Between Darkness and Light (17 page)

Shaidan said nothing but the nervous twitching of his tail began to lessen slightly.

“We didn't get off to a very good start, did we?” He risked reaching out to touch his son's arm. “Let me put this bruise ointment on your cheek then we can start again.”

His son remained silent, head bent, looking at where his hands lay on his lap.

Kusac sighed inwardly. This was going to be no easy task. “Lift your head up, please,” he said, letting him go to unscrew the lid on the tube.

The cub complied, a startled look in his eyes as he smelled the pungent aroma of herbs and spices.

Forcing himself to laugh gently, he pressed a small amount of the paste out onto his fingers. “Smells strange, doesn't it? Like one of the spicy meals the desert tribes cook back home, but it works wonders on bruises. By tomorrow, it should be almost gone.” He recapped the tube and set it on the floor beside him.

Resting one hand on the edge of the stool, he leaned forward to reach his son's cheek. Shaidan flinched away from him briefly, then stopped, obviously gritting his teeth in anticipation of more pain.

“I won't hurt you,” he said, his fingertips applying the ointment gently. “Did you know we're all trained medics in the Brotherhood? Treating my own cuts and bruises was one of the first things I learned to do.” The bump was large, but the skin was thankfully unbroken.

When he'd finished, so strong was the urge to pick his son up and hold him close that he had to force himself to stand up and put the tube back in his medikit. It was too soon for that, they were still almost total strangers.

“Has the General, or anyone else, ever hit you before?” he asked, trying to keep his tone casual as he closed the cupboard door and turned to face Shaidan again.

“No, Captain, never.”

He felt the band of tension round his chest begin to ease and held his hand out to his son. “Let's go back to the main room. I was having third meal when you arrived. Shall we see if there's anything on the food dispenser menu you fancy?”

The small hand took his hesitantly as Shaidan got to his feet. “The stool . . .”

“Can stay where it is for now,” he said, leading him out of the bathing room.

They stopped in front of the dispenser. “Choose what you'd like to eat,” he said, pointing to the menu on the side.

Shaidan looked at it, then back to him, tail beginning to flick anxiously again. “I never choose. I eat what I'm given,” he said quietly.

A chill swept over him as he realized that Shaidan was exactly where he'd been when he'd been released to his own people by the Primes at Haven. He was incapable of thinking for himself.

“Go and sit at the table,” he said gently. “I'll bring your food over to you.”

While the unit began to synthesize the vegetable protein into a thinly disguised meat casserole, he moved over to the breakfast bar and began unbuckling his weapons belt. Wearing his robe might set him apart from everyone else on the Outpost, but it wouldn't help him gain his son's confidence right now.

Throwing it over one of the tall chairs, he refastened his belt over his black tunic and, grabbing a spare drinking bowl, returned to get Shaidan's food. Putting the dishes in front of the cub, he sat down in his own chair, picking up his discarded fork. His meal would be stone cold by now, but he didn't care as he watched his son finally begin to relax. His reading of him had been right. Faced with something familiar, Shaidan was finally beginning to respond—only a little, but it was a start.

He searched his mind for a topic of conversation and remembered what M'kou had said earlier about the cubs.

“Tell me about Gaylla and the others,” he said.

“What do you want to know?”

“What was it like before the General came for you?”

“Studying and lots of medical tests.”

“What kind of tests?” he asked, pouring water into his son's drinking bowl and pushing it across the table to him.

The cub shrugged as he shoveled food into his mouth. “They took blood and did tests with things attached to our heads, making us use our mind powers.”

“Who did?”

“Dr. K'hedduk,” Shaidan replied, an involuntary shudder running through him as he said the name.

“You didn't like him. Did you feel his mind?”

Shaidan stopped eating to look up at him, a curious expression on his face. “Once I did,” he said. “When I was birthed from the tank, before they put the collar on me. It was cold and hard, like the minds of the M'zullians here. Not like yours or the Primes.”

“Mine?” he said with a jolt of fear. “You've felt my mind? When?”

Shaidan's face screwed up as if in pain. “The General asked me . . . to find you . . . this morning . . . tell what I read . . .”

His blood ran cold, both at his son's attempts to speak and from worry that Kezule had discovered his secret. “Can you tell me what you told him?” he asked quietly.

Shaidan looked away and picked up his drinking bowl. “You didn't like your breakfast.”

Relief flooded through him. “Is that all?”

The cub took a drink and put the bowl carefully back on the table before replying. “I have felt you thinking about me,” he admitted.

He let that pass. “Do you get asked to do this often?”

Shaidan replied by shaking his head.

He gestured at his son's plate. “Don't let your meal get cold,” he said. “Believe me, it tastes quite disgusting.”

“I know,” said Shaidan, picking up his fork.

Shaidan had been aware of the hatchling within the egg beginning to wake since breakfast. Since no one had asked him, he'd held his peace—it wasn't his place to volunteer information. Such an act was beyond what was acceptable for a vassal like himself.

What had begun as a tension deep within his mind was increasing rapidly now to the point where, despite his collar, he was feeling acutely uncomfortable and distressed. He knew it was the hatchling's distress, not his own, but so acute had it become, he couldn't understand why no one else was aware of it.

He followed the General into the mess area, waiting the obligatory six paces behind him while he surveyed the off-duty personnel. Everyone was unsettled today, and they'd spent the morning visiting each work area for half an hour in an effort to reduce the tension.

A sudden movement from the group of Sholans caught his eye just as his mind was filled with a shriek of distress and a feeling of claustrophobia. He staggered back, bumping into the doorframe, clutching his head as the shriek sounded again. Confused and frightened, he began to whimper and cry.

Loud, angry voices sounded above him, then he was firmly grasped and picked up. Sholan scent—his father's—surrounded him as he felt himself being carried out of the mess and down the corridor. Gradually, the screams in his head began to fade. Aware of his surroundings again, he realized the angry voices were his father and the General arguing heatedly over him.

“I'm taking him to the sick bay,” Kusac was saying. “He's ill, dammit!”

Suddenly they were jerked to a standstill. “There's nothing wrong with the child, Kusac! You've no need to grab him in this way!”

“You're not a medic. I am and I know that telepathic kitlings of his age often throw sudden fevers caused by their awakening Talent. I want Doctor Zayshul to check him out!” snarled Kusac, pulling free of Kezule's grip and continuing on down the corridor.

“The labs and sick bay are out of bounds for you!” hissed Kezule, running to keep up with him. “I'll take him!”

“Like hell you will!”

Shaidan, the hatchling's cries now dulled to a faint echo, relaxed back against his father's chest, taking comfort from the arms that held him firmly, yet gently. It was a new experience, and not unpleasant. Tentatively, he closed his hand over his father's arm, grateful for the peace he'd brought him.

They were approaching the sick bay—he could smell the scent of the disinfectant they used.

“General! The Doctor needs you in your quarters!” said M'kou urgently, rushing out to greet them. “The alarm for the incubator . . .” The aide ground to a halt. In the distance, an alarm was suddenly silenced. “Your wife's in surgery on the Command level. She can't leave her patient.”

“Escort Kusac to the medic on duty,” snapped Kezule, pushing past him and running off toward the elevator.

Kusac slowed down and Shaidan lifted his head to look around.

“Incubator?” asked his father. “The General has a child?”

“An egg,” confirmed M'kou, escorting them to the central nurses' stations. “The incubator alarm went off. I'm sure it's nothing but a blown fuse. What's wrong with Shaidan?”

“He collapsed in the mess. He's picking up something—at a guess I'd say the egg's hatching,” said Kusac, his tone grim as he shifted his hold on his son.

“Are you sensing something?” M'kou asked Shaidan as Kusac sat him down on the edge of the counter.

He nodded, discovering his head ached.

“What can you sense?” M'kou sounded worried.

“She can't get out, the shell's too hard,” Shaidan said, swaying slightly as the room seemed to spin about him. “She can't breathe.”

M'kou's face took on a look of panic as he paled, obviously torn between running after the General and following his orders to remain with them.

“My son needs psi suppressant drugs,” ordered Kusac, leaning across the console and grasping hold of the medic on duty. “Go to the General, M'kou,” he said over his shoulder. “We'll be here when you return.”

M'kou turned and ran.

The room was fading in and out as Shaidan found himself gasping for breath. “The Doctor . . . she knows . . . and she's afraid,” he mumbled.

Strong hands took hold of his head, one on either side, holding him firmly, thumbs pressing against his temples.

“Shaidan, look at me,” he heard his father saying, but he kept his eyes tightly shut.

“Shaidan!” The voice demanded obedience and he forced his eyelids open. “You're not the hatchling, Shaidan. Your life is separate from hers. Pull your mind back from her.”

“I can't,” he whimpered, looking into his father's amber eyes. “I don't know how!”

“Put up a shield between you and her.”

“I can't.”

With a hiss of impatience, Kusac glanced over his shoulder. “Hurry up with the drug!” he called out to the medic as she disappeared off to a treatment room. “I want you to imagine you are surrounded by a golden light,” he said, lowering his voice. “It's all around you, whichever way you look. Can you see it?”

Shaidan tried to concentrate but his breath was coming in short gasps and his father's face was beginning to fade.

“A golden light, Shaidan,” the Captain said, tilting his head up until their eyes locked again.

“A golden light,” he repeated after a moment's hesitation. The room was beginning to recede again until all that remained were his father's glowing amber eyes.

 

Kusac was well aware what Shaidan was experiencing because he felt it, too. As he tilted his cub's head up, he felt the metal collar round his son's neck. Vartra's Bones! His son could pick up the hatching egg despite the psi damper? He pushed his shock aside, concentrating on pitching his voice in a command tone and forcing his son to focus on his eyes. He had to do something now and initiating a light trance would only take him moments.

Dropping his hand inside the collar, he found his fingers automatically going to the point where the control circuits were embedded. Instinctively, as he reached for them with his mind, blocking the current so the device could no longer operate, he widened his mental shields to include Shaidan. That done, he reached for his son's mind, giving him the knowledge of how to erect a mental shield, then withdrew. Relinquishing control of the collar, he retreated again behind his own shields, praying that while in the trance, Shaidan hadn't been aware of him using his own psi abilities.

“Can you see the golden glow?” he asked, breaking eye contact.

“Yes,” said Shaidan, beginning to blink.

“Good. Now change it slowly until it becomes a bright blue. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” the cub said after a moment. “Bright blue.”

“Now imagine that blue glow wrapped around you, like a second skin. Nothing can get past it, no thoughts, not even those of the hatchling. All those sensations will fade until you can't feel them.”