Chapter 15

The Prisoner

SNOW DECIDED TO give it one last try. She could think of no other way to find them. She couldn’t search the entire compound, with so many guards on the lookout. This had to work.

She calmed her mind, then formed the message again.

Ja’Prith? Father? Can you hear me?

It had been hard enough getting the hang of using her telepathy at close quarters. She didn’t even know if she had the ability to make mind-contact over a greater distance. But it was her only hope.

She waited. As seconds passed, her heart began to sink. Then –

Who calls my name?

Snow recognized the mind-voice immediately, though its tone was far calmer than the last time she had heard it, back at the Academy.

A friend, she replied. I wish to help you. Can you guide me to where you are?

There was a long pause.

I can.

Snow had expected to receive directions, or a description of the creature’s whereabouts. What she got was far more straightforward. She suddenly knew, with absolute certainty, which route to take.

She made her way swiftly along one corridor after another, guided by the sure sense of direction which Ja’Prith was somehow planting in her mind. Her route quickly led her to an area on the opposite side of the compound to the hangar. The gentle pull on her mind stopped as she silently approached a silver door. There were White Knight sentries posted on either side of it.

Grasping her combat baton firmly, Snow sprang from cover.

She had both the element of surprise and her intensive Armouron training on her side. The android guards never stood a chance. Seconds later, they lay beside one another on the corridor floor, twitching and sparking.

Snow swiped her stolen keycard across the door sensor and it hissed open. She stepped forward into a large, low-ceilinged laboratory room.

And there was Ja’Prith. Snow’s first sight of the creature sent a powerful surge of pity and anger through her mind.

The huge beast was being held behind a thick, transparent wall. He was lying face down on the laboratory floor, surrounded by banks of scientific equipment.

In size and form, Ja’Prith was much like the other creatures from the Kasteesh colony. But his body had been horribly abused by his Corporation captors. His elegant head-crest was threaded with electronic sensors and wiring. Areas of his stone-plated hide had been cut away or punctured, to allow for the attachment of electrodes. His short hind legs, which he was forced by his unnatural position to stretch out behind him, had been brutally sheared of their claws, such that they now appeared useless.

Worst of all was the method by which he had been restrained. His wings had been pinioned to the laboratory floor. A pair of crackling blue plasma-shackles held them stretched flat, so that the noble beast could only raise his elongated head, with difficulty, but was otherwise completely immobilized.

Ja’Prith’s great yellow eyes met Snow’s pitying gaze.

You are much like your father, little Wingless One.

Snow was taken aback. She had expected to have to introduce herself.

How do you know who I am?

Your mind, as much as your physical form, mirror his, came the reply. You are Hoshiko’s daughter.

There was a pause, then –

I sense that you had hoped to find your father with me.

It was true. As much as Snow was pleased to have located Ja’Prith, her overriding sensation was one of bitter disappointment.

Do you know what happened to him? she asked.

Ja’Prith’s eyes seemed to cloud with pain. It was a few moments before his response came.

When your father and I fell in battle, we were both brought to this dreadful place. For many months, the white-coats conducted tests and experiments on us both.

The experiments were terrible. They caused us both great pain. In your father’s case, they did untold damage. But they were successful, in their way. They unlocked areas of your father’s unique mind that he had never accessed before. He began to exhibit even greater psychic abilities – ones that our enemies craved.

One day, your father was taken from our cell. That was the last time I saw him.

Snow could sense the desolation in Ja’Prith’s mind-voice. The separation had clearly hurt him deeply.

I tried endlessly to reach his mind, but without success. I learned later that he had been transported to Earth, for further experimentation.

Then recently, after all this time, he continued, I too was taken to Earth by my captors. I hoped desperately to be reunited with your father. I put my life’s energy, night and day, into generating the most powerful mind-call I could, in the hope of reaching him.

I heard you, Snow told Ja’Prith. Only I didn’t know how to respond then.

The effort made me weak, the creature went on. And before long, I found myself back in this cursed cell—

The floor suddenly juddered violently beneath Snow’s feet. The sound of a massive explosion followed a split second later.

Snow knew instinctively that the tremor was due to Oddball’s handiwork – a detonation big enough to put several shield generators out of action.

‘Yes!’ she cried, out loud. ‘They did it!’

Hopefully, Ko’Drall would have seen the explosion and realized what it meant. But it was better to be sure.

My friends have disabled the shield that protects the compound, Snow explained hurriedly to Ja’Prith. I told your comrades that I’d send a signal, once the shield was down. But I’m not sure I have the mind-strength to call them from so far. Can you?

The giant creature’s eyes blazed brightly.

It is already done, my friend.

A moment later, Snow’s mind filled with a multitude of voices – the answering mind-cries of Ly’Throk, Ko’Drall and their fellow creatures.

We come, dear brother! We come, Hoshiko’s daughter! We come!

‘Come on, Snow!’ Rake muttered through clenched teeth. ‘Where are you?’

He was standing beside Tea-Leaf and Hoax at the foot of the freighter’s boarding ramp. His eyes glanced eagerly from the opening of one corridor to the next, desperate to see the figure of Snow appear along one of them.

Even if she did show up, she was going to have a job getting to the ship. A host of White Knights had formed a semi-circle around its ramp and were slowly closing in. Only the steady stream of crossbow bolts that Tea-Leaf was sending their way, combined with Hoax’s barrage of well-aimed flash-bang pellets, were keeping them at bay.

After they had separated from Snow, they had managed to fulfil their part of the bargain – to take out the psychic shield – without too much difficulty. Once they had dealt with the White Knight guards in the shield generator area, Oddball had taken great pleasure in blowing its main power cell sky high.

With the shield out of action, they had fought their way back to the freight ship. They found Salt waiting anxiously for them. But there was no sign of Snow.

Oddball appeared at the top of the ramp. His typically bright-eyed expression had given way to a look of grim despair.

‘The old man says we can’t wait any longer,’ he yelled flatly. ‘The Mshanga attack is starting to bring the building down. If we don’t leave now,

he’s worried we won’t get out at all.’

Rake didn’t reply. He could hear for himself the violent thuds, crashes and protesting groans that were evidence of the creatures’ fierce onslaught against the roof and walls of the compound. It had begun only minutes after they had knocked out the shield and had continued relentlessly since. The building wouldn’t stand much more.

Tea-Leaf, still firing off bolts desperately, shouted over the din, ‘He’s right, Rake.’ Her face was as bleak as Oddball’s. ‘We have to go. Maybe Snow got out some other way. She might be OK.’

Rake knew she didn’t believe that any more than he did.

Hoax pulled another handful of red pellets from the compartment in his leg guard and hurled them at the front rank of White Knights. They exploded in a burst of noise and coloured smoke. He delved in the compartment again – then held up his empty hands to Rake.

‘I’m out!’

Tea-Leaf loosed a final shot, then lowered her bow.

‘Me too,’ she said grimly.

Rake’s expression was desolate. This wasn’t how their rescue mission was supposed to end. He had come to Kasteesh to bring Snow home.

But they had no choice.

‘OK. Fall back,’ he cried. ‘We’re leaving.’

As his fellow knights made their way up the ramp, Rake turned to follow. He cast one last backward glance at the hangar.

‘Sorry, Snow,’ he murmured.

Then he leaped onto the already rising ramp and hurried into the belly of the ship.