Eyes in the Sky (2 page)

Natu announced their arrival to the base and received confirmation that there was a reception committee for Riasa.

“What is a reception committee?”

“A full medical workup. Teklan is a fairly empty world, but they do not wish to bring in any disease that could mutate into something really nasty over time. Mist and Reset will run the scans and do your workup. It gives you a baseline for health at any of the Alliance facilities. The records are activated if you enter a med base under Alliance control. They will know what your readouts should be and will treat you accordingly.”

Riasa nodded. “Right. I recall reading something about that.”

He snorted lightly. “I bet you do.”

She wanted to smack him, but she sat back in her chair instead. The formfitting bodysuit came out a darker shade than she had first guessed. On the second day, Natu had provided her robes in the hated white, but she was getting used to them. Stains came out fairly easily from the pale fabric.

“What have you learned aside from the basics of flight?”

“The tenants of crowd control and the origins of the Sector Guard. The Citadel’s tale is a valiant one in and of itself.”

“Is it? I thought it was just a simple reference to the building that they train in.” Natu looked surprised.

“I doubt that that is what you thought. They were talents arrested and imprisoned by their own people until there was an alien attack. They gathered their strength, broke free and pushed back at the invaders until their world was reclaimed. From that point, they returned to the Citadel and shut themselves in again. When their folk again asked for help, they made them pay and so began the Citadel tradition of charging for their services.”

Riasa had to admit. “It made for compelling reading.”

“I think my education has been sorely neglected. What did they do next?”

“They began a school for off worlders. All with a psychic talent could come to gain insight into the training that they had been honing for decades within the walls, for a fee of course.”

“Of course.”

“A contract to the Citadel was created and the first branch was crafted as a girls’ school on Thoola. A boys’ school was also created and the spread of the Citadel began, world by world, inviting more and more talents until they spanned the spectrum of physical and psychic possibility. When the Sector Guard recruits, it apparently does it from a Citadel if possible. The more advanced the training, the better.”

Riasa looked through the view screen and smiled. There were trails leading to a world that seemed nearly golden to her eyes.

She watched as they closed on Teklan. She could see the spots of habitation, a crystal palace in a dry valley, a wide house built of wood and the base itself with a smaller assembly of buildings off to one side.

The rest of the world was wild and barren. Riasa smiled. It was going to be like being on vacation.

“How long have you been with the Sector Guard?”

“Seven months. I spent years on my world as a peacekeeper, but it seemed that there was greater need for my particular skills elsewhere. I applied to the elders and they let me go.”

“Let you go?”

“We do not leave, we do not travel and we do not mix with other species. My need was great, so they allowed me to leave and made the contacts that I needed.”

“What was…why did you need to leave?”

He smiled and began the landing protocol. “That is a story for another long trip. I am sure that you and I will meet again.”

She was shocked. Not for one instant had she considered that Natu was not hers permanently as a partner. They got along so well it would be strange to think of assignments without him, if she was given assignments at all.

In one moment, she went from amused to somber. It wasn’t like her to wallow in optimism. She should have been more practical from the moment that she met him. Now, she was about to lose a friend.

The landing area was a wide tarmac, and Natu set them down with the ease of practice. She sat up and unclasped her harness, stopping at their shared quarters to get her clothing. With the folded clothing in her arms, she waited by the rear hatch.

Natu stood behind her, and they waited together for the medical team to fix the tunnel to the ship.

When the door opened, she stepped out and into the care of the medical team. They gently took the Resicor clothing from her and ran scans over her body.

“Hello, Riasa. I am Reset, and I am the medical officer here at Teklan Base. Currently, we are doing a bio-scan on you to determine if you have anything that could damage an inhabitant of this world. The ship isn’t equipped to do that yet. It has to go to Morganti for an overhaul.”

“Hello, Reset.” She smiled weakly. She recognized the species of the woman in front of her, and it boded ill for someone of Resicor.

Reset checked the scans and grinned. “Excellent. You are clear.” Reset paused. “But your stress level just hit the roof. Oh, darn. It is the Kozue thing, right?”

Riasa nodded. “That is it.”

“I will explain it to you later, but both sides were deceived. The Kozue tribe hired for it thought they were killing warriors because of the interference of an illusion talent, and the quantity of people were exaggerated for the Resicor viewers. They thought it was an entire town, but there were considerably less people.”

Oddly enough, it was fairly easy to believe that her government had something to do with it. They wanted to make it clear that there was no help out there for talents. It had to be driven home with a bludgeon to kill hope, so they had done it.

“Come on inside for the final scans and you can meet Mist. He is a Nishan, but his form is that of a Kozue warrior. He is also my husband, so there is that level of comfort as well. You are not in danger here.”

Riasa nodded and followed Reset down the transparent hall, watching the swing of her dark blue hair.

In medical, there were more scans and some blood work. Reset commented, “You are in amazing shape.”

“I work on a farm so there isn’t a muscle I don’t use in a day.”

“That would explain it.” Reset smiled. “We work closely with the Citadel. They are still getting settled in.”

She checked the readouts several times before letting Riasa out of the machine.

“What was wrong?”

“Nothing. Your people have a tendency to hand over minor talents to Raiders for experimentation and enhancement. I wanted to be sure that you hadn’t been tampered with.”

“You are kidding. They wouldn’t do that.” Despite the horrors she knew about, that ratcheted it up above normal levels.

“They could and did. Sector Guard Base Udell, is home to Quint, and he was born on Resicor as a single being. Now, he splits into five and the process was not painless.” Reset sighed. “I spent weeks reworking several Resicorians into the talents they had been born with after they had been transformed into weapons. What made it worse was that they were breeding another generation.”

Riasa sat down. “I think I am going to be sick.”

“The ones who were rescued are alive and well. They have all been reset to their original talents and are living at a variety of bases and Citadels. They have normal lives now, which is more than they could have had at home. It is just a shame that the agony had to come first.”

A knock at the door brought Riasa’s dazed head up.

A man stood in the doorway, and he smiled in a friendly manner that belied the scars that were carved into his cheeks and jawline. “Greetings. I am Clovid Aturn, manager of the Citadel Teklan, such as it is.”

“Riasa Zorgard.”

“If you would like to come with me, we can walk to the Citadel and I can get you settled.”

Reset nodded her release. “Feel free to pop in for a chat.”

Clovid offered her his arm and, bemused, she took it. He showed her the cafeteria and walked outside across the tarmac with her to the large, squat building she had seen from space.

“I hear that you were collected by Stone.”

“Um, I was?”

“The grey Guardsman with the wings.”

She blinked. “Right. Stone. Yes, he snagged me from my home.”

“It must have been traumatic for you.”

“Not particularly. It was a fairly easy snatch. I knew someone was coming; I just didn’t know how or who.”

He patted her hand, and she carefully released his arm.

He gave her an intense look. “I am a little fuzzy on the details of your talent.”

“I see things. My vision is my talent and little escapes it.”

“What do you see now?” He puffed out his chest.

She looked up and around. “Three satellites, a white moon hiding in sunlight, nine base personnel working on shuttles, three flowers and the scar on your left cheek was done by a different hand than the right.”

Her final observation shocked him. He backed up. “I see.”

“No, I do, now can I please see where I can sleep? It has been a very long and disappointing trip.”

He withdrew all flirtation and became businesslike as he led her into the building and the quarters that were hers. Citadel Teklan had been built
into
the planet and her space was on one of seventeen lower levels. It was fine with her. She just needed a place to sleep.

Seeing was not a skill that she could teach, but she could teach interpretation of visual stimuli. Teaching was the only entertainment she got in the first few days.

When her com unit pinged and told her that she was requested at the base, she nearly wept in relief. In seconds, her outer robes were on and she was headed to the base. The nice thing was that being a master of her talent let her wear the suitable robes for a mastered physical talent based on perception. She got to wear black.

Might was the base commander, and he greeted her with a polite inclination of his horned head. “We have a request for your skills.”

“Thank goodness. I was so bored.”

He chuckled. “Don’t you want to know what the assignment is?”

“Nope.”

“You don’t want to know where you are going?”

“Nope. I just want to go.”

“Right. Well, here is the tablet; your flight is waiting. It is a shakedown for you, so you will be flying with Finder and Frost. They will monitor your skills and determine if you can go on solo missions in the future.”

She clapped her hands in a gesture that alarmed Might.

He waved her away. “Out to the tarmac with you. Look for the man with leathery wings and the woman kissing him.”

Chortling, she headed out to the tarmac and did indeed find the couple making out next to a shuttle. She greeted them. “Please excuse me. I will just head on in.”

They broke their liplock and the woman grinned. “I am Finder, this is Frost, and we will be your supervisors for this excursion.”

“So, this is a test?”

“Yes, indeed.” Finder waggled her eyebrows and gestured for her to enter the ship. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we can get home and you can consider your options.”

“Options?” Riasa blinked in surprise.

The man with the wings and the intense features said, “We can explain on the way. Let’s go.”

Finder grinned. “Let’s go.”

On the way, Riasa learned that she was a candidate for the Sector Guard. If this trip went well, she would be offered the position the moment that they landed. If it didn’t, she was stuck in the boring Citadel.

When they landed on Truska, she knew what they needed, and she set out to find it. It was a simple assignment, to find a set of crown jewels that had been covered by a slick landslide.

Finder and Frost stayed with the royals while Riasa grabbed a shovel and went skipping down the slippery muck that covered the hillside. She could already see the crown jewels, but they had moved dramatically from the point where the recovery efforts had been engaged.

She continued on for three hundred meters and started digging while whistling a tuned that used to keep the goats quiet.

Riasa dug for half an hour before she started to pull out the objects that had come loose, and from there, she uncovered the box that they had been in during the formal walk to the palace.

Once it was all accounted for, she scanned the area and picked up one more ring to toss into the pile, and then, she hauled everything up the hill, dragging it behind her.

The crowd at the top was silent. The hillside waterfall was nearby, so Riasa left the jewels at the feet of the royals, and she went to take a shower of sorts.

She was wet but clean when she returned. “Apologies but that mud is sticky.”

The grand duke asked, “How did you know where it was?”

“I could see it. I can see metal under mud.” She inclined her head because the moment seemed to call for it.

Finder nodded as well. “We have carried out the contract and wish you a good evening.”

Frost shepherded Riasa back to the shuttle and into the lav. “Take a better scrub. Use solar and sonic.”

She was in the shower when the shuttle took off. She reached out and gripped the walls as they lifted but finished her solar and sonic scrubs before she considered her options. She could step out and flatten herself against the wall or wait in the confined space and leave when they were out of the atmosphere.

She chose to wait until she could open the door and haul herself over to the jump seat that was her designated spot. “So, we were in a bit of a hurry?”

Finder nodded. “You could say that. While you were digging, the royals began to mutter how nice it would be to have someone like you at their beck and call to retrieve lost caches of jewels around the globe. Their culture likes to bury things. We didn’t want a fight, so we got you out of there before they could work their nerve up.”

Frost snorted and aimed them back at Teklan. “They were getting themselves into a bit of a greed snit. Congratulations. You showed no hesitation in going after your goal and that is to your credit. I have never seen a woman slog through muck without whining about it before.”

Finder smacked him.

Riasa smiled, “I was raised on a farm. I have had to slog through way worse. It is all hands on deck during kidding season. Whining isn’t an option.”