The Node
Roca raced to the starport, through orb-tipped reeds and the overcast night. Tarlin ran at her side. He seemed stunned, even in shock. He had ridden hard and fast over the mountains, making in less than a day. He could have killed himself thundering through the upper ranges of the Backbone at such speeds.
He had her eternal gratitude.
She spoke into her wrist comm. “Brad, is the flyer ready to go?” She was sprinting so hard, the words came out in gasps. Reeds snapped against her legs.
“Yes.” Brad’s voice came back sharp and fast. “I’m cold-starting it now.”
The reeds thinned out as Roca and Tarlin neared the port. The flyer waited on the brightly lit tarmac, glittering gold and black. Tarlin hesitated at the edge of the field, his face pale. Roca doubted he had ever seen anything like the flyer nor touched a material like the tarmac. But he faltered only a moment and then picked up speed again.
They reached the flyer within seconds, and Brad grabbed Roca’s hand as she reached up to him. Without missing a stride, she jumped up into the cabin. Tarlin swung up behind her, his ashen face the only indication he was dealing with technology that had to look like magic to him. Her respect for him went up another notch. Eldri had always chosen his friends well.
“You’ll need to strap in,” Roca told him as she dropped into the copilot’s seat. “The webbing will fold itself around you. Don’t be alarmed; it’s for safety.” Even as she spoke, her own webbing was folding its silver mesh around her body. She fastened the catches.
Tarlin lowered himself into a seat set slightly back between the pilot and copilot’s chairs. He copied her actions, strapping the webbing around his body. Roca knew what it took for him to accept all this. The Lyshrioli lived the same, year after year; change disturbed them. Yet he never flinched.
The comm crackled. “Dr. Tompkins, this is Colonel Majda on the Ascendant. We still don’t have a lock on either King Eldrinson or Lord Vitarex.”
Brad spoke into the mesh. “We’re headed out now. Do you have a fix on us?”
“To the centimeter,” Majda said. “The shuttles are on their way. ETA in six point three minutes.”
“Understood, Colonel,” Brad said. “We will meet you at the Archer camp.”
Just hearing the word “Aristo” made Roca ill. The Traders had violated her most treasured retreat, the haven for her family. They had brought great agony to her husband. No mercy existed in her now. The Aristo would pay. She was the Foreign Affairs Councilor of the Assembly, her life dedicated to dealing in diplomacy with other governments, including the Traders, but right now she could think of only one thing, that she wanted him to pay long and hard and forever, to suffer the same torments he had inflicted on her husband.
First they had to reach Eldri—before his injuries ended his life.
Eldrinson floated in a drugged sea. He never lost consciousness, but he drifted in and out of awareness. The pain had receded. The hot beverage these strangers gave him to drink hazed his mind and dulled the worst of his agony.
After many hours, or perhaps only a moment, he became aware of someone nearby. He struggled to focus. A man was speaking, softly, brokenly, tears in his voice.
“ … don’t die,” he pleaded. “Please. You must live. I beg you.” His voice broke. “I couldn’t bear it if you died.”
Eldrinson tried to speak, but no words came. He wet his lips and tried again. “Shannon?” It was barely a whisper.
“We’re bringing help.” Shannon’s words were ragged and earnest. “Tarlin went for Mother. Help will come.”
Eldrinson knew it was too late. His life was slipping away now. He was too tired. But somehow, incredibly, he had achieved his goal. He had kept his secret from Vitarex long enough to stop the Aristo from taking him off Lyshriol.
A hand touched Eldrinson’s forehead, a hinged palm cool against his fevered skin. “Father, can you hear me?”
“I hear,” Eldrinson whispered. “I am—glad you are here.” He paused, gathering his energy. “I don’t want your mother to see me—see me like this. To see … my death.”
“You won’t die.” Shannon brushed back his hair.
“Can’t see … .”
“We’ll fix it,” Shannon whispered. “We’ll make you better.”
Urgent voices came from outside and the scrape of booted feet. Eldrinson’s sensitized mind reacted to nuances his ears couldn’t yet discern. “No! She must not—see me—”
“Who, Father?” Shannon asked.
The voices resolved into Skolian Flag, a tongue flat and harsh after Shannon’s Trillian. Then a woman spoke in Trillian, almost chiming, though she had never learned to make the true sounds. Didn’t have the right vocal cords …
“They’re here!” Shannon’s boots crackled as he jumped to his feet. Eldrinson reached out to stop him, but Shannon’s footsteps were already receding across the tent. Rustles came from the entrance, then the scuff of feet and someone’s abrupt intake of breath. The sharp odor of the oil Brad used in the flyer cut through the air. Currents moved across his face as people knelt around him, creaking, scraping, clinking.
“Eldri?” A soft palm cupped his cheek. Tears filled her voice. “Eldri, can you hear me?”
He pulled his head away. “Roca, leave me.”
“I can’t.” She was crying now. Her hair brushed his arms, his hands, his face, its clean fragrance painful in a way that no medicine could help. She pressed her lips against his forehead and he wanted to weep with the bittersweet
agony of knowing he could never again be the man she had fallen in love with.
Other people were doing things, placing cool strips on his neck, moving blankets from his body, no doubt examining him with marvels of medical technology he couldn’t see. A syringe hissed against his neck. He felt Roca’s anguish and it tore him apart. Someday their children could be the ones lying broken and tortured, victims of the Traders, and he couldn’t stop it from happening no matter how hard he tried, because they had chosen to fight and nothing he did, nothing he said would ever stop them. A father had to protect his wife and children, always and forever, but he couldn’t, not even in his own lands, and it was killing him more than his shattered body.
He meant to tell Roca to leave. But for the first time in days, forever it seemed, the pain was leaving his body, truly leaving, not muted by herbs but genuinely going away.
“I can’t feel anything,” he whispered, switching into Skolian Flag for the doctors.
A man whose voice Eldrinson didn’t recognize spoke in Flag. “We’ve given you a neural blocker, Your Majesty.”
Majesty. He wished they would stop calling him that. But he was grateful they had stopped the pain.
“Can you heal him?” Roca’s voice asked.
Silence followed her question. Then another voice spoke. “We will do our best, Councilor.”
“Where is Shannon?” Eldrinson asked.
His son answered from farther away. “Here, Father.” The scrunch of cloth and mail came from Eldrinson’s right. Then Shannon spoke next to him. “The doctors will fix everything.”
Eldrinson reached out and his knuckles brushed a tunic. Someone grasped his hand.
“I’m right here,” Shannon said.
“You saved my life,” Eldrinson whispered. “Even more. You stopped Vitarex … from taking me offworld. He was ready to leave.” Roca and ISC wouldn’t have made it in time to stop him.
“I should have never run away.” Shannon wasn’t trying to hide his
guilt-torn emotions. “Then you wouldn’t have come after me and he wouldn’t have caught you.”
Roca spoke in a murmur. “Shannon, no, it’s not your fault.”
“Listen to your mother.” Eldrinson took a breath, determined to put strength in his words. “Had Vitarex not captured me while so many people were searching for you, we would have never known he was here. Until too late.” He kept going despite the drugged lethargy overcoming him. “His plan might have succeeded. You stopped that. You. Shannon.”
Silence followed his words, as everyone in the tent absorbed the implications. By running away, Shannon may have averted an interstellar war.
“But what about Althor and Soz?” Shannon sounded bewildered. “What if they are captured?”
A man, one of the unfamiliar voices, spoke quietly in Flag. “Jagernauts have options. If necessary, we can end our lives using the biomech web in our bodies.”
Would it come to that? Would war force his children to commit suicide? Would they die in the cold reaches of places unknown and unimaginable? Nor was it only Sauscony and Althor. Kelric would go someday, when he was old enough. Wanderlust drove the boy. It was too much. Unbearable. Eldrinson rubbed his useless eyes. If only he, too, had a biomech web so he could finish this, for he couldn’t live in a universe as harsh and inexplicable as the one his wife’s people and their enemies had created.
“Love, don’t.” Roca brushed her knuckles against his cheek in that way he loved. “You will get better. Our children will be fine. We will protect Lyshriol. You will see.”
He wished he could believe her. But those pretty words meant nothing against the truth.
The white ceiling blurred. Soz lay on her back, aware only of the pain in her legs. It shouldn’t hurt this way. The tests all said her body would easily take the biomech. She refused to believe they had been wrong, that her body was rejecting the augmentation.
A blurred face moved into her line of sight. A gold face.
“Kurj?” she asked.
Her half brother raised his inner lids. He regarded her with gold eyes, his usually impassive face creased with concern. “How are you feeling?”
She wanted to say she felt fine, just great. But they had to know. Today she had become among the most expensive and complex pieces of military equipment built by ISC. They had designed a biomech web from her own DNA and woven it into her body. It included many components: threads that linked to sockets in her neck, lower back, wrists, and ankles to an internal mesh node in her spine; bioelectrodes that spurred her neurons to fire according to directions from either her node or brain, allowing communication between the two; nanomeds that patrolled the implants, healing and repairing, dispensing chemicals to prevent rejection, and working with the other nanomeds she already carried that maintained her health and delayed her aging. And that was just the start. They hadn’t yet given her the operations to increase her speed and strength or the microfusion reactor to supply energy.
“My legs hurt,” Soz said. “My sight blurs.”
A long silence followed her answer. Too long. She hadn’t expected to awaken this way. Doctors and biomech techs should be here, checking on her, testing how her body had taken the web. Although it made sense that Kurj would want to see how she dealt with the operation, he should have come with the doctors. She couldn’t see him clearly, only the blur of his face.
Then he stepped away.
Disquieted, Soz probed his thoughts. His mental shields glinted bright and metallic in her mind, like his inner eyelids. She didn’t push at his barriers. It would never work. No one had his mental strength. But just as someone with less strength might be more nimble than a heavier fighter, so she had more finesse as an empath than Kurj. She edged around his mind looked for chinks in his shields. She found a hint, something serious, something he didn’t want to tell her—
Her father?
Soz strained to focus. What was wrong with her eyes? The operations included no optical enhancements. It shouldn’t have affected her sight.
Over the next few moments, her vision cleared. She was lying in a hospital room with a glossy white ceiling and walls which could also project holographic images. Turning her head, she saw a long white counter that stretched along one wall and ended in a console molded from seamless
curves of Luminex. A multi-tiered, wheeled cart-bot with supplies stood by her bed. No, “bed” wasn’t accurate. She lay on a mech-table with embedded components that could recognize tension in her body and adjust as necessary for her needs. Right now it moved subtly beneath her, probably to ease her stiff muscles. A robot arm was folded against the table, silver and chrome, quiescent now but with lights glittering along its length.
Then she realized she and Kurj weren’t alone. He stood across the room with Secondary Tapperhaven, the two of them deep in a conference, communicating with the comms in their gauntlets by tracing messages on the screens. Kurj towered over the Secondary. He wore khaki trousers, knee-boots, and a pullover with a single gold line of ribbing across the torso that accented the width of his chest and shoulders. His uniform had no adornment, no medals, no indication of rank anywhere. He needed none. Everyone knew he commanded ISC.
Soz squinted at them. Here she was, just waking up, worried about her father and these changes in her body, and they were over there having a secret conference. She sat up and winced as pain stabbed her legs. The glimmering white sheet fell down around her hips, leaving her in a white medshift that fortunately was smart enough to keep itself closed in the back. She crossed her arms and scowled at Kurj and Tapperhaven. Neither had noticed she was fully awake yet.
“Are you done telling secrets?” Soz asked.
Tapperhaven jumped and Kurj glanced up. Soz had no idea how she looked, but for some reason Kurj smiled. “Good evening,” he said.
“I wouldn’t know about that.” Soz slid off the bed and stood next to the cart-bot. Her legs wobbled but she caught the cart in time to hold herself upright. Then she glared at Kurj.
Tapperhaven strode over. “Cadet Valdoria, you should get back into bed. You’ve just had several major operations.”
“Is that an order, ma’am?” Soz asked.
The Secondary spoke dryly. “Yes, Cadet, that is an order.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Soz pulled herself back up on the bed and sat with her legs hanging off the edge, waiting to see what they were planning. Kurj joined the Secondary, his expression concerned. That worried Soz more than any rebuke he may have given her. He never looked at her that way.
Soz spoke uneasily. “Is my body rejecting the biomech?”
Kurj’s inner lids came down to shield his eyes. “No, it doesn’t appear so.” What was up? “Is it normal for my legs to hurt this much?”
He spoke carefully. “The pain will pass.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” Soz’s muscles bunched under the hospital shift. “What went wrong?”
Tapperhaven spoke quietly. “The operations succeeded.”
Soz had always been a good judge of whether or not a person was lying. It came with being an empath. Tapperhaven had given her the truth—as far as the response went. Soz wanted to insist they tell her, but she knew it wouldn’t work if she pushed too hard. She took a calming breath. “Sir, if my father has been hurt, I request you let me know.”
She thought he would say nothing had happened or tell her in some taciturn manner that she had no need to know. The last thing she expected was the grief in his voice. “In many ways, Soz, it is easier to deal with you when you are glowering like an irate warrior goddess.”
Soz didn’t know what to make of his response. “What happened?”
Kurj glanced at Tapperhaven. She nodded, accepting some unspoken command, and withdrew across the room. She took a post by the door as if she were a guard. That disturbed Soz even more. An officer with a rank as high as Jagernaut Secondary wouldn’t act in such a role unless this dealt with a far more serious situation than her biomech.
“Tell me,” she said.
Kurj spoke with difficulty, something she had never seen from him before. “Your father has been hurt.”
Ah, no. No. “How?”
He indicated her legs. “It should be impossible for you to feel what happened to him across so many light-years. But it has affected both you and Althor.”
“My father hurt his legs?” How? A fall in the Backbone? A seizure? She had seen him have a tonic clonic attack once, and it had scared the blazes out of her. He had been out of danger for so many years, she had forgotten the severity of his condition.
“I’ve been in communication with Colonel Corey Majda,” Kurj said. “She commands the Lyshrioli ODS.” He gave her the information without
pause. “The Traders got into Lyshriol. We aren’t yet sure how. Majda’s people found only the jamming equipment and one comm with off-planet range. ESComm apparently planted one agent and meant to pick him up when he finished his mission. However, they have denied any connection to his presence there, and he covered his tracks too well for us to prove their involvement.” He lifted his hands, then let them fall back to his sides. “Soz, I’m sorry. They took your father.”
“No!” She heard his words, but she couldn’t believe them. It couldn’t be true. “Has ISC caught them?” Her words tumbled out. “Did he escape? Will he be all right?”
“Yes, he escaped. We don’t yet know how ESComm placed an Aristo on the planet.” Fatigue came through in his voice. “But your father is receiving the best care ISC can provide.”
Soz didn’t miss what he left out. “How badly is he hurt?”
“We don’t know for certain yet.”
“Tell me.”
“Soz—”
“Tell me!”
Kurj answered with more regret than she would ever have expected him to show for the stepfather he hated. “He may never walk or see again.”
Soz clenched the table until her fingers and thumb hurt, her thumb, on her Skolian hand, just like Kurj’s hand, so unlike her father’s four-fingered, hinged hand. “That must be wrong. Surely ISC can help him.”
“We will do our best.” Kurj spoke quietly. “I won’t deny I’ve never done well with your father. But I would never have wished this on him.”
This was an aspect of Kurj she had rarely seen, indeed, one she doubted most anyone alive had witnessed except their mother. The iron-hard dictator had a human side. Kurj’s decades of dealing with the Traders had scarred him so deeply he would probably never heal, but the passage of years had ameliorated his antipathy for the man he had almost killed to prevent his marriage to Roca. His inner demons and outer horrors had made him into the unyielding Imperator, but a human being, an empath, existed beneath those hardened layers.
“Will you let me know when you find out more?” Soz asked.
“Yes. Immediately.”
A ping came from across the room. Soz glanced up to see Tapperhaven speaking into her gauntlet.
Kurj spoke to the Secondary. “Are they asking about Cadet Valdoria?”
Tapperhaven nodded to him with the extra respect J-Force officers reserved for the Imperator, who had once been one of them. “They want to come in and continue the tests.”
“Very well.” Kurj gave Soz a dry smile. “You up for being poked and prodded?”
She sat up straighter. “Yes, sir.” The sooner she could start to use her biomech, the better. She thought of her father. She had even more motivation to become as deadly against the Traders as possible.
As soon as Tapperhaven spoke into her comm, the door slid open and three people entered. Soz recognized the two in white jumpsuits: Dr. Callie Irzon, the primary biomech surgeon assigned to Soz; and Dr. Tine Loriez, a lanky man with intense eyes, the surgeon who had assisted in the operations. Both had the J-Force insignia on their shoulders, the stylized symbol of a Jag in flight.
A biomech-adept came with them. Tall and long-legged, the woman wore a form-fitting blue jumpsuit of metallic cloth. She had the dark hair and black eyes ubiquitous among the noble Houses. The ID holo on her chest had no name, just the five-star symbol of the House of Rajindia. Soz didn’t know her, but she recognized the family. The Rajindia line was ancient, dating back to the Ruby Empire. The House had almost died out on Raylicon during the Dark Ages, but it had rebounded again after the Raylican people regained the stars several centuries ago.
The officers saluted Kurj, clenching their fists and crossing their wrists as they raised their arms out to him. He inclined his head, his eyes shielded by the gold lids he could see through but that appeared opaque to everyone else. “At ease.” He indicated Soz. “Your patient awaits.”
They gathered around her then, all business. Loriez tapped a panel in the mech-table and a console in the headboard activated.
“How do you feel?” Irzon asked.
“Normal,” Soz said. It was disappointing. She had thought she would notice a difference, more strength, an enhanced sense of her body. Something positive. “My legs hurt when I came to, and my vision was blurry. But
those problems have cleared up.” She was aware of how closely they were all watching her.
Rajindia spoke in a dusky voice. “Activate.”
Soz blinked “Ma’am?”
“We activated you,” Irzon said.
“Oh. Yes.” Soz knew the terminology, but recognizing the words and having the process applied to her were two very different things. It felt strange to hear, as if she were a machine. But it was true. The operations would have taken several days and her recuperation even longer. Someone today had apparently decided she was ready to wake up. So they turned on her biomech.
Soz tapped the table where she sat. “Did this activate my web?”
“That’s right.” Rajindia lifted the sheet and showed her a long rod along the edge of the table. Blue light glowed within it. “The signal came from these bars. They extend down your body.”
Soz ran her hand over the rod. It was odd and intriguing that her conscious mind responded to signals from this machine. Loriez was at the head of the mech-table, working at the console in the headboard, studying holos of her body that floated in the air. He scrutinized them the way she had seen officers study equipment.
Disconcerted, Soz turned back to Irzon. The doctor was simply waiting, neither checking monitors nor performing any other visible doctor activities.
“Why don’t I feel anything?” Soz asked.
“You aren’t stiff?” Irzon asked.
“I ache everywhere.”
“That’s expected.” That neither Irzon nor the adept asked about the pain in her legs made Soz suspect they knew what she had discussed with Kurj, and were already examining her for problems.
Soz turned her wrist up to the ceiling and rubbed her thumb over the socket there. The circle was the color of her skin and smaller than the tip of her little finger. She tried to sense a change, a difference, an itch from its implantation. Anything. Leaning over, she turned out her feet so she could see the socket above each heel. Without knowing to look, she wouldn’t have noticed them. She sat up straight again and slid her hand under her hair,
fingering the socket at the base of her neck. Then she moved her hand down her back, searching—yes, there it was, the spinal socket just below her waist.
The doctors and adept continued to wait while she explored. Tapperhaven had remained posted by the door, and Kurj stood leaning against a nearby wall, his arms crossed, his metallic coloring a vivid contrast to the white Luminex. The sleeves of his pullover strained his large biceps.
“It’s odd.” Soz braced her palms on her knees. “I don’t feel a thing. The sockets aren’t even sore.” She surveyed her arm, trying to find a seam where the doctors had inserted the tubes they used to thread the biomech into her body. The placement didn’t have to be exact; the picotech braided into the threads had enough intelligence to make them weave into Soz’s neural system. “If I hadn’t known you all had operated on me, I couldn’t tell now.”
Relief washed across Irzon’s face. “Good.”
Her response startled Soz. Usually J-Force officers were more reserved about showing emotion, not because they didn’t feel it but because they learned fast to guard their moods when they spent the majority of their time with other empaths. Irzon’s reaction made sense, though. It had to be excruciating to do such work on the Imperator’s heir. If anything happened to Soz, the doctors would lose their jobs, possibly even their freedom. They all knew Kurj was listening, watching, analyzing.
Loriez was studying the holos of her body floating above his console in the headrest of the table.
“How does it look?” Soz asked.
He glanced up at her. “You’re a healthy young woman, Your Highness.” Kurj’s voice rumbled. “She is Cadet Valdoria here.”
Red tinged Loriez’s cheeks. “Yes, sir.”
Any reminder of her differences here made Soz twitch. Somehow she had to find a balance between being one of Kurj’s heirs and being like the other cadets. If Kurj hadn’t spoken, she might have done so herself, but that could have caused problems. Given her less than stellar subtlety, she might have ended up with more demerits, and she already had too many of the blasted marks on her record.
Rajindia gave the impression of calm efficiency, but Soz could feel her
underlying strain. None of it showed, though, when she spoke. “We can finish activating the system now, Cadet Valdoria.”
Soz sat up straighter. “I’m ready.”
Loriez pressed more commands into the console, and the blue rod edging the biomech table flared in brightness. Soz waited, striving for patience, but nothing happened. After a moment, she gave Irzon and Rajindia a quizzical look.
“You can finish it yourself,” Rajindia said.
Neither the adept nor the doctors offered any more guidance. Soz closed her eyes and concentrated, settling her thoughts as her instructors had trained her to do in the biomech class she was no longer taking. Perhaps testing out of it early hadn’t been such a good idea, after all.
She thought: Node?
Nothing.
Soz let her consciousness float. She wished she had Shannon’s ability to submerge into a trance. Thinking of him made her tense, which had never happened before. She let the memories of home slip away and just drifted.
Still nothing.
Perhaps she hadn’t directed the thought enough. She focused her mind and concentrated harder. Node, activate. It startled her how strong the thought sounded in her own mind, as if it were enhanced. Still no response, though.
Her agitation surged. She pushed it down, but the more she became concerned about being concerned, the more it disrupted her concentration. It was like saying, Don’t think of huge pink fungi. Of course then she could think of nothing but pink glop.
Node, she thought. I would appreciate it if you would answer me.
Please specify the question you wish answered. The thought came into her mind, firm, strong, oddly warm, reassuring in its competence.
Soz sat up with a jerk. “Whoa!”
“Cadet Valdoria?” Rajindia asked. Irzon and Loriez were watching her intently. An uncharacteristic furrow showed between Kurj’s eyebrow. Soz grinned at them all.
Here is a question, she thought to the node. Do you have any properties that distinguish you from any other node created by ISC?
Your question is rather general. It sounded calm. Pleasant. Efficient. Did you have anything specific in mind?
This is ultra, Soz thought, this time just to herself, without the focus she used for the node. Then she added, Something that would prove I’m talking to you.
“Cadet Valdoria?” Irzon asked, her dark eyes alert. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine.” Soz had no idea how her face looked while she “conversed” with her node. Probably she needed better control of her expressions. She didn’t want to go blank or make odd faces. Maybe that was why Kurj so often looked impassive; he had developed that control to a high art.
The node thought, My history parallels that of other nodes constructed by the J-Force biomech technicians. However, I do have more memory than other nodes.
Why more memory? Soz asked.
Your brain has extra capacity. Scientific images of neural structures formed in her mind, along with various stats.
Ultra, Soz thought. To Rajindia, she said, “My node has extra memory because your tests said my brain can handle it. You think I have inherited some of the genes that give holographic memories to the women called Memories on Lyshriol.”
Rajindia inclined her head in acknowledgment. “Your node told you this?”
“You bet.”
Irzon smiled. “Congratulations, Cadet Valdoria. You’re now a Jagernaut.”
“Hardly.” Kurj spoke from his post by the wall, his deep voice rumbling like a growl. “She’s a first-year cadet.”
Soz bit back her urge to point out that her classes and new biomech web qualified her as a junior. She was too pleased with the node to be annoyed at him right now. Besides, she could end up with more demerits.
Know who he is? she asked her node.
Which “he”? According to your sensors, I this room contains two human males.
Hey. It could detect the people in the room. She could hardly wait to explore all these new abilities. Their interaction was going so fast, barely a second had passed according to the fuzzy display it was creating in her mind. To Kurj she said, “Yes, sir,” in response to his comment about her rank.
“We can begin your training with the biomech web after you’ve rested.” He pushed away from the wall and walked toward her, lowering his arms.
“Yes, sir.” She sent her node another question: What Can you tell me about the larger man in this room? She pushed her thoughts even faster, curious to see how much she could learn in the few seconds it took for Kurj to walk to the table where she sat.
Data flooded her mind: Identity: 99.8 percent probability he is Kurj Skolia, Imperator. Weight: 130 kilograms. Height: 2.13 meters. Chronological age: undetermined from physical attributes but given as 52 standard years in history files. Apparent physical age: 38 standard years.
And so it went, ever faster. Kurj was moving in slow motion now, taking each step through invisible molasses. Soz winced and pressed her fingertips against her temples. The node was flooding her with data, everything from his blood type to estimates of the chemical composition of his hair.
Pain stabbed through Soz’s head. “Ah!” She pressed the heels of her hands against her temples. Stop! You′re going too fast.
“C-a-a-a-d-e-e-t V-a-a-a-l-l-d-o-o-r-r-r-i-a-a-a.” Irzon’s voice echoed so slowly that Soz wondered if someone had recorded it and was playing it at a delayed rate. She groaned and doubled over, her hands clenched around her head.
Accelerated mode off, her node thought.
The pain receded in Soz’s temples. Someone put a hand on her shoulder and someone else pressed a medical tape against her arm.
“—happened to her?” Kurj was demanding.
“Her blood pressure and heart rate spiked,” Loriez said.
“She started to have a seizure. Too many of her neurons were firing at once.” Then he said, “Gods above! Her impulse rate increased for a fraction of a second.”
Rajindia spoke. “Cadet Valdoria, can you hear me?”
Soz sat up slowly. Afterimages floated in front of her eyes as if she had looked at a bright light. Irzon was monitoring her with a gold metallic strip she had laid on Soz’s left forearm. The tiny holos that glittered above it showed data and images of Soz’s brain. Rajindia stood with her hand on Soz’s shoulder. Kurj was over by Loriez, dividing his attention between Soz and the holos above Loriez’s screen.
“I’m all right.” Soz lowered her hands.
“What happened?” Kurj asked.
“Apparently I put the node in accelerated mode.”
“You’ll learn how to control the modes,” Rajindia said.
Loriez looked up at Soz. “According to these scans, you tried to change the speed that neural impulses travel in your brain.”
Kurj frowned at him. “Is that possible?” He didn’t even hide his worried look. Today he was showing a whole plethora of moods that Soz had never seen from him before.
“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Loriez said. “Certainly not like this. But she did it.”
“Is it dangerous?” Kurj asked.
“If it had gone on much longer, it probably could have caused brain damage.”
“I can learn to control it,” Soz said quickly. She didn’t want them turning off her biomech. It exhilarated her, despite the headache. She needed to know what it could do, how far she could push it. A whole new universe of possibility awaited her.
“And if you can’t control it?” Kurj asked. “Neural impulses are the transfer of chemicals across cell membranes. How could you speed that up?”
“I don’t know,” Soz admitted. “Maybe something about the extra memory in my node.”
Rajindia spoke to Kurj. “We can study the effect to see if it can be handled or eliminated.”
He considered her for a moment. Then he spoke firmly to Soz. “You
will stay here, under Rajindia’s supervision, until we ascertain how and why this happened.”
Soz had no objection. If she stayed here, working with the doctors, she would learn to use her web faster. “Yes, sir.”
“I mean it, Soz,” Kurj said. “Don’t push this one. You’re risking a lot more than demerits. You could damage your brain. Then where would you be?”
It was a sobering thought. “I’ll be careful.”
“Good.” He smiled slightly. “Remember that when you feel tempted to push this web of yours.”
Soz flushed. Kurj knew her too well. “Yes, sir.” Then she thought, Node?
Attending.
She strove to keep her thought process at a normal speed. Why did your accelerated mode make chemical changes in my brain cells?
I haven’t completed my investigation, it answered. However, my initial analysis suggests the effect is due to the unusually extensive neural structures in your brain. Many now also include bioelectrodes that can fire according to commands from you or me. When they began to discharge in accelerated mode, it caused some sort of resonance process.
Soz looked from Kurj to Rajindia. “Do I have more neural structures than most psions?”
“Everyone in your family does,” Rajindia said.
“Did Althor have any problems like this?” she asked.
“None,” Kurj said. “Why?”
“I asked my node what happened.” Soz described its response.
Rajindia rubbed her chin. “Imperator Skolia, I’d like to jack her into our training system.”
Kurj looked less than thrilled. “It’s too soon. She just activated her system. We don’t know why it’s malfunctioning.”
“It’s not malfunctioning.” Soz jumped in, eager for the training. “It’s
working even better than we expected, better than I’m trained to handle. I need to learn.”
His inner lids came down in opaque gold shields. “Do you make it a practice to contradict your commanding officers, Cadet Valdoria?”
Heat spread in Soz’s face. Damn. “Sir! No, sir!”
Kurj spoke into the comm on his massive wrist gauntlet, and Soz winced as he registered another demerit on her record. At this rate, she would spend the rest of her time at DMA cleaning mucked-up droids and spamoozala.
Loriez had continued to pore over Soz’s stats while Rajindia watched Soz with unsettling intensity, as if she would see into the workings of her bio-enhanced brain. Irzon set her holotape on the cart and picked up a pressure-pulse ring. Although Loriez’s console could read Soz’s vital signs, the ring provided more accurate data. Soz held still while Irzon clipped it around her arm.
While the doctors worked, Kurj spoke to Rajindia. “Which training system do you want her to try?”
Soz glanced up with a start. She had expected him to deny her permission to work on the training systems. Her pulse surged, evoking a discreet beep from Loriez’s console. She wanted to jump in with suggestions for her training, but she managed to restrain herself. Kurj might be giving her demerits, but he was still listening to what she had to say. If she pushed any harder, that would change.
“I’d like to try the debriefer,” Rajindia said. “It will make it possible for her node to interact with our systems here. We can ask it questions directly and record its responses.”
Kurj nodded, the elbow of one braced on the forearm of the other so he could rest his chin on his fist while he thought. Soz recognized his mannerisms; he was probably going to agree with Rajindia. Well, good. She had always known Kurj was intelligent.
“Very well.” Kurj lowered his arms. “But control the speed of the questions. Keep it all in normal time mode.”
“We’ll make certain of that,” Rajindia said.
He nodded to them. “After she’s had a chance to rest, you can proceed.”
She was ready now! Soz started to protest, but Kurj raised his eyebrows at her, so she closed her mouth.
Her brother actually smiled, his teeth a startling flash of white in his metallic face. It made him look decades younger. “Rest, Soz. Gather your strength. Your node isn’t going anywhere without you.”
Good gods. That sounded like a joke. From Kurj. “Yes, sir.”
To Irzon, he said, “Keep a good watch on her legs and her sight.”
The doctor nodded. “We’ve had extra monitors on both since she awoke and described her symptoms.”
So they had heard Kurj tell her about her father. She stared down at her hands, which were folded in her lap.
“Soz.” Kurj’s voice was a low rumble.
She looked at him. “Yes, sir?”
He spoke with uncharacteristic gentleness. “I will let you know as soon as I have more news about him.”
“Thank you, sir.” For now, she would learn her biomech system and learn it well, just as she would master her other enhancements when she received them, as she would ace her classes, meld her mind with an EI, and learn to fly a Jag, until she became the most versatile, hardest, fastest Jagernaut in the J-Forces.
Then she would kill the Aristos who had hurt her father.