grated equally against Saran's nerves. Larabee had been co-opted into the Dark Angels several years ago and Saran knew the Dark Angels would take a similar pro-active course with Hunter. If they didn't, he certainly intended to "suggest" it in his LEO Commissioner role. A powerful, trained-killing-machine Bondless Sentinel wandering around teetering on the edge of lunacy had been dangerous enough in Larabee's case, but Hunter complicated the issue even further by being the firstborn, albeit illegitimate, child of a Patriarch. The political scheming and intrigues that could be spawned by that single fact alone didn't bear thinking about.
What was most displeasing to Saran however, was again down to Trey Logan's presence. The Halfway PD had been threatened with a thousand fates worse than death if they interfered in any way with what would hopefully go down on The Promenade, or arrived "too fast" at the scene. However, a total lack of police officers present in the pickpocket and petty-crime plagued Promenade would be a red flag for anyone watching Jim who was even half way rational, so a few uniformed officers "for show" were scattered about like confetti. To Saran's irritation, Trey had walked half a step behind his shoulder, in a semi-subservient, semi-hiding way, but then Saran had seen the looks cast at Trey by his former colleagues. Some were sympathetic, as if Trey had suffered a tragedy, which made Saran bristle mentally. Others were pitying, as if Trey were some abused animal, which made Saran's lips tighten. Still others were overtly sneering, as if Trey were a figure of amusement and Saran noted how Trey's pale skin was flushed slightly. Some of the glances were almost leering and Saran's hands itched to slap those faces that shot coquettish looks implying all sorts of nasty things about Saran and Trey's relationship. Unconsciously his frame grew taller as his spine went stiffer, and his already naturally forbidding expression became more so. Unknowingly he spared Trey even more discomfort for several spiteful individuals lost their "courage" as Saran's eyes became ever more icy as he walked along.
Side by side, Gage and Race were ambling leisurely along from the opposite direction and the four men "bumped into each other" with expressions of surprise. Hyper aware of Trey, Saran noted how his Guide instantly shed a bundle of tension just by laying eyes on Race Keegan's composed, self-confident Guide Gage Butler and felt a familiar surge of pique. The four men changed direction towards the Café Armand, where they "accidentally" met Jim and Blair about to go in, and decided to lunch together.
Neither Race nor Jim had disguised the tattoos denoting rank that adorned their necks. Race was too well known from the media due to his disguising "interstellar playboy" lifestyle and this was one occasion where Jim wanted to be deferred to by people; if a fire fight started, their tendency to instantly obey him might save lives, besides which trying to disguise his tattoo would jar with the "Arrogant-Thinking-I'm-Invulnerable" obnoxiousness he was projecting as a lure towards the assassin.
It was Jim's tattoo that got their request for a table for six on the balcony instantly granted, with a group of lesser diners being knocked down the list as the Maitre D' personally escorted them to the table they had specifically requested. Tactfully everyone ignored the rainbow-hued state of Blair's neck; Race and Saran actually seemed to have a tinge of envy and Gage shot his Sentinel a stern, "don't even think about it" glare.
Ordering coffee for them, Jim leaned back casually in his chair with the attitude of man without a care in the world. "I think it's working, so be ready."
Blair nodded, holding the menu in front of him as if they were discussing what to order. "Yeah, our spider sense has been tingling. We both get the feeling someone is watching us – " he broke off as the waitress came with the coffee.
"Have you any notions as to who would want you dead this much?" Race asked his cousin as Gage started pouring coffees.
Saran accepted his cup as Jim replied, formulating a question himself but then he noticed what Gage was doing. Ladling three sugars and a hefty dose of thick cream into the rich coffee, Gage vaguely held it out to Trey who equally as absently took it and imbibed a large sip without so much as blinking. Saran took his coffee black and strong and Trey had never once even looked at cream and sugar, never mind asked him to pass them over! For pity's sake, was Logan trying to give him a guilt complex? How could a detective on Halfway Station, one of the toughest precincts around, be so timid?
At the same time, Jim was shaking his head. "I could paper a wall with the list of nasty people who'd sell their mothers for the chance to kill me, but the point is not one of them has either the balls or the ability to be quote, confident of killing me on Eden, unquote."
For a split-second of a split-second, Gage and Trey's eyes met before Trey's eyelashes swept down. Such an infinitesimal moment would not even have been picked up by cameras or surveillance devices, but they were dealing with three Alpha Sentinels, two of whom were already hypersensitive to – and sheepishly jealous of - the deep friendship between their respective Guides.
Jim's eyes blazed. "My family are not suspects, Guide!" The Dark Sentinel's voice was a low snarl.
Trey's eyes opened impossibly wide; Gage's entire body flexed as he prepared to defend Trey against the Sentinel he didn't really like; Race stiffened as he faced the dichotomy of protecting his Guide from the angry Dark Sentinel who was also his friend; Saran's eyes narrowed dangerously, affronted by the fact that Trey had instinctively looked towards Gage and not him for succour.
Their reactions occurred in another fraction of a second. Blair instantly acted to verbally extinguish the burning fuse of insulted anger. "It's not like being a detective, Trey, where the family or close friends are the immediate suspects. The Oligarchy and the High Houses don't work like that."
"That's right," Gage put in to help defuse the tension. "These people are seriously weird, but not fratricidal."
"Hey!" Race scowled at his Guide.
Gage sniggered and then managed to not-quite-snipe, "Didn't Saran bother to explain the insanity to you?"
Saran's spine went rigid at the Guide's subtext but before he could part his lips, it suddenly struck him how feeble his intended retort of "I've been busy!" would sound. He would come off like some middle-management desk-warming husband trying to get out of admitting he'd forgotten his wedding anniversary or something!
Trey's voice was soft, "I apologise, Sentinel Ellison. It's just that I was a detective for a long time, and statistics show that most homicide victims are killed by an immediate family member – spouse, parent, child, or sibling."
Jim could feel the heat of Blair and Gage's twin glares and mentally protested at finding himself the bad guy when he'd been insulted, but he soothed, "It's all right, you can't override years of proven "cop life experience" in a few months. But please don't worry about me being attacked by anyone in my family. Gage is tactless but correct, the High Houses don't quite operate according to the same reality as other people. Nobody in my family would kill me in order to become the Body Heir or indeed any variation on that theme."
Race interjected, "That's right. As long as you are not the Body Heir, being the scion of a High House really is "all gain and no pain". We reap the benefits without having to bear the burdens."
"I couldn't give my siblings or cousins the Body Heirship," Saran noted.
"Hunter is still very much in a "wouldn't touch a penny of the Ellison megabillions if you begged me" sort of place," Jim admitted of his half-brother. "Stephen is more than happy with his current position in the Ellison family business and would run a mile, screaming all the way. My half-sister Suzette is her mother Ehlan's Body Heir and Edmund is set on becoming a doctor, even if the pair of them weren't a bit too young yet for that sort of Machiavellian plotting, übergeniuses though they are. The rest of the Ellison clan is only too happy to sit back and enjoy the bank accounts available without the work that goes into replenishing them. I have quite a few relatives who would probably smile if I happened to die, but they wouldn't dream of arranging my untimely end."
Trey looked blandly at Gage, eradicating all vestiges of a smirk from face and tone of voice. "So the High House clans are a couple of gunmen short of an Apocalypse, but they're not inherently homicidal?"
"Yep," Gage asserted, ignoring both the glares directed at them by three offended Sentinels and also the disguised snickering of a Dark Guide, who was heard to repeat, "couple of gunmen short of an Apocalypse?" in a sotto voce hiccoughing snigger.
Standing in a shallow alcove on the broad walkway less than ten feet away from his target, Ruis de y l'Almonte's fingers tightened anticipatorily around the energy weapon in his hand. He sneered as he watched the six men settle down to lunch with obvious camaraderie, utterly clueless as to their vulnerability. This was so easy!
The elevated sidewalk passed right by Café Armand, within a couple of feet by their table. The shallow alcove was just deep enough for one adult to stand within it and be hidden from view to everyone except those who passed by it. The hustling, bustling throng of shoppers were a flowing but superbly concealing barrier as they walked past Ruis' position without even noticing he was there. Ruis' weapon was an aptly named Altairian Blaster,looking like a giant red onion with a handle. Long both illegal and obsolete, most people including a lot of law enforcement officers wouldn't have recognised it as a weapon even had Ruis been openly waving it about instead of keeping it discreetly half-hidden by his hand.
He eyed the six men again, glee bubbling up as he saw the fools enjoying their meal and joking with each other; he should have done this years ago! He had spent years hunting on his father's Eden estate, but anticipation unparalleled shot through Ruis at the thought of looking straight into Ellison's startled eyes and blasting a hole the size of a basketball in the asshole's chest…his genitals began to swell in response to the surging lust in his body…oh yeah…maybe even during the resulting screaming and panic, he could stun that pouty-mouthed Dark Guide and drag him somewhere quiet where the little whore could put that mouth and that ass to better use…
Ruis licked his lips greedily, savouring the adrenaline. He'd blow away Ellison, maybe even the High-and-Mighty LEO Commissioner to boot, and be the other side of the station before the first screams had faded. He would attend the funeral with Dear Old Dad, properly sober and shocked. Then it would be time for his old fart of a father to have an unfortunate accident. Perhaps a heart attack or a stroke?
He checked the table again. The six men had polished off a variety of foodstuffs that tended towards steak and ribs smothered in sweet sauces, and were now making inroads on Café Armand's famed melt-in-your-mouth confections, which were guaranteed to be laden with crème patisserie and 90 cocoa-butter chocolate. They were ideally positioned for Ruis to simply walk as if going past and then just bring up the blaster and fire.
He blew out a breath, settling the fluttering in his stomach now that The Moment had come. Ruis had scrapped his original plan, to hire a hitman to zone Ellison out and kill him in Cascade. The assassin would realistically have only one shot and if he failed would be killed or worse, captured, by Ellison and forced to reveal his employer. Even if he was successful, Ruis would have to hire someone to kill him, then get rid of that witness, and so forth; much easier, cheaper and sweeter to do it himself! Other problems had then presented themselves though. It was unlikely he could escape from Cascade without someone noticing the presence of the Body Heir of High House de y l'Almonte, so killing Ellison in some other convenient locale where he was less likely to be noticed and where he could escape among large crowds of panicking people had become Ruis' plan du jour. Despite his self-delusions of grandeur, Ruis knew himself to be unskilled with long-range weapons such as a rifle, so he decided on a hand-held firearm.
Smiling happily, Ruis stepped out of the alcove and slipped effortlessly into the bustling crowd, walking casually towards the table. His overwhelming hubris meant that Ruis had never considered the fact that his "close-up" kills had always been inflicted on creatures unable to fight back instead of an equally sentient being capable of retaliatory action. Deferred to – spoilt rotten - since the cradle, he gave not a second's consideration to wondering what action the Guides – he didn't even think of them as human – might take.
Blair made a loud, completely unapologetic sucking sound as he slurped the luscious Morello Cherries off his spoon. He hadn't even tried to fight the Healthy Nourishment versus Yummy Food battle and tucked in along with the others. His wistful question to the Maitre D' as to whether Café Armand had any desserts containing real Earth Morello Cherries had been answered with a definite yes. Blair was completely unaware of the fact that behind his turned head his Sentinel's eyes were boring through the unfortunate Maitre D' as they silently but grimly told the poor man that if the Café Armand didn't have real Earth Morello Cherries, they'd better find some, fast. The other men valiantly hid their smirks as Blair turned back to the table happily.
Gage and Race were self-confessed chocoholics, tucking into twin plates of rich goo with glee. Saran had the least sweet tooth of them all, eating a fresh-fruit and choux pastry combination.
Trey's lunch order, crispy chicken with Jack Daniels whisky glaze dip, had proved such a winner that he hadn't actually gotten to eat any of his first order. When the second batch came around, Trey actually went so far as to bat Saran's hand away and glare at the others pointedly with his fork poised to strike. He relaxed now that his dessert wasn't under such threat. He liked tart things and the lemon and lime dessert he was now slowly making his way through was superb.
It was Trey and not Blair, for all the latter's Dark Guide status, who sensed a frisson of something a few seconds ahead of the other two empaths. He had always been acutely sensitive to subtle nuances of emotion that even other powerful empaths missed; it was part of the reason why he had been so tragically good at his job in the Juvenile Crimes Division. Running his tongue over his tingling teeth as he decided where to attack his dessert again from next, Trey felt the external mixture of anticipation, sexual arousal, glee and jubilation wash over him. For a moment his lips curved upwards in response to the blast of ebullience but then, like a bitter aftertaste, the "greasy" taint of dark undercurrents surged. The anticipation was overlaid with an afterimage of spurting blood and the sickly-sweet stench of charred human flesh. The building lust carried with it the echoing screams of a body violated against it's will; the glee was spiteful; the jubilation viscously cloying with hate.
Blair and Gage caught the empathic ripple a second later, and simultaneously, Trey's eyes widened as he mentally received an emotion so strong it was actually visual: pure bloodlust wrapped in the image of Jim Ellison's chest exploding in a spray of gore.
Sentinel-hyperactive reflexes kicked in before conscious thought and sent the three men back out of harm's way as in unison Trey, Gage and Blair surged upright from beside their startled Sentinels, throwing the table forward to act as a shielding barrier even as Sentinel ears detected the low whoooof-whine sound peculiar to the charging power cells of hand-held energy weapons. Coffee, confectionary and crockery flew through the air to spatter, splat and shatter unheeded. Before mouths could formulate any question or demands regarding this extraordinary behaviour, the overturned table rocked as it absorbed the discharge of a hand-held blaster that a second earlier would have impacted with Jim Ellison's chest – after going through Gage Butler first. No further explanations were needed.
Screams filled the air as people tried to scatter away from the epicentre of the mayhem. Ruis reeled momentarily in shock, unable to adjust mentally as his blast killed the table and not Ellison. Ruis took in the three unharmed Guides and as had happened often before, he was swamped with an unreasoning, bestial rage that consumed him and drove rational thought from his brain. Shrieking in rage at their daring to thwart him, he fired straight at the Dark Guide, completely oblivious to his surroundings. He heard nothing of the shouting around him, saw nothing of the dangerous looking people converging on his position, knowing only that his unholy desires had been thwarted.
Jim swept Blair's knees out from under him as the Sentinel's hyperactive ears caught the warning whoosh-crackle of discharge, catching him effortlessly as he collapsed, and another energy ball sizzled above his head so close that it singed the hair on Blair's scalp. Race roared, an inhuman sound of pure terror-driven fury as Gage crouched without cover to one side of the table over the prone Maitre D' who was tangled up in the legs of an overturned chair. Gage's eyes locked with those of his Sentinel and he stretched out one arm yearningly –
"HALFWAY PD! DROP IT ASSHOLE!"
Like a vid screen being paused, the pandemonium suddenly ceased as everyone automatically responded to the authority in that furiously bellowed command.
In that freeze-frame moment, Ruis de y l'Almonte stared in stupefaction and incandescent fury as the smallest and most fragile-looking of the Guide-whores stood up directly in front of him and pointed a handgun straight at him with one hand, displaying a pathetically small gold badge at him with the other. Asshole! Completely pushed over the edge of rational thought by his egotism and the fact that nobody had ever denied his whims, Ruis turned the blaster towards this new target –
Without hesitation, Trey fired two rapid shots into the attacker's chest, both striking the man's heart.
The blaster dropped to hit the floor with a deafeningly loud crack. Ruis stared at Trey with wide eyes, a faintly puzzled expression appearing briefly before his eyes went totally blank and he followed the blaster down.
Race hauled Gage into his embrace by the scruff of his Guide's neck even as the Dark Angel agents formed a living corral around the scene, blocking sight of what was happening. Jim and Blair stood side by side as Dark Angel agents crowded round the body. Trey lowered his hands, dimly aware of Saran moving to stand behind him, flinching slightly as two hands came to rest on his shoulder.
Ignoring his half-brother, Ellison Vincent Hunter went to crouch over the corpse and suddenly reared back up, a vile epithet exploding from his lips.
"What?" Jim took a step forward at the shocked and amazed expressions mirrored on the faces of the Dark Angels. "Who is he?"
Hunter raised grim eyes to his half-brother's face. "Body Heir Ruis de y l'Almonte."
Chapter X – Damage ControlThe coffee was so hot as to be almost scalding. Trey knew it didn't really matter. Were he to ingest something as hot as Earth's sun, it still wouldn't thaw the bitter, absolute cold that permeated every cell of his being.
All that glitters is not gold. The ancient proverb popped suddenly into Trey's numb brain and he tasted salty blood as he bit down on his bottom lip with his teeth to suppress an outpouring of hysterical laughter. He recognised that he was "in shock" through a comforting buffer of emotional detachment that he also knew wouldn't last forever.
In less than fifteen Earth minutes, the scene at Café Armand had been "wiped down" so efficiently it might never have happened, everyone including the corpse – Trey shuddered – swiftly removed. Even now the Dark Angels back-up Disinformer agents were spreading the story that someone had gone crazy while spaced out on vibe in The Promenade. The near-miss experience by Saran, Race and Jim only added verisimilitude to the tale, since of course a deliberate attack on those three men, who between them comprised of three Alpha Sentinels, two High House Body Heirs, one LEO High Commissioner and two favourite sons, would be so ludicrous as to be unbelievable.
So now here Trey was on the glittering but not gold T'Pau, which orbited high above Halfway on one of the most exclusive, highest rent docking rings. The Dark Angels, even the intense, dangerous Hunter-Killer agents, had been kind to Trey, escorting him to this quiet suite and speaking softly to the obviously distraught man. Somewhere far, far below, hopefully many, many levels down, Lord R- the body – was in storage for the trip…wherever.
Not that the T'Pau looked remotely like a Dark Angels vessel. In actual fact, the Dark Angels only had a few ships that actually resembled their true "kick ass and take names" function. The whole idea of their organisation was to blend in not stand out, thus most ships resembled anything other than what they were – cargo ships, freighters, luxury space liners, even garbage scows. The T'Pau was ostensibly a luxury space liner, and indeed should any surveillance devices be brought on board/penetrate inside the hull, that is exactly what they would show – luxurious appointments such as the silk couch Trey was currently trembling on. The Dark Angels certainly didn't believe in ascetic self-denial if it could be avoided. Nevertheless, for all it's silk and gold, Trey would have laid odds that the T'Pau packed more weaponry per square inch than most planets could muster.
His stomach roiled as that nice numb buffer collapsed and Trey dove for the bathroom, uncaring of the exorbitantly expensive, exquisitely crafted Italian marble toilet bowl as he brought back the coffee and his lunch into it. Finally he stood shakily, rinsing his mouth with water from the washbasin as the toilet auto-flushed and sterilised itself. Aching in every part of his being, he shuffled back to the luxurious couch and sank down, ignoring the burning in his throat and oesophagus from stomach acid.
Something dug into his hip and he pulled out a small gold object, his now obsolete detective's badge that he kept in his suite at the Commissioner's Residence. He had taken to holding it in the evenings, sitting on his bed and rubbing his thumb across the badge number, fortifying himself by remembering the good times he'd had on Halfway, the rich satisfaction he'd gotten from being able to protect a child from further harm. Even now he had no idea of why he had obeyed the impulse to bring the badge with him to Halfway. Trey sighed; his actions had been a matter of pure instinct, without conscious thought. The perp with the blaster had been threatening innocent civilians and cop instincts to protect others and focus the danger towards himself had kicked in. The gun and identifying badge were in his hands, his voice barking out the traditional challenge before his conscious mind was anywhere near catching up with what he was doing. The perp had continued to attack and Trey had automatically taken him down.
That reflex was drilled into every Police Cadet from Day One of training, for it had been a hard-won victory for law enforcement. By 2010, with "suicide by cop" epidemic in the then United States of America, the Prince of Wales had personally endorsed a Bill through the British Parliament granting immunity from civil suits and/or criminal prosecution for police officers who killed/injured an armed perpetrator only for the villain's gun to be fake. Civil liberty groups screamed initially, but scientific fact proved that it was impossible, in the split second available to him or her, for a police officer to accurately determine whether a gun was real or not, particularly in view of the fact that children's "toy" handguns, especially those made in the USA, were designed to be as realistic as possible. In the famous Canary Wharf test, a British newspaper lined up ten people, each holding a handgun, some of which were real, some of which were fake toys/decorative cigarette lighters/paperweights, etc. They then took ten firearms experts, including a British SAS Commando, a US Navy SEAL, a twenty-five year NYPD veteran sergeant and an Israeli West Bank police captain, and asked them to pick out the fakes. Even from as little as five feet away, none got a 100 score. Only from a distance of two feet did the experts accurately identify the real guns from the fakes, and then only after several minutes of long looking. The point was made and the British police were delighted that finally the responsibility for being stupid enough to wave a gun about and threaten people was dumped on the shoulders of the criminal, instead of the police officer being blamed as some sort of trigger-happy cowboy when the situation went to hell in a hand basket.
All of which meant squat here and now. A nobody – a Guide who ranked even less in the social consciousness – had stood there in full view of the passing public and shot to death the Body Heir – and only child – of a High House Patriarch. Trey was as dead as Ruis de y l'Almonte, the universe just hadn't caught up with that fact yet -
"TREY!"
Trey jumped violently as his name penetrated, the sharpness of tone indicating his name had been uttered repeatedly. Saran stood in front of him, the Sentinel's acute olfactory sense making his nose wrinkle as he smelled the lingering taint of vomit and the very strong scent of Trey's fear.
Entering and finding Trey staring with worryingly blank eyes at the suite's wall, Saran moderated his tone as his Guide's eyes focused on him nervously. "The T'Pau is going to undock in a few minutes. We're heading for Federation with Code Red PVC, so we should be there in an hour. Don't be alarmed if you feel a funny pressure on your body, it's from the extreme acceleration."
Trey nodded silently, finding himself too tired to speak inanities.
"That's your detective badge."
Trey had almost forgotten what he held in his hand. There was a tone in Saran's voice he couldn't identify as the Sentinel held out his hand. With a reluctance he knew was obvious, Trey obediently placed the badge in Saran's hand.
"You brought your badge with you." It was not a question.
Trey shrugged slightly.
"Try and get some rest," Saran ordered/suggested, "before we get to Federation. It will take a while to straighten this out."
"Right," Trey muttered.
"You acted In self-defence to protect others," Saran responded sharply.
"Yeah, right. I'm a nobody and an empath! I killed a High House scion who was also the Body Heir and only child of a Patriarch. I'm as good as dead and we both know it!"
"Stop getting hysterical!" Saran snapped, striving to remain calm. "That isn't what happened."
Trey gave a bitter laugh, "You can't actually be that naïve? As if what really happened will count for anything –"
Saran's eyes flashed. "What really happened will count for everything as long as I am LEO Commissioner, regardless of who is involved," his tone was arctic, "and have you forgotten you are also my Guide?"
From somewhere deep inside Trey, the magma of suppressed anger and resentment surged straight up a newly discovered fissure and spurted forth along his vocal chords. He was suddenly furious. "Do you really think I am that stupid or that gullible, Van den Mikhail?" His tone made the name an epithet and Trey was irrationally pleased when Saran blinked and even leaned back from him a tiny fraction. "I'm nothing – hell, I'm less than nothing. If you're an empath, people don't even class you as human, and I killed Alphonse de y l'Almonte's only child! You think that he or anyone else amongst you High House hypocrites will give a damn about the fact that Ruis was a raving psychopath when I killed him? We're not even bonded, so do you really think I don't know the instant your pet doctors tell your dear mother the Vicereine that you can rebond with some pansy neutered socially acceptable Guide, that you won't give me to Alphonse de y l'Almonte tied up with a big red bow? You destroyed my career, ruined my life, and now I'm going to end up being revenge-assassinated by l'Almonte because I blew away his waste of oxygen son! Sure, there's nothing to get hysterical about, I don't think!"
"Have you finished?" Saran said in a voice that could flay the skin off a rhino.
"I think we've both finished." Trey was suddenly exhausted. "Please leave, High Commissioner." He folded his arms across his chest.
"Fine." With spiteful deliberation, Saran shoved the police badge in his own pocket, angrily pleased at the flicker of distress on Trey's face before the empath's expression set stubbornly.
Whirling on his heel, the Sentinel stalked out of the suite, hearing the door slide shut behind him followed by the distinctive snick of the lock. His mouth twisted, not that it mattered. That suite was the one reserved for the LEO High Commissioner when aboard the T'Pau anyway; Saran could override as many locks as Trey wanted to engage so he could get to his Guide as and when he chose; let Logan sulk and stamp his feet if he wanted to…
The T'Pau had many state-of-the-art outfitted, large conference suites that doubled as Command and Control – C&C – centres plus a secondary Bridge, to supplement the Main Bridge, which was always computer linked to each of them. All Dark Angel ships, plus the largest IFP military Battlestar spaceships, contained such rooms in greater or lesser numbers. In case of sudden attack/crisis, they meant that the Captain and Bridge Officers could direct matters as easily as if they had been on the Main Bridge without them having to waste valuable minutes trying to get to the Main Bridge, particularly if they happened to be at the other side of a large ship when the event occurred, and the advantages of multiple back-up C&Cs in case of Main Bridge destruction were too obvious to need explanation. Indeed, some of the Battlestars had prominent – and entirely fake – Main Bridges protruding out of the front section designed to encourage an enemy to concentrate fire there.
This conference suite was replete with people who all looked politely enquiring when the legendarily icy "Winter King" came storming in with a face like thunder. Saran practically threw himself into a chair as the very air in the room seemed to shimmer and everyone felt a slight jerk as if an invisible hand had simultaneously given their intestines a short upwards tug. Scientists had come up with various ways to make interstellar travel faster and most spacecraft of utilised a mixture of methods taken from the choices of warp speed, hyper speed, slipstream drives, Stargate wormholes, Hyper jump points and so forth to get from A to B.
By IFP law, all spacecraft built to carry ten plus people, regardless of design purpose, had to have a minimum of two different velocity systems installed, even if one was relegated to a back-up/redundancy system. In this way, it was virtually impossible for a ship to be stranded so far in deep space as to be unable to reach a safe planet or solar system. In the 22nd and 23rd Centuries, such tragedies had happened, with ships carrying dozens or hundreds of people doomed when their sole propulsion system experienced irreparable failure for some reason. In some cases, these "lost" ships had been found much later, floating in space with the desiccated dead aboard. Those aboard the Lusitania had committed suicide en masse; twenty-three children aboard the Golden Sprite had been discovered alive 150 years after it's disappearance, as the adults had put them into cryogenic stasis.
Without such systems, reaching a habitable planet or the nearest Stargate could take decades or centuries, the people aboard doomed to die of starvation or asphyxiation long before then. Warp engines depended on "Dilithium Crystals" that could crack under temperature extremes, while hyper speed engines had to be constantly monitored to prevent overheating and meltdown. Stargate wormholes were acutely sensitive to solar flares, while hyperspace was easy to get irretrievably lost in if the ship's "lock" on the jump point failed. Having two or more different propulsion systems guaranteed that if problems started with one, the other was unlikely to be affected.
The wealthier the individual or organisation that had commissioned the craft, the more propulsion systems could be included. The T'Pau, like all Dark Angel battle ships, had them all. Thanks to being granted a Code Red Priority Velocity Clearance – PVC – the T'Pau could utilise any and all of these systems taking precedence over any other ship in order to get to Federation as fast as possible.
As he sat visibly glowering in the chair that automatically contoured itself to his body shape, Saran was in no frame of mind to be properly appreciative of the awesome power that thrummed many decks below, nor of the rich buttery sheen the wall lighting cast on the huge, genuine mahogany conference table. Expressions were schooled into bland neutrality, but witnessing perpetually icy, aloof Saran Van den Mikhail fulminating on the verge of an actual emotional outburst was a sight so rare as to require due respect.
A few seats down and across, Ellison Vincent Hunter raised one eyebrow at the LEO High Commissioner. The Cascade IA Captain looked remarkably at home amidst this gathering, despite his sartorial elegance being a cut above the basic boots, pants, shirt ensemble of most of those present. Hunter wore a light blue double-breasted suit with waistcoat and low-heeled boots of an exactly matching shade, plus a snow-white shirt and a slim, blue-and silver check tie. His suit had slender silver threads running through it, giving it a pinstripe look and also perfectly highlighting his pale ice-blue eyes. In contrast, Jim Ellison wore plain black boots, neat beige pants of a style similar to "chinos" and a soft, long-sleeved sky blue sweater that served to bring out his ice-blue eyes. The two men looked as alike as to be twins, only the fact that Jim had a slightly thicker crop of short-cut blond hair indicating him to be the younger. Next to Hunter sat a tall man with short, spiky dark blond hair and utterly pitiless green eyes. Dressed in black from head to toe, Christopher Larabee had an intensity that seemed to electronically charge the very air around his body. Completely impassive, the one thing he and Hunter had in common was their apparent imperviousness to the discomfort they, Bondless Sentinels, were causing their Bonded brethren who happened to be present.
However, looking respectfully towards one man, they waited with patient deference for him to speak. The table was oval in shape, at the "top" nearest to the door being where the Captain would sit, with his First Officer on his right and his XO on his left, with the rest of the senior officers, the Flag Officers, seated around the rest of the table according to rank or seniority in the case of those who shared equal rank. At the moment the Captain's Chair, since that worthy was on the Main Bridge controlling the T'Pau with his FO, XO and other officers, was taken up by a tall, rangy black man who bore a startling resemblance to the famous 20th – 21st Century actor Samuel L. Jackson, perfectly understandable since Brigadier Lincoln Winston Jackson was the directly-descended so-many-greats-grandson of the man.
For a threat against the immediate family members of a High House, the Dark Angels responded with a tendency towards overkill. When that threat involved the Body Heir of a High House, the Dark Angels didn't just bring out the "big guns" they simply exterminated with extreme prejudice and never even bothered with the questions. In the knowledge that the would-be killer of James Ellison could be someone "inside" the Oligarchy or the Nine Ruling Houses, the Dark Angels Central Command had directly appointed Jackson to command the operation that had just ended successfully – or not, as was the opinion of Trey Logan – with the elimination of the threat. It was rumoured that the Central Command had been ordered to appoint Jackson by the Dark Angels Supreme Commander; it would never be confirmed, nobody alive had any knowledge of the Supreme Commander's age, gender or race. Not even Central Command had any inkling of his or her identity. He or she was never seen and heard only via voice synthesiser. The "Supreme Commander of the Dark Angels" reputation had long, long since passed beyond legend into almost semi-divinity.
Descended from generations of Dark Angel operatives, it was rumoured that Jackson had been born clutching the famous pin depicting the black wings and crooked halo in his hand. Brigadier Jackson's mother had been a Dark Angel Hunter-Killer agent, and his father had ordered him to revert to her maiden surname after she was killed. However, Brigadier Jackson was regarded with enormous respect by the Dark Angels, a towering accolade worth far more than any medal, to be honoured by so many lethal, dangerous people. Like the great Prime Minister he was named for, Jackson was an outstanding war leader who worked harder and smarter; his priority was enabling his people to fulfil their mission as best he could, but he understood the importance of achieving "victory with honour" and like Churchill, was always ready to "jaw-jaw" if it had a realistic chance of averting "war-war". He was wise enough to listen to his advisers and let his subordinates do their jobs without micromanagement.
Like the great President he was also named after, Jackson believed in brevity and clarity. Long speeches and a love of the sound of his own voice had never been his failings. "Is Trey Logan all right?" Brigadier Jackson asked, his voice low but authoritative.
Saran needed to vent. "All right? All right? No, he is not!" Angrily the Sentinel reiterated the conversation with his Guide - albeit not Trey's crack about them not being bonded – as if Saran didn't know that! "He's got some sort of persecution complex! I've half a mind to sedate him. Logan's obviously on the verge of hysteria-"
"Of course Trey Logan is hysterical." Gage Butler cut across the rant. "All empaths are. We hide what we are and live in uncertainty and fear because we find it fun. Didn't you know? We only go on the run as wild empaths because we're neurotic. It has nothing to do with being treated like freaks, losing our jobs, having our families harassed, seeing our marriages break up and losing custody of kids because of one tiny dot on a brain scan. We just like to live dangerously!"
If Gage Butler's tone had been literal acid, it would have eaten through the tabletop as he spat the words into a silence so tense it was almost physically painful. Race's hand twitched minutely. "Don't touch me, Sentinel." Butler didn't even look at his Sentinel, his tone pure venom.
Brigadier Jackson turned his head slightly toward Saran. "Commissioner." His tone was soft as he uttered but a single word that nevertheless conveyed what he didn't say.
Saran didn't speak. He couldn't. There had been too much bitter vitriol in Butler's tone for him to be anything other than speaking the truth, or at least what he believed to be truth. Saran inclined his head in one sharp nod that was also understood by the room's occupants. The Guides, wild empaths all, for such had the fortitude to cope with the rigours of the Dark Angel life, exchanged between them brief glances of surprise and hope, which were instantly noted by those present, particularly the Sentinels. Sitting silently beside Jim, Blair Sandburg saw the sudden, twin expressions of perturbed thoughtfulness that flickered across the faces of Captain Hunter and "Hellhound" Larabee and he bit down a smile of satisfaction. Their comfortable world-view had just been shaken up, and that could only bode well for the Guides that Blair knew were out there unconsciously waiting, somewhere in the big universe. Everyone in this room had just been given a big nasty-tasting dollop of home truth to digest and Blair heartily approved, for all his complete happiness in his bond with Jim. Speaking of Bonding, there would be plenty of that in the near future unless he missed his guess. The Sentinels had clearly been unsettled by the rage and pain in the voice of the Guide Gage Butler and would seek to reaffirm their position with their own Guides. That unease should make them push a bit empathically deeper in the bond, which in turn would strengthen the connection.
So now that Gage has encouraged a bit more love and understanding between the Dark Angel Sentinels and their Guides, how are we going to get Trey out of this mess? Blair asked himself and stifled a grimace as there was no reply.
To be concluded…
© 2003, C D Stewart