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Chapter 42

Thousands of Lights

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The room was massive and brightly lit. The ceiling high above—why did everything here have to be on such immense scale around here?—was a honeycomb of thin, angular partitions that glowed with a golden tone. The partitions looked huge, slightly irregular in pattern, and translucent. Beneath them, in the space above the activity on the glistening white floor, thousands of tiny lights filled the air. Most were pale yellow, but scattered among them were others that burned a more intense white. Many, mostly in the highest reaches, were varying shades of darker yellows and golds. A few were brown, dull, but still visible. The lights did not blaze, yet I could see them individually if I focused. Toward the center of the room, pale threads formed links like spiderwebs between the bright ones. It gave those areas a glow, as if I gazed into a galaxy swept clean of all dark debris.

The sight was stunning, but that was not what caused my heart to stand still.

In rising, tiered circles beneath the lights lay glistening white, oblong boxes similar to suspended animation chambers. They tilted upward on one end, making their contents visible from the outer edge of the room where we stood. Inside the ones closest to me, sleeping on pillowy, golden interiors were what appeared to be pale, blond Humans.

I stopped walking.

My escort gently nudged me forward.

As I moved along the edge of the room, my attention remained locked on those SAC-like chambers. I watched as two Endar in crisp white coats, accompanied by a white-robed Human, walked to a chamber on the second tier. One of the Endar adjusted some settings along the chamber's side, and the Human inside it sat up. The attendants removed sensor pads from its head, then assisted as it climbed out of the SAC. They guided the Human accompanying them in to replace it. As an attendant led the newly removed being away, the other proceeded to reattach sensors to the replacement.

My mind flashed to the conversation with the Tabi security team, when I asked why they were in the Endar spaceport warehouse. How they were monitoring it for smuggled cargo...

I sensed a sudden change in the atmosphere of the room. Instinct made me tuck my head deeper inside the cowl of my robe.

Curiosity made me peer back out.

Atop the three circles of the mechanical mountain sat what appeared to be a workspace surrounded by floating virtual screens. A Human stood its center. Despite the distance, I knew he was staring right at me. I couldn't see his expression, but his posture said he was not happy with my presence.

Of course. I was a non-telepath and beyond their influence. Maybe that was a good thing. Or not. I couldn't tell him to resume whatever he was doing and ignore me.

Up there in his tech nest, he probably was not used to others 'telling' him to do anything, anyway.

The figure ducked down among the screens.

Meanwhile, we'd come to a stop, and my escort was having a contentious discussion with a leather-clad peer who must have represented security for the area. I pulled my focus back in time to see a new Endar in a white coat approaching from deeper in the room. Its coat stretched tautly over layers of black leather. They were nowhere near as thick as the High Jerak's.

He waddled briskly up to us.

"M'Faiya," my escorts acknowledged it. My translator didn't interpret the word, but it came through with a tone of respect, confirming he held some rank.

As expected, the new Endar officiously demanded my escorts' credentials and the reason for their intrusion into the middle of a critical operation.

"We found one of your charges wandering in the lower tunnels, M'Faiya." Endar Left pulled the hood off my head.

Intense red eyes flicked over my bald head and locked on my face. "Contract and pod number," the lab-coat-over-leather Endar demanded.

I had no answer for him.

"Is it damaged, M'Faiya?" Endar Right asked. "We discovered it outside our walls, cringing in fear against an entrance in the base tunnels. It appears ill-used."

"We found no report filed on a missing Minder, so we brought it to you," the other half of my escort added. I wondered if that was how smugness sounded in Arpi.

"Do you insinuate my division is ineffective or incompetent in some way?" The leather-layered Endar made a hissing sound. Two more Endar guards sauntered over from the space along the wall to stand behind the M'Faiya. They squared off as if they were ready to physically engage with my escort.

Two groups confronting each other for honor and prestige: I guess every species has them.

It seemed a good time for a soft Human to get out of the way and let them sort things out. Before I could move, however, the M'Faiya put his hand on my bare pate, the razor edges of black claws settling dangerously close to my eyes and ears. It could have easily plucked my head from my body. Instead, it tilted my face up to stare into it.

"Scan this creature," he snapped.

Not good.

A lesser lab-coated Endar carrying a small device came across from the lowest row of white chambers. With the scanner poised, he lifted my left arm and flicked up the sleeve of my ragpile robe.

Seven Endar stared at my cobalt blue shipskins.

The fingers on my skull tightened. "Scan it!"

"There is nothing, M'Faiya," the Endar holding the scanner over my wrist announced.

"A spy," the M'Faiya hissed. "Alert High Jerak Seok." He released my head and turned to my escorts. "You did not check this thing to confirm what you had?"

"It is forbidden to touch the Minders beyond rendering basic assistance," Endar Left protested, the anticipated disgrace of a rival clan crumbling around him. "We could not know!"

"This is not Minder-wear," the M'Faiya plucked at the shoulder of my robes.

"Perhaps the coverings are part of the assault perpetrated on this Minder..."

"It is not a Minder!" The M'Faiya caught my upper arm with hard fingers. Before I could flinch, it ran the foreclaw of its other hand slowly down my bicep.

The robe shredded, but my shipskins hardened to dissipate the pressure from the sharp tip. They remained intact but the pain nearly took me to my knees.

"This is Human clothing worn by their spacerpeople, you incompetent dung-dwellers. You should have called for a handler who knew what to look for in a Minder. You bring this enemy spawn into the heart of our operation and interrupt me at this critical time! There will be severe repercussions."

The M'Faiya released me and I clutched my forearm with my other hand. The shipskins had protected me from a flayed muscle, but the resulting bruise would be wide and bone-deep. I panted, trying to focus on anything that would distract me from the pain while they continued to argue.

My desperate eyes found a doorway in the wall a short distance past the opening through which we had entered. I stared at it, knowing what I'd just experienced was a mere prelude to what the High Jerak planned for me. There sure as hell was no hope of him changing his mind and parading me before the Saalyu now. I had seen too much.

An Endar security guard walked through the door, a white-robed child tagging along behind him.

Holy shit!

My tiny angel stopped in mid-step. Her escort paused and said something, but she ignored him as she stood, rooted in place, an expression of uncertainty rolling across her features as her eyes swept the room.

The process of changing out Humans in the chambers, which had continued while the Endar surrounding me argued, came to a stop. The three Humans scattered across the levels turned to stare at the kid.

Their Endar handlers, unaware of her arrival, chittered at them impatiently.

The kid's eyes had moved over to me. They widened. Narrowed. She looked back at the others and frowned.

The three blond people suddenly lost interest in her arrival and returned their attention to their Endar attendants. At the same moment, the guard who had entered with the kid looked around the space in what I interpreted as confusion, then backed slowly out the doorway and left.

The kid had erased memories again. I saw her do it. She knew I saw her, yet, she didn't erase me.

Mother Universe! While she was erasing memories, why not include the seven Endar surrounding me? Idiot kid!

I jerked my chin in a gesture for her to leave.

Endar Right's attention snapped to me. "What are you doing?" he demanded.

I shook my head, feeling pretty confident that, even though she was in plain sight across the room, he could not see her.

By now, I was fairly certain the Endar were not real telepaths. They had driven the MoMo off their homeworld because the jellyfish had the skill—a skill which presented a threat to merchants, bankers, and negotiators who wanted to do business on the Moneyworld. The MoMo would have fought the eviction and won if the Endar shared the skill.

So why in hell would the Primacy risk using telepaths who might manipulate their minds? No sane species would do that.

The image of the hostile, glaring figure at the top of the tech pyramid flashed in my memory. Were the people in those white robes slaves, accomplices, or the true manipulators here?

"The High Jerak orders the prisoner and its escort to his private interrogation chamber. He wishes you to continue with your own work," the security officer behind the M'Faiya told him.

The M'Faiya waved a hand in dismissal. "Reports. I want reports on all of this from you."

More black uniforms had emerged to dominate the area around us. One moved up on my right, cutting off my view of the kid.

At least for now, she was able to move about, erasing memories. For me, it looked as if my time was up.

Endar Right and Left vibrated as the new guards enclosed us in a wall of security black and herded them, with me in the center, back into the maze of silent corridors and spiraling lifts.