Chapter 28
Ethan worried he was trying too hard with his attempt to make himself look weaker, but Velda kept touching him, quick brushes of her fingers on the back of his hand, and he was getting the message that she approved, that he should keep it up.
Her fear for him was just one more thing to love about her, even though there was going to come a time, and soon, where he wouldn’t be able to keep up the ruse.
Linao was already suspicious of him, although his comment about the Cores being dishonorable had annoyed her enough that she was striding ahead of them, eager to put them back in Ritter’s clutches.
She flipped between sharing secrets with them and then also trying to keep them in a state of fear, and he wondered if she shared as much as she did because she didn’t often get the chance to talk to peers and she knew they were going to die anyway, so a little sharing didn’t matter.
It made a twisted sort of sense.
She asked for directions a few times, but eventually they arrived back in the med bay, where they’d hidden out the day before.
Ritter was already there, studying the equipment with interest.
When he turned to face them, Ethan had the distinct impression he was unhappy to see Linao, and not all that happy to see Ethan and Velda, either.
Nirro wandered out from a small room to the side of the med bay, and Linao took a surprised step back at the sight of him.
That’s what Nirro had been called away about, Ethan realized. They’d been told Ritter was setting up the experiment, and they wanted to observe. Or interfere.
Whatever it was, it had already complicated things.
“Have you seen anything like this before?” Linao asked Nirro, pointing to the box which was open on the counter.
“You think I have?” Nirro asked without answering.
“We know you found that ghost ship in Raxian airspace well over a year ago, and that turned out to be an ancestral ship. Either the Raxians are lying about finding a box of them onboard, which we don’t think they are, or you got onboard first and took it before you started towing the ship away. ” Linao leaned against the wall.
“Interesting.” Nirro stared at the box with renewed curiosity. “I haven’t ever seen anything like it, but it’s possible it happened the way you say. I don’t know anything about it, though.”
Of course. Ethan thought about how many ancestral wrecks had been found recently.
The Raxian find was the first, or rather, they’d thought it was the first, but according to Linao, the first one had been nearly twenty years ago on Garmen.
Then the Raxian find, then the one on Faldine.
After that, there was the find on the small moon, Fynian, and then the wreck Wren Thorakis had stumbled across on Ytla.
If there were boxes full of silver balls in each one, where were they?
And that didn’t even address the find the Cores had made on Fjern, the planet where the silver balls had been working as designed for thousands of years.
“The leader of the Caruson that took control of the ore ship was very interested in the balls. He contacted his superiors about them and then took them when he escaped.” Linao walked forward and bent a little to look at them more closely. “I had the sense he knew about them beforehand.”
“I’m a rebel now, remember,” Nirro said. “I may have been in the military before, but I wasn’t at the top of the chain. I would not have been given access to that information.”
“But you were onboard the Caruso warship that towed the old ancestral wreck in Raxian airspace,” Linao said. “You were part of the crew.”
Nirro went still and looked over at Linao. “Who told you that?” he asked.
Linao shrugged, and the way she did it, eyes a little averted, told Ethan she suddenly regretted saying that. She’d showed her hand, and Nirro did not like it at all.
“Are you still dealing with the establishment as well as us?” Nirro asked. “Playing both sides?” He made an explosive sound. “You have to be, to know something like that.”
Linao’s silence lasted too long and Nirro looked out into the passageway and called something in Caruson. Light flashed—a laz shot—coming from just outside the med bay doors.
It hit Linao in the back and she went down hard.
Velda made a sound of distress and moved back against the wall, and Ritter stared down at Linao, frozen in horror.
Ethan edged back to stand shoulder to shoulder with Velda, up against the wall.
“You.” Nirro pointed at Ritter and the scientist took a step back, hands up, palms out.
“I don’t even know what you two were talking about.”
“Show me how this works,” Nirro said, pointing to the box. He snapped out a command and a guard stepped into the room, grabbed Linao’s ankle and dragged her out of the room.
The time is coming, the voices in Ethan’s head said. Get ready when they open the box.
He had to agree. Nirro was already shooting him quick looks, as if he suddenly saw Ethan a little more clearly.
Ritter’s gaze skittered around the room, landing on Nirro, on the armed guards just outside the door looking in, and on Ethan and Velda. He walked to the table and his hand shook as he lifted the small clamp he used to handle the balls.
He carefully lifted one out of the box, held out a hand. When he was sure Nirro was watching he dropped the ball onto his palm and they all watched it melt away.
Then he retrieved the small device that was also inside the box and activated it, holding it against his hand, and the ball rose back up.
He grabbed it with the clamp and returned it to the box.
Nirro had watched the whole thing with growing interest. “Do you feel different?” he asked.
Ritter shook his head. “A little nauseous, for some reason, but otherwise, no.”
“And you did this to the crew of your runner, as well?”
Ritter nodded.
“And to these two?” He glanced at Ethan and Velda.
Ritter nodded again.
“And you were planning to do what today?” Nirro lifted the clamp and studied it.
“I was going to use up the last four balls on them, giving them two each, and check their vitals to see if it would make a difference. If each one is working even a little bit, it may be there is a cumulative effect.” Ritter’s hand waved vaguely.
“I want to try one on my own people,” Nirro said. He gestured one of the guards into the room and spoke to him in Caruson.
The guard seemed very unhappy about being part of the experiment, but Nirro was tapping the little device, which Ethan took to mean he was reassuring him they’d both just seen the ball being lifted back out without any issue.
Eventually the guard held out his hand and Nirro used the clamp to lift a ball into his palm.
It disappeared and the guard closed his hand into a fist, in an almost reflexive action.
Then he shivered, his lips moving back in a snarl, and he fell forward, directly into Nirro, who caught him as he went down, twisting him to the side to lay him on his back as his feet drummed on the floor and his back arched up.
He screamed, and then went absolutely limp. Velda crouched down, hands out to balance herself, and Ethan saw a silver ball roll across from the body toward her, and then disappear when it reached her fingers.
She turned her head to look up at him, a little wild-eyed, and he joined her, going onto his haunches.
It seemed as if neither Nirro or Ritter had seen the ball leave the guard’s body. Ritter had gotten as far away from the flailing guard as he could and still be in the room, and Nirro was shouting for help from the guards outside.
He grabbed the device that extracted the silver balls and lifted up the guard’s hand, pressing the device into his palm.
Nothing happened.
“Why isn’t it coming out?” he shouted at Ritter.
“I don’t know! I was experimenting with it, I didn’t build it!” Ritter made himself smaller where he pressed up against the wall.
Nirro stared at the lifeless body before him and for a moment, Ethan thought he was going to crush the extraction device in his hand.
He didn’t, though. He tossed it onto the counter and bent down to the guard, looking for signs of life.
One of the guards in the passageway finally stepped inside, crouching beside his friend, and then shouted something at Nirro.
The rebel leader shook his head, but Ethan guessed he was being blamed for the death.
The guard remonstrating with him stood suddenly, his gaze caught on the box containing the remaining three balls, and he swept it off the counter with a shout.
The box hit the ground, and the balls went flying. Ethan heard them bounce, and it seemed as if they shot randomly around the room.
But he knew better.
He didn’t look down, keeping his gaze up and on the Caruson and Ritter, but he felt the nudge as two of the balls hit the side of his hand.
He guessed the last one had found Velda when she lifted her hands up off the floor at last and pressed them together, fingers entwined.
Nirro seemed to remember they were there, looking over at them and then dismissing them as the guard shouted in his face.
He rose to his full height, lifting his laz, and shouted back.
With a snarl of outrage, the guard remonstrating with Nirro turned on his heel and as he stormed out of the room, he casually shot Ritter.
The scientist was already up against the wall, and he slid down, and Ethan thought he was dead, not unconscious.
At least that one guard had upped the laz strength.
It was something to keep in mind.
The sound of laz fire and shouting was suddenly clear, coming from down the passageway.
The Caruso had decided to turn on the Cores. They had already been distrustful, and then Linao had let it slip they were still in talks with the Caruso establishment.
“Stay.” Nirro pointed to them both, scooped up his fallen soldier’s laz, and walked out of the med bay.
The door closed behind him and for a moment there was silence.
Ethan guessed it wouldn’t last long.