Astra: Synchronicity (37 page)

"Him. You didn't say you were bringing
him
. The word is out that Aliane is after him. If I do this,
that assassin of hers is gonna be on my doorstep. He'll drag it out
of me before he kills me. No, you have to go now."

"What about me?" Amii asked. "Would you do it
for me?"

He approached her and stared up at her in
silence for a few moments. The glow of his eyes faded while he
studied her with dubious care. He cast a glance toward the others.
"Leave us."

Magnius flinched, but Nadine grabbed his arm
and turned them around. After a brief pause, she led him out the
kitchen door. "We'll be right outside."

Once they left, he put his hand on her back
and pointed to his worktable. "I'm only doing this as a favor. Last
one I'll ever do for her. How could she even think about bringing
him here? Too lost in her ivory tower to have a clue?"

"Why are you helping me then?"

He grabbed a machine off the table that
looked older than the City of Dreams. "I have a weakness for pretty
girls. What man doesn't?" He sat her down onto a stool, took her
hand, and inserted it into the vise-like contraption. "Relax. This
will only hurt for a second."

Amii shivered and closed her eyes, expecting
a blade to drop like a guillotine and slice her hand clean off her
arm at the wrist. A piece of cold metal settled on top of her wrist
and cinched down on it. Discomfort turned to unbearable pressure
before she heard a distinct pop and the device eased back up. She
wiggled her fingers to prove her hand remained attached.

When she opened her eyes, she gasped when she
saw the recessed hole in her arm lined with sterile plastic.
Implants were keyed in a way that made them almost impossible to
remove from their base. People could rip the entire thing out of
their arm if they wanted to, but getting by in Astra with no ID
proved difficult. The trick lied in removing the holographic
implant, which the ID chip sat under, without destroying
either.

Only a handful of locations could replace
implants legally, but stringent precautions guarded and scrutinized
the facilities to prevent foul play involving IDs. Some people
found their own ways around the system using ugly machines cobbled
together from everyday equipment. Few had the know-how to do it,
and finding them proved the biggest challenge of all.

She handed him her new ID chip, which he
inserted into the scanner. "Elise Vaughn. Pretty name. Sounds like
an heiress from a film noir." He removed her old ID with a pair of
tweezers and slid the new one in. "Do you want a new implant? Yours
was what, sixth generation?" He took one off the desk and held it
up to the light. "Version 8.5.1—it has a holodiode that can
generate a neon bracelet around your wrist."

She wondered why anyone would want something
like that but nodded to pacify him. "Yes, thank you." He placed it
on her wrist and screwed down the top clamp of the machine on it.
"Are you sure you won't help him?"

The man tightened several half-rusted screws
and a moment later he was done. When she removed her hand, she
could not tell anything had been altered. "It does neither of us
any good if I help him. Just him coming here means I'm dead.
Tiyuri'll get the information he needs and your friend will be no
better off than he is now. So pointless is what it is."

She had to convince him. Both of their lives
depended on it, not to mention Xander's and Lyneea's. If a single
man's death could save four people, that justified it.

"What can I do to change your mind?" Amii
slid her left hand up his thigh to emphasize her point.
"Please?"

He took a ragged breath and leaned back
against his desk while arching his pelvis toward her. "Convince me
then, baby."

Yanking his shirt out of his pants, she ran
her fingers up his bare chest at a seductive pace. She stood and
pressed her body against him, grinding her hips into his in a
blatant attempt to arouse him. As she unbuttoned his pants, she
fluttered her eyelashes at him and flicked her tongue against his
lips. He put his hands on her shoulders and groaned with desire
enough to tell her he'd completely let his guard down. Now that she
had him right where she wanted him, she unzipped his pants and
heard them fall to the floor with a dull thud.

She stuck both her hands down his boxers and
grabbed his nuts. When she squeezed them, he winced. "You'd be
surprised how little force it takes to rip these suckers off.
You'll bleed to death before you even have the chance to call for
help. I'll bet it's the most painful way to die there is." She
tightened her grasp on them for emphasis. "I don't care how
pointless it is, you are going to do this for us. Understood?"

His lips twisted into a snarl on an otherwise
pained expression. "Fine…bitch."

"Ooh," she mocked. "At least I'm not your
bitch." She knelt down and pulled out the disruptor tucked in his
back pants pocket. "Fix yourself before I call them back in."

As he buttoned his pants back up, she stared
at the gun. A 380 Prime. The cold metal felt good in her hand. She
recalled how it worked, how to field strip it, how to clean it, how
to rig it with explosive ammo…and a part of her wondered why she
had such an intimate knowledge of the weapon.

Amii grabbed her old ID chip off the table
and stuck it in her pocket. She hid the gun in the shadows beside
her when she turned toward the door. "Nadine, you can bring Magnius
back inside," she called.

The two of them returned. The man's
disheveled shirt and rosy face made it appear she'd done something
sexual with him. "Okay, let's get this over with," he said and
gestured to the stool in front of him.

Magnius sat down and stuck out his arm. He
stared at Amii the whole time. It didn't take a propulsion expert
to figure out what was on his mind; he wondered how she'd swayed
the man into agreeing to this and feared she'd compromised her
morals to do it.

The man smirked when he put Magnius' hand
into the machine and brought the contraption down onto his arm.
"Your girlfriend here's a real doll. She's got some tongue on her
too."

"What?" His response caused him to jerk his
wrist in the device, and suddenly his face crumpled in agony.
"Shit!"

"Hold still," he told Magnius and wrested a
sharp metal bracket out of his skin. He flailed his hand out toward
Amii. "Get me a towel. Something. Anything."

She scanned the shelves next to her and
snatched a green dresser scarf off one of them. Seeing all the
blood on the table gave her pause before he took it from her and
blotted the mess up. A clean gash cut into the side of his arm, but
he'd not yet slowed the bleeding from the wound.

The man held the scarf against the wound and
took Magnius' other hand to hold it in place. "Apply pressure. And
don't move this time."

He kept as still as humanly possible while
the device extracted his implant. After his ID chip was changed,
the man held the implant up to the light and examined it. "First
generation. A classic. Worth quite a bit actually." He didn't give
Magnius the option to upgrade.

In less than a minute, the procedure was
done. Magnius took his old ID chip and cradled his wrist on his way
out, muttering a string of expletives the entire time.

"Thank you," Nadine said.

The man rolled his eyes and waved them out.
"Just go."

Her eyes flashed for a few seconds before she
turned around and headed to the door.

Amii winked at him and pursed her lips.
"Thanks for the gun." With that, the three of them disappeared back
into the night.

The second lady took Amii's hand and clutched
it in hers. "Thank you. I'm sorry it didn't go better. He's not a
bad person. Paranoid but he means well. Not that any of it will
matter after tomorrow…"

"So is he really going to die?" she
asked.

"The odds aren't in his favor, but nothing
can change that. We must all play the role fate has assigned no
matter where it leads us."

"Maybe we should help him."

"Are you crazy?" Magnius said. "It would lead
Tiyuri straight to us. Even wandering the streets at night like
this is a risk. He could be following us as we speak. Or any
lunatic with a grudge against psions."

Nadine shook her head. "We're safe from
Tiyuri. And I know either of you is capable of defending yourselves
should you need to."

Amii had a hard time concealing her nervous
anxiety, not of the assassin but of Northampton. Nadine might be
able to conceal herself from the prying eyes of the city using her
telepathy, but Amii possessed no such gift. Every dark corner could
harbor a brutal menace, and she longed to be on Pisa away from
civilization. "I don't feel safe here. An odd thing to say, I know.
But in a lawless society where deceit is a way of life, I know
where I stand. Here, I don't even want to look at people the wrong
way. How are you supposed to protect yourself if you can't carry a
disruptor?"

"Trust, Amii…trust."

"How can I trust when all my life people have
been after us?" She stared at her implant and turned it under the
glow of a streetlamp. "How do I activate the bracelet on this
thing?"

Nadine tapped her own implant a few times and
activated hers. A holographic projection encircled her wrist with a
haze of neon pink butterflies. She reached over and did the same
for her friend, but Amii's appeared in a standard green glowstick.
"You can download all sorts of different shapes and colors. It'll
stay on for an hour. It's solar powered—the latest breakthrough
from the Academy." She watched the telepath twirl her wrist, and
the holograms moved around it in slow motion.

"Can we get this fashion show on the road
ladies?" Magnius said from over their shoulder.

Hand-in-hand, the two women strutted down the
street together. Amii smiled. "One day, we won't even need to wear
clothes anymore. It will all be holograms."

"Now that's scary," Nadine said. "I'd like to
think we have better uses for our technology than that."

"You mean like blowing up the Xuranian palace
and assassinating General Secretary Straikovsky right under
everyone's noses?"

The second lady's tone turned somber when she
stared at her friend. "Yeah."

They continued the rest of the way to the
Westwood Estate in silence. The quick dose of reality ruined their
lightened mood. Somewhere in space, war was being waged right now.
And it only marked the beginning.

***

Nadine knelt on the bed and watched her
troubled husband dress to meet with the President and Chairman
Dodd. She'd slipped back into bed during the night without
disturbing him, but once eight rolled around, he commenced with his
morning routine. Because she was scheduled to visit the Academy
this afternoon, she joined him for breakfast.

Since their return, Bryan rarely slept more
than five hours and it had begun to take its toll on him. He drank
coffee all the time when he hadn't been able to stand the taste of
it for as long as she'd known him. He took stims to stay focused,
which were banned on most worlds across Astra; throughout Chara,
the drugs remained legal though regulated and taxed. He hadn't
become an addict yet, but she feared for him.

Day by day, the couple became more frustrated
with the failings of their government. Zion had fallen to the
Xurainians, but because it wasn't an AC system, the council bided
their time without striking back. She'd been outraged over the
assassination of General Secretary Straikovsky and the subsequent
accusations that it was an act of UE government-sponsored
terrorism. However, for all their protests, their government
couldn't prove the theory wrong.

Petty Officer Jon Weber provided the first
lead. His wife and three kids lived on DeSoto, Bandiera—the same
planet generations of his family grew up on since humans departed
Earth so long ago. Weber was one of the few missing with the
ability and opportunity to stage said attack, and since he hadn't
been assigned off the
Kearsarge
for the morning speeches, he
became the primary lead. Unfortunately, no one had been able to
find any additional evidence against him. Nothing in his life
appeared out of order until the assassination of the General
Secretary.

Some digging revealed Weber had a secret
relationship with another man in his hometown, James Wolfe, who was
a farmer and also unhappily married. Wolfe had been an active agent
in the UE's intelligence agency until he retired seven years ago.
His connection with Weber couldn't be ignored. Since the day of the
attack, AC resources were pooled to get to the bottom of the
mystery, yet they weren't able to stop him.

To the dismay of the UE, Wolfe's evidence
trail stretched across Astra and back again. He was a Centrist
supporter when the attack occurred, but afterwards he led several
rallies on DeSoto where he accused the PAU of siding with the
Xuranians—that they were sympathizers with the aliens and called
for war. Five days before Straikovsky's death, Wolfe booked passage
to Barnard Station and headed to Kashtivone from there. Asians
found what appeared to be his final message, but there was no way
of knowing if it was authentic.

When the PAU declared war and laid claim to
Pisa, the hawks in the council embraced opportunity to strike back
at their long-time enemies. Skirmishes near Shambhala erupted
within days. And now rumor had it the PAU planned to meet with the
Xuranian High Commander on Barnard Station. The Xuranians had
previously made a big deal about negotiating peace only with a
united Astra. Had the prospect of long-term war and occupation
changed their minds?

Bryan strolled over to Nadine and took her
hands. "I want you to come with me."

The second lady frowned. "You know how mad it
makes me to have to listen to the chairman prattle on as though war
is the answer. He's quite fortunate he's not on New England so I
can't dominate his mind. His closed-mindedness will be the death of
us all."