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  Saeliko closed her eyes and willed herself to take five long breaths, counting them off with each exhale. She focused on easing the tension in her body and relaxing the tightness in her muscles.

  In her mind’s eye, she slowly constructed the temple courtyard that had become a focal point of her youth. Tall croaker trees lifted up out of the hard-packed dirt, their wide trunks surrounded by patches of green grass that had survived the frequent trampling of young Saffisheen in training. Moss covered large swaths of the walls that squared off the yard, which gave the temple a tranquil appearance that belied the cruel and uncompromising existence of the children being trained to mete out hearty portions of pain and suffering.

  At the north end of the courtyard, a wide stone staircase led up to the temple itself. On the right side of the steps, a statue of Sova the Silent stood watch over the field, the pale grey face partially concealed by the hood of a long cloak. Sova was revered above all others, her status raised nearly to that of a goddess. Another statue sat opposite on the left, but Saeliko had never learned who it was supposed to be.

  Verossa stood at the top. She wore her usual charcoal coat, which was unbuttoned down the front to reveal a light grey tunic and dark brown leggings that didn’t do much to conceal chubby thighs and calves. Nor did her tunic hide the pot-belly that had steadily increased in size in recent years. Saeliko had heard tales of Verossa’s ferocity and daring accomplishments before becoming a pedagogue, but looking at her now, it was a challenge to imagine.

  The teacher slowly descended. As she did so, she pulled forth a coiled whip that had been attached to her belt beneath the coat. Saeliko had experienced the whip before on numerous occasions. Sometimes it was brought out merely for the purpose of intimidation – a threat that remained unfulfilled as long as Saeliko obeyed. Other times, it was more than a threat. Frustratingly, it was impossible to tell which on any given day. For as much as Saeliko disliked the old cow, she had come to admire the woman’s ability to hide her tells. With the other pedagogues, Saeliko had learned to read their intentions in the subtle changes in facial expressions. A curl in the corner of the lips, a slight tilt to one side, the appearance of an extra laugh line or two on either side of the eyes. There were always tells. Except with Verossa.

  The pedagogue let the whip unravel when she alighted the last step and planted her feet in the dirt in front of Saeliko. The metal-studded tip rested in a clump of grass like a snake. Saeliko lifted her gaze to Verossa’s face and searched one more time for a hint of the woman’s appetite. Her visage was empty.

  “You’re a stupid girl.”

  Saeliko didn’t answer. She knew the statement was a trap.

  Verossa took another step forward, letting the whip drag through the dirt beside her. “Stupid,” she repeated again. “Saeliko, do you know where a Saffisheen’s power comes from?”

  She considered this for a moment. She didn’t know the right answer, so she kept quiet. That was the smart thing to do.

  “Do you think it comes from our blades?”

  Saeliko shook her head, guessing that Verossa was trying to trick her with an obvious choice.

  “What about our reputation? Is that where our power comes from? Is it all a mummer’s farce?”

  Again, Saeliko shook her head. That didn’t seem like the right answer.

  “Then tell me, you impudent, naïve little girl. Where does a Saffisheen’s power come from?” She took another step, now only an arm’s length away. Saeliko could smell the woman’s sweat-stained clothes, inadequately masked by the sweet-water that she habitually patted on her face and neck.

  She still had no idea, but she sensed it was better to take a guess now than remain silent. “Our training,” she said and tried to appear confident. “Our strength is derived from our training.”

  “Stupid.” Verossa leaned forward and looked down with a peaceful composure that contradicted her obvious displeasure. “You’re worthless, Saeliko. You’re as worthless as a piss-bucket with a hole in it because you don’t learn. You show some skill with a sword in your hand, I’ll grant you that. But you’ll only ever be half a Saffisheen if you don’t open that thick skull of yours and let some knowledge seep in.”

  Saeliko stood still and tried to hold a neutral expression. She was aware, however, that anger was clawing and dragging its way onto her young face.

  “That’s right. You’re half the girl you should be because you’re too stupid. So, listen to me carefully, and I’ll tell you where power comes from. Are you ready?”

  Saeliko said “Yes” through gritted teeth.

  “Calmness. That’s where it comes from. True power is inherently calm. Power exudes calmness, so much so that calmness is power.”

  She thought about this but felt as though she failed to grasp the meaning behind the pedagogue’s contention.

  “Heed my words, young Saeliko. One day your life might depend on it.”

  Saeliko opened her eyes and snapped back to the present. She looked around again at the white walls, the padded table and the black loops around her wrists. The silence of the room pressed into her like an invisible force. It was odd; the absence of auditory stimuli was somehow more threatening than having a hissing viper in the corner or a stirred hornet’s nest hanging from the ceiling. It grated on her being.

  It made her feel powerless.

  Calmness is power. She closed her eyes again and held her breath for a long moment before exhaling and doing it again. Calmness is power, and fear can take a sharp stick and shove it up its hairy ass. This improved her mood, albeit not by much.

  Minutes went by, or seconds, or maybe hours. It was impossible to tell. And then, to Saeliko’s immense relief, somewhere beyond the white walls of her cell, footsteps sounded. Two pairs of footsteps. And muffled voices to accompany them.

  Well, thank the Five for that, at least, she thought as the sound increased in volume.

  She looked to her right just in time to see part of the wall swish away, leaving a doorway in its wake. Her brain marveled momentarily at the swishiness. She had never seen anything of the kind before.

  Two men walked in, both wearing strange clothes. She ignored their outfits and instead focused on the devices they held in their hands, which appeared to be thin book-like objects. They weren’t actual books, but, more importantly, they didn’t appear to be weapons either. The men had other devices strapped to their belts, but they were neither blades nor firearms.

  She immediately felt more at ease, not only because they were weaponless, but also because these were not demons standing before her. They were men. Soft-skinned, pasty-faced men. Men that could be manipulated.

  One of them approached her directly and stood next to her. He looked down at her and smiled. It was a condescending smile – the smile of a person who thought that they had climbed high enough up the social ladder to treat everyone else like a child or some category of underling.

  The second man came around to the other side of the table. He was the junior of the two and offered a softer, more curious visage. Saeliko could see from the movements of his eyes that he was studying the interlocking, scrolling tattoos that spanned the left side of her face from hairline to jaw. She had as much disdain for this man as she did the first, but for different reasons. Whereas the condescending man stunk of false bravado, the younger man reeked of naivety.

  “Hello Saeliko,” the first man said in Maelian. Saeliko turned her head to look at him. She didn’t have a clue how he knew her name, or, for that matter, how he spoke Maelian. He certainly didn’t look Maelian. “My name is Dr. Dahlsey. You’ve had quite the scare, young lady.” He glanced at the book-like thing in his hand and tapped it a few times. “Collapsed lung, three broken ribs, significant lacerations in twelve different places, severe bruising, massive blood loss. You’re very lucky to be alive.”

  I’m alive? That was a lie. All the evidence pointed the other way. She could feel her chest where Janx’s knife had embedded itself, and although she c
ould sense a general soreness, there was nothing of the excruciating agony that should have seared through her flesh and ribcage. She had suffered other wounds on the Skag, too, none such as life-threatening, but not insignificant either. Of those, she could feel nothing. He was trying to trick her.

  “Now,” the man continued, “I’m sure you’re confused, and I’m sure you have lots of questions. However, I’ll need to give you a full checkup before we get to all that.”

  She didn’t know what a full checkup entailed, nor was she interested in finding out.

  Saeliko whispered beneath her breath, her eyes looking up at the older doctor. She then swallowed and feigned weakness – not too much, but enough to convince him that her health was less than robust.

  Dr. Dahlsey furrowed his brow. “I’m sorry?”

  She whispered again. Her voice was indiscernibly quiet. She stopped and watched the doctor’s reaction. He shook his head to let her know he couldn’t understand. Even the second man moved closer to the table, the tops of his thighs pushing up to the table’s edge close to her left hand.

  Then Saeliko spoke one more time, but now she raised her voice so that it was audible. “Come closer.” The outlines of her words were wrapped in a rasping sound.

  Dahlsey obliged, bending over so that his face hovered above hers. “Strange,” he murmured. “You shouldn’t be having vocalization issues. There was nothing in your med-report that suggested any damage to the throat or . . .”

  She whispered a fourth time, again indiscernible.

  He bent closer still. His eyes peered into hers.

  Saeliko headbutted him as hard as she could. Her forehead smashed into his nose and produced a satisfying crunching sound. Blood sprayed out of his face a fraction of a second after the impact, a healthy portion of it landing on Saeliko’s own nose and cheeks.

  Her attention was already focused on the second doctor. Her left hand used every bit of slack in the restraints as it lunged out. Fortunately for her, and unfortunately for him, the closest bit of flesh within reach was the poor fellow’s three-piece set. Her fingers locked around his pickle and plums and squeezed, hard.

  Both men wailed like banshees. Dr. Dahlsey collapsed to the floor writhing around in agony. The yet unnamed doctor would have done the same had Saeliko not had him frozen in place. His expression modulated between intense pain, uncontrollable panic and paralyzing shock. His entire body was quivering.

  “Take these off,” Saeliko commanded, nodding at the black loops around her wrists.

  The only reply was a high-pitched squealing sound, which was accompanied by a rapid expulsion of snot bubbles out of both nostrils. Tears began streaming over his cheeks.

  “Hey!” For good measure, she tightened her grasp even further. That was almost a mistake. The junior doctor nearly blacked out from the pain.

  “O . . . o . . . okay,” he managed to get out between gasps. Saeliko didn’t mind the saliva and snot that drizzled from the man’s mouth as he stammered even though some of it sprayed onto her. She was making progress. The man’s right hand reached down under the table, beneath the spot where her left shoulder rested. She watched him carefully lest he be reaching for a weapon or trying to trick her in some way, though she didn’t think it likely given the state of his manhood in her clutches.

  There was a mechanical toggle sound followed immediately by a beep – he must have activated a switch – and all four restraints popped open.

  There we go, she commented internally.

  She emancipated the weeping man’s tortured paraphernalia, and he dropped to the ground in a heap, but not before bouncing his head off the table on the way down. Lucky for him, the table was padded, although he was in far too much discomfort to revel in his good fortune.

  Dr. Dahlsey was back on his feet now, a blood-covered hand trying in vain to keep more from escaping his ruined nose. His howling had subsided into a general moaning, and he looked to have recovered somewhat from the initial attack. Saeliko eased off the table, stood in front of him in her ridiculous gown and noted with gratification that his eyes and general demeanor no longer exuded an air of condescending indulgence. Now there was rage, although not without fear.

  “Where am I?” Saeliko asked. “What is this place?”

  “You stupid bitch.”

  She punched him hard in the gut. He doubled over, just as she intended, allowing her to bring her right knee upward with velocity into his nose. Dr. Dahlsey was unconscious before he hit the floor.

  His comment still nagged at her. He had claimed she was alive, which would have meant that she was not in fact navigating the perplexities of an afterlife. He must have been lying about that. Maybe this was a purgatory location where candidates were tested before being allowed to pass to Karramoor.

  “Don’t move!” a voice shouted before she could contemplate the ramifications.

  Saeliko turned to see a third man standing in the doorway, weapon in hand. Where are the women in this place? This guy was the youngest so far, maybe eighteen or nineteen. To his credit, he didn’t show the usual nerves of a young man facing potential conflict. He gripped his weapon with both hands, holding it steady, pointing it directly at her chest.

  She knew it was a weapon, but like everything else she had experienced thus far, she didn’t recognize it. Smaller than a flintlock, but with a blunter front end and no obvious barrel. Instead, two dim blue lights blinked slowly on the front face. It reminded her of the big guns that Janx and Seventy-two had carried back on the Skag – tools of destruction given to them by none other than Radovan Mozik.

  Saeliko stepped toward him.

  “I said don’t move!”

  Another step. She ignored him and focused all her attention on the trigger finger, waiting for the tell-tale twitch. There it was. Her body took over.

  A strange zapping sound crackled through the air and she felt the wake of something hot shear through the space where her torso had been just a moment ago. She watched his eyes widen when he realized that she had dodged his attack and was now closing the distance between them.

  He looked down at his gun, which was making a short, high-pitched winding-up sound. Saeliko didn’t understand what this signified, nor did she pause to give it much thought. She leapt forward, one hand reaching out for the weapon and pushing it downward, the other hand colliding with his throat.

  He made a good effort to throw himself backward and away from her grasp, but it was too late. Within a few heartbeats, she was on top of him raining down punches with willful violence. Only once he was incapable of defending himself did she stop and pick up the fallen weapon. She examined it briefly, careful not to point the blue blinky lights at herself.

  The man groaned and tried to lift himself up. Saeliko pointed the gun at him and fired. She was surprised to see a bolt of pure energy strike him in the chest, and for a few moments, his whole body convulsed as if he were having a seizure.

  Holy Five, this thing shoots lightning.

  The gun made another winding-up sound and then clicked. Probably some sort of reloading mechanism inside. She wanted to shoot the man a second time to observe the effects again, but he was now unconscious, so there wouldn’t be much point.

  Instead, she walked back into the room and found junior doctor crying on the floor, hands covering his wounded gentlemen parts. She shot him and watched him convulse.

  “Oh, this is very good.”

  She marched out of the room and looked for more people to shoot.

  1.2 KETTLE

  “Okay, hold on a second,” Kettle said with one hand in the air to call for pause. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. And please, correct me if I’ve got any of this wrong.”

  “We will,” said Commander Saris.

  “You work for a corporation called Zodo.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Both of you.”

  “Yes, although Radovan and I were stationed on different planets.” Commander Saris looked over at Radovan
, who didn’t acknowledge the point. “This is our first meeting.”

  “And people from this corporation, Zodo, decided it was a good idea to kidnap Haley and I and abscond with us to a different planet.”

  “Yes.”

  “Along with an ultra-religious zealot who wanted to kill both of us after we crashed into the ocean.”

  “I cannot verify any of the events that took place on your world. We haven’t been in contact with Zodo personnel on VGCP Seven for well over a decade. However, I can speculate that our people there did not know that an Ender would board the aircraft. More likely that the Enders got wind of what was going on and managed to smuggle him onto the plane. Likewise, it is highly doubtful that the original plan called for a violent crash into the Sollian Sea. The airplane would have had enough fuel to cross the Sollian, pass through the verse gate and make it to a runway here on VGCP Thirteen. From your retelling of the events, our best guess is that the Zodo pilot encountered difficulty controlling the aircraft in the storm and subsequently entered the verse gate at an incorrect angle of attack, which sheared off the tail section. Once he concluded that the damage to the aircraft was fatal and that there was a significant chance he would perish in the inevitable crash, he gave you the name and location of the last known Zodo representative on VGCP Eleven.”

  Kettle was about to ask another question, but Dallas, sitting to Kettle’s left, beat him to the punch. “You know a lot of Americans died in that plane crash, right? I mean, you guys are on the hook for murder.”

  “Americans?” Commander Saris inquired, mouthing the word as if for the first time and looking to his colleague to fill him in.

  “America is a nation state on Seven, sir,” Radovan supplied. “They have a military base close to the verse gate. Dallas, Supra and Kettle are all Americans.”

  “Right. Forgive me. My condolences on your losses.” Kettle noted Dallas’ expression, which made it clear that the US Marine found the apology grossly insufficient. Soup looked equally pissed off. There followed an awkward silence. Whether or not Saris understood the effect his insincerity had on the group, he gave no sign.