LINKS
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The Christa Affair
Chapter Forty-One
It was a full-scale council of war. United by a single purpose, twelve determined persons were gathered in the recreation compartment of the \Klondike\. They had no more secrets. (Well, almost none -- Jashi hadn't revealed the fact that they had resigned their Federation military field commission. The log of their resignation was never transmitted -- there had been no one to receive it.) Playback of the Admiral's hyperphone message -- the fateful call for help that had plunged the \Klondike\ and her crew so unexpectedly into a tangled web of intrigue and danger -- had dispelled any lingering doubts on the part of Tad and Marty, and had quickly convinced Korlana to reveal her identity as a Federation Agent. They listened in fascination as she told her story.
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Through a long and complicated series of events -- some of which were merely opportune coincidences -- Korlana had been infiltrated by the Federation into Uzos society when she was nine years old. She carried hypnotically implanted indoctrination that would become active on her twelfth birthday.
Born under hyperdrive in uncharted space, Korlana had carried no birthmark when rescued from the burned out hulk of her renegade parents' unregistered ship; the Captain of the rescue vessel -- a private freighter of Federation registry -- adopted the three year old toddler. Six years later she was again left an orphan -- this time in the care of the Uzos government -- when her benefactor was killed during R and R on Uzos-Prime. For the past four years she had served as an attendant and close personal confidant to Princess Katya.
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The Princess Katya was the youngest of eight siblings, and female -- the last-born of three. She was dissatisfied with her upsettingly-low position in the pecking order of her father's royal circle, and acutely aware that she would never supervene to a position of substantial power. She was cunning and clever, with the ability to be ruthlessly cruel when it suited her purpose; lately, the High Lord had come to regard his own daughter as a threat to his safety.
Korlana's parents were a famous archaeological team, well known throughout the Federation, who fiercely avowed allegiance to no world. A ward of the Uzos government since an early age, the adopted child of a ship's captain before that, with no family ties to any political power, Korlana was recruited by the Exalted High Lord on her fifteenth birthday. In return for a lavish life style she became his personal agent, assigned to keep tabs on his rebellious daughter.
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The legends of Uzos told of a time when it was possible to walk from one world of the system to another. For years, the rebellious Princess had studied the ancient writings -- scribed before the first contact with offworlders, before knowledge of the Federation, and before the unification wars. They were written in the Old Language, and deciphering them was a slow and difficult task.
She discovered the existence of a secret chamber beneath the palace -- one unknown to even her father. Katya studied the contents of the hidden vault, and learned of L'sa'ria and the Forbidden Knowledge. The records gave two things of major importance -- the trajectory of L'sa'ria at the time the worlds of Uzos were colonized, and instructions on how to use the Sacred Orb to gain entrance into the city.
Though such an important discovery would have brought her great favor in the eyes of her father, Katya couldn't tell him. The vault beneath the palace was sealed with the Royal Seal of Death, placed there by the first Lord of Empire when the unification treaty was signed. Not even His Lordship was exempt from its taboo; Katya would have been immediately executed.
The planetary administrator of Uzos-Three -- the poorest of the four worlds -- was Katya's uncle, her deceased mother's brother. He blamed the High Lord for his sister's death and had sworn vengeance. Under his administration, the population of the world was continually more and more oppressed until they were at the point of revolt. By careful application of propaganda, the anger of the people was skillfully directed at the High Lord and his central governing council, rather than at the planetary government, where the blame belonged. The revolt was held in check by two major obstacles -- no interplanetary transportation, and more importantly, no weapons. It was to her uncle that Katya took her discovery; Korlana dutifully reported the meeting to the High Lord.
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"The bastard sold me down the river!" Korlana exclaimed, coming to the end of her tale. "He engineered the kidnapping. Her own father! Knowing full well what the Raiders would do to both of us..." She paused, her face pale, and Suu quickly rolled up in her chair to check the readout of the monitor on the side of the gurney.
"I'll be all right," she assured Suu in a shaky voice. "He promised me she wouldn't be harmed, and I carried the hyperbeacon aboard so he could 'just keep track of her'!" It was an explosion of bitterness; Korlana collapsed wearily to the narrow bed. "The Raiders just scanned us and fell in behind until we made planetfall on L'sa'ria."
"How did it get blamed on the Estarani?" Jashi was reluctant to question her further, but he needed the whole story.
After a moment she was able to continue. "I don't know," she answered. "I think they were just a target of opportunity. His Lordship knew we were scheduled to stop there of course, and it was our last port of record -- we were running blacked out after Estara departure, except for my beacon. I filed my last report with my Federation contact while dirt-side the day we departed, but he wouldn't have known that."
"What did you load on L'sa'ria before the Raiders hit?" asked Jashi. Korlana had seen a computer copy of the star-room record of the attack.
"Mostly weapons -- small hand-held beam weapons of some sort -- and several hundred transport devices. The workers had just started bringing up precious stones and alloys when they let go on us."
"Like this?" interrupted Toko, holding up an L'sa'rian antimatter pistol -- the one Tad had found in his appropriated underground home.
"Yes... Katya had one in our suite." Korlana responded, then continued her story. "I got to go along on the first trip inside. The Sacred Orb opened the door without any difficulty, and the keeper of the city was most cooperative. We encountered no problems at all."
"Weapons like these and transport devices... Anything else besides jewels?" It was important to know what they might be up against when they faced Licti. Jashi showed her an L'sa'rian wand. "Anything like this? Anything that projected a beam that made things disappear?"
"No, not that I saw anyway. Katya kept walking around our suite with the pistol -- once I thought she was actually going to shoot it -- talking about what a wonderful weapon it was and what they were going to do for her. Her uncle had promised to make her Planetary Administrator of his world if he won the challenge for the throne after the revolt. If there'd been anything like that, I think she'd have bragged about it. She did love to brag... Made \both\ my jobs easy." Korlana seemed to drift away for a moment. "She was my friend... He \promised\ not to hurt her!"
Suu reached out and put a restraining hand on Jashi's arm. "I know you need more, Jashi, but let her rest a minute. Come on, I'll buy you a cup of coffee." She rolled away toward the refreshment console without waiting for him.
*********
The brief time spent in Tad's "mechanical doctor" had saved Suu's life, but had been insufficient to reverse the damage to her spinal column; she was paralyzed from the waist down. The device was quite different from the one in the L'sa'rian hospital, and there were no instructions, no Keeper to offer assistance, and not enough time. All too soon Roi had reported the \Klondike\ coming up on point-omega; they had been forced to abandon their efforts and transport up. Jashi had forcefully denied Karli's request to stay with Suu and continue treatment until the next orbit. Suu was receiving hourly treatments in the ship's tissue regenerator, but there was little hope of recovery.
Lito had been granted liftoff clearance for the landingcraft a few hours after sunup. Spaceport Control had warned that anyone left behind would have to take the scheduled shuttle; no private landingcraft would be given inbound clearance until power was restored. Loss of broadcast power had severely crippled Sanctuary's orbital tracking and communication network.
All were exhausted from the ordeal of the night, but driven by a sense of urgency, Jashi had passed out Revtab and headed for the fresher; twenty minutes later they were assembled in the control room, alert and excited -- except for Mowii, who was stoned, and kept stumbling and bumping into the others. "Happytab?" wondered Jashi to himself. "How the hell much is she taking?" He decided now wasn't the time to ask.
There had been no problem obtaining departure clearance from Extasy Spaceport for the landingcraft -- other than the delay caused by the blackout -- and they hadn't been contacted by planetary authorities in the hours since; apparently they weren't suspected in DeCarlo's disappearance -- if it had even been discovered. Jashi looked at the chronometer -- the one set to planet time; it read sixteen hundred -- one hour past noon. They had less than a day until the return of \Doyenne\, aka Licti, King of Falturon. The mission-elapsed timer showed one hundred twenty-eight days. Four months since the madness began -- now it would end, one way or another.
Korlana called to them before the hot brew was half gone. "I'd like to finish, Captain." She grinned at him, and new life seemed to flow into her dark eyes, masking the pain that showed there in occasional unguarded moments. "Then I'm going to take a long nap!"
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"Katya tried to buy our freedom," Korlana continued when they were all ready. "Or hers at least. She offered the Raider Captain the Sacred Orb and the Book of Forbidden Knowledge if he would put her down on Uzos-Three. He took them, and laughed at her... Said Licti had promised him her ship and everything in it for kidnapping her. I don't think he knew it was her own father who paid for the contract." After a moment Korlana added, "I'm glad you got it back. I'm sorry the Book was destroyed, though." Her sadness at the loss of the ancient document was shared by the others, especially Karli.
"When Licti discovered what he had -- I only found this out later -- he repudiated his agreement with the Raiders, and kicked them out with virtually nothing. They must have been returning to loot L'sa'ria for themselves when you captured them.
"My Princess always lands on her feet," Korlana laughed. "By the time we were down on Sanctuary, she had it all figured out. And she made it work! Licti took her as his Queen, official native ceremony and all, and I was allowed -- make that ordered -- to be her Lady in Waiting."
"Wait a minute!" Jashi interrupted. "You mean she's here \willingly\?"
"What would you \have\ her do, Captain?" Korlana retorted coldly. "The bastard had a buyer for her -- non-Human, and not from any world in what the Federation so smugly refers to as 'charted space'... I don't know \what\ he had planned for me!"
Mowii began to giggle, a high-pitched humorless staccato that bordered on hysteria. "And you thought you were going to rescue her!" she squeaked. "You stupid bastard... What ever made you think she'd \want\ to be rescued?" She hiccoughed and regurgitated; the bitter mouthful choked off the tirade as she struggled to swallow and clear her windpipe. It wasn't clear whether the outburst was aimed at Jashi or her bondmate.
Rang moved quickly to hustle her from the room. She regained her breath and her eerie laughter echoed back along the corridor as they moved away toward their quarters; Rang returned quickly, mumbling an apology. "Happytab didn't do \that\!" reflected Jashi silently, as Korlana resumed her tale.
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Licti took his Queen (and thus Korlana) with him when he embarked on his quest to topple the Federation. Losing Christa was an accident -- his intention was to hold it for ransom -- the result of a major misunderstanding of the device by his engineers; they shifted it, then couldn't bring it back. Then he hit on the brilliant idea of spreading armed, drug-hyped Estarani all over the galaxy, simultaneously hitting every major Federation installation.
For several years, Licti had kept the Estarani supplied with two rather nasty genetically-engineered drugs that they were especially fond of -- both a product of laboratories on Sanctuary -- and he had little difficulty in gaining their cooperation. Only mild persuasion had been necessary; they liked nothing better than a good fight.
His engineers put together a giant transport facility for Estara-Six -- a central hub capable of transporting grasshoppers to any of the hundreds of transporters he installed on worlds throughout the galaxy. The instant-drive of the L'sa'rian ship made the job of distributing the devices child's play. The trip to Ultazari-Seven had been to capture the deposit of Immunofactor-26.
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"They still didn't have the hang of operating the alien ship." Korlana smiled at the memory. "Those hot-shot engineers of his -- like kids with a new toy! Here we are flitting all over the galaxy in this funky ship that defies every known law of physics, and they're \guessing\! They couldn't even read the operations manual, or the labels on the consoles. Half the time they missed the target by light-years, and once we were stranded gods-know-where for two days -- it wasn't part of \this\ universe, I'll tell you that -- and when we finally did get back, it was five minutes before we left! I remember how angry he was when they couldn't do it again... Said they had just discovered time travel, and \lost\ it. I thought he was going to shoot one of them!"
The smile faded; she shuddered, almost imperceptibly. "The only reason we were still around when you showed up on Ultazari was their blundering. After they zapped the team of scientists and loaded the I-26, they couldn't get the drive to work. We were still inside the orbit of the tenth planet when your ship dropped out of hyperspace. They decided to come back and have a look -- see what you were up to -- then the whole field collapsed and we had to land on gravitics... I wasn't surprised when it blew up last week. Just a pity \he\ wasn't on board."
"Just one less thing we have to deal with," said Jashi curtly. He felt a pang of sadness at the loss of such wonderful technology, but under the circumstances he wasn't about to complain. "Where's Katya now?" he asked the obvious question.
"With Licti, as far as I know. I learned there was a Federation agent on Licti's palace staff, and tried to contact him; she caught me. Stupidly, I confessed that I was working for the Federation \and\ her father, and that I was sure that \one\ of them could help us... She was furious and turned me over to Licti.
"I don't know how much I told him. When conventional torture didn't work, he started in on me with the machine..." Her voice trembled at the memory and tears came to her eyes; for a moment Jashi thought she was going to be unable to continue. "The last thing I remember, I couldn't breathe or swallow, and my heart kept starting and stopping, over and over again; when I came to, I was in your infirmary. I don't know how DeCarlo got me, or why he told you I was the Princess."
Jashi recoiled visibly at her mention of the neural-impulse injector. "He used it on you personally?" his voice was sharp, cold.
"Yes... There was usually a doctor in attendance, but he always operated the device himself. When the doctor said I was too weak to take any more they'd take me back to my cell, then start again a few hours later."
*********
Originally designed as a medical device, to suspend or stimulate selected body functions during surgery or while a patient was in a coma, unscrupulous operators had quickly found a second use for the brain-stem neural-impulse injector -- as a persuader of the reluctant. Resistance was futile when your captor could control every muscle of your body at the touch of a switch.
Possession of the equipment was illegal on most civilized worlds. Jashi had seen one used, once. He had promised the others an explanation for his horror of the device; with considerable effort, he recounted the painful experience from his first year with Federal Interstellar.
A stowaway had been discovered as his freighter prepared for return departure to Summit -- a middle-aged Human male, still indentured to a local official for payment of his passage years earlier. As Third Officer, the duty of returning the stowaway to the planet fell to Jashi.
Jashi was the official representative of the ship's Captain; protocol demanded that he observe the "trial" -- public reading of the charges of attempted escape (they called it "default of contract"), and pronouncement of punishment -- and the prisoner's slow, torturous execution at the hands of an expert neural technician. It was done publicly, as a deterrent to others who might be tempted to default. More than a year of hypno-therapy had been required to exorcise Jashi's recurring nightmares.
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"You see, Tad? You need have no fear that I'll release DeCarlo," Jashi finished, visibly shaken from reliving the barbaric ritual. "Seems both brothers have a fondness for the device..." His voice trailed off in revulsion and he found himself fantasizing unique ways to kill with just his bare hands -- painful ways, that destroyed the body a piece at a time and took hours or days before the victim died. Jashi shook himself free of the obsessive thought with difficulty; there was one more thing. "Were there Estarani on board at Ultazari?"
"Yes," Korlana responded; Jashi could see she was getting very tired. "The ones that attacked you. After they got the field working again we hovered over the campsite at the edge of the atmosphere -- your scanners couldn't detect us -- and beamed down a transport receiver. He just waited until you got to the campsite, drugged a few of them and shoved em thru. When they're hyped up, they'll kill anything that moves."
Korlana found the strength to laugh. "You guys sure put up one hell of fight! Katya had the complete run of the ship, and I usually went with her; we watched from the big screen on the bridge. He sent down nearly two hundred before it was over -- you killed half of them and the ones that got dosed with ultrasonics went insane. He had to shoot them, all but one... It was strange! It was among the ones that transported up from the battle-site, but it didn't seem to be affected... Wonder what ever happened to him? I never saw him after that."
She closed her eyes, and for a moment Jashi thought she had gone to sleep. They flickered open again, and she smiled wearily. "Captain?" It was almost a whisper. "The one that gave Rang the Sphere didn't come from our ship... Licti didn't send any thru until the first group that attacked you in the domes. We were there... At the gate aboard ship. Katya liked to watch their bodies respond to the drug. They become very aroused."
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
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