Fine, he thought.
He shucked the tactical bag, and it slid easily off his shoulder and onto the surface of the bridge. Rechs felt it hit his boots as he started to climb over the rail.
And then he was falling, pulling out his carbon-forged machete from off his back as he splashed into the dark waters below.
Fine, he thought. If the thing wanted to play tricks with memory and mind to get him under the water where it would have the advantage, then…
Here I am. Let’s play.
27
Syl Hamachi-Roi’s chartered star yacht, Star Mist, officially designated as a sanctioned courier for a member of the House of Reason, set down on the ceremonial landing platform of Detron’s old Government Council Building. It was the height of high-end luxury travel, and the landing pad it kissed was built during the grand days of the Republic to receive official dignitaries for commissioning ceremonies for the latest battleship, the landing pad was as visible within the government cluster as the playing field of a sports stadium.
Repub Navy traffic control, mainly the admiral overseeing operations aboard the destroyer Castle, had been reluctant to let Star Mist enter Detron’s airspace, but both the pilot and the House of Reason member herself had dared the admiral to shoot “her ship” down if he didn’t like it. Seconds of inaction on the part of the navy had allowed Star Mist to drop below the atmosphere and assume an approach profile for Detron’s government sector and the ceremonial landing pad. Despite the military no-fly zone currently in effect.
This was her big moment. Syl Hamachi-Roi and her handlers would not be denied.
The recently-elected junior delegate had been a nobody mere months ago. She’d quickly risen to prominence in the entertainment and media streams by taking on the policies of the current leadership. She showed a gross ignorance of galactic history, but she’d tapped into a universal frustration many were having with respect to the government. And she’d artfully managed to suggest—without, of course, ever really saying it—that maybe the Mid-Core Rebellion had some legitimate grievances.
Detron was her big moment to take the stage.
Word from the media was that Syl had a very good chance of becoming the next Orrin Kaar, a man considered a first among equals, capable of getting his will done in the House and Senate.
But first… she needed a moment to shine.
She needed to put it all on the line to show the masses of the galaxy that she could be the savior they so desperately needed, wanted, according to the media’s indefinable and ongoing crisis they never tired of talking about.
The galaxy was never without trouble.
Syl, and many others, were vying to be the answer to the galaxy’s problems.
As the Star Mist set down, elegant and slender gears deployed from her mirror-polish underbelly and gases vented from twin deluxe nacelles that erupted aft of the central passenger deck. The crowd held its breath in anticipation. Within minutes nondescript but obvious security types masquerading as crew were securing the landing pad as more and more protestors gathered around the steps of the various government buildings to witness the spectacle.
Elsewhere were the riots and ruin. Here was worship.
This, for every protestor who’d thrown in with what was happening here on Detron, was a crowning achievement. To many, who felt their grievances were legitimate, this was victory. The House of Reason had failed. Or rather its leadership had failed. And now one of their own, a simple working girl from their side, one of the House’s most bright and shining new members, had come to their rescue.
Syl Hamachi-Roi, surrounded by a cross-section of Republic citizenry who looked just like her, emerged from the ship and was led toward a sea of microphones and floating holocams. Some of the feeds went full-screen on the delegate; others kept her in a smaller window while continuing to show the body of the dead legionnaire being dragged through the streets and kicked at by a sea of masked “freedom fighters” who were apparently too preoccupied or just plain mean to be bothered with the historic event happening at the landing pad.
“People of the galaxy!” began Syl, shouting to be heard over the swell and roar of the crowd. Her face shining. Her eyes beatific. She was even smiling at them. Willing them to hope in this darkest of times. Like some angelic messenger who would one day be a god among them.
“I hear you!” she pandered.
The crowd roared like some bellowing beast from the elder ages, crying victory above the bloody carcass of its foe.
28
Rechs fell through a world of utter inky blackness. If there was light, or any shade of color down here beneath the surface of the underground lake, it was a deep, unclean ochre. A brown morass of obsidian gloom. He felt the presence of the psionic user down here in the darkness with him.
His headache was gone. Meaning the thing had stopped lashing at his mental barriers. Now it was trying to manifest total control of his mind and body.
It wasn’t a mermaid with the face and torso of his dead lover, Reina. It had merely pulled that from his memories, the strongest ones it could find. Those Rechs thought he’d buried so deep that even he’d forgotten them. The psionic monster had cobbled together a glimmer to entice him. A lure to entrap. A dream to capture. Its animal mind thinking only the basest of thoughts. Woman. Sex. Desire. Fantasy.
Perhaps that appeal had worked hundreds or even thousands of times before. The broken and cracked bones of many alien species littered the silt-covered depths down here, like some apocalyptic graveyard long turned over in search of buried salvage. Yes, these dead indicated its enticements had done the trick before.
Rechs could see that now, the ultra-beam from his helmet cutting through the brackish lake.
When it came, it came as a fish. Almost
