Theirs Not to Reason Why 4: Hardship (21 page)

(
Multiple times. But not in this.
) Pulling out of the wires, she drifted down to Sunrise. Her previous telepathic sendings had been focused specifically for Feyori minds. She now gentled her “volume” so that it wouldn’t hurt the other woman’s head. (
Sunrise, I’m about to go inside. I might be there for half an hour, or I might be there for up to two days.
)

She sighed, touched the screen to mark her spot, and looked up at the silvery sphere of Ia’s altered body. “You need me for backup?”

Thinking about it, Ia dipped into the timestreams. There wasn’t much the woman could do physically to a Feyori, but perhaps she could interrupt the power sources . . .

On the false timeplain, she saw a confrontation that split into a trio of possibilities; one path had Ia as the winner, the other had Miklinn winning—a possibility she could not and would not allow, ever—and the third had Miklinn releasing his grudge. That was the smallest of the three streams. On the true timeplains, however . . . there was a very odd streak. A static image of herself, and . . .

Fascinating. I hadn’t realized I could do
that
now . . . but it does make sense. It’s also far easier and faster than what I had planned, with far less risk to me . . . and all because he insisted I manifest. How ironically apropos.
Pulling back to herself, Ia found Mara squinting up at her with a distinctly dubious, uncertain look. (
 . . . What? What’s wrong?
)

“You just went all . . . all golden, sir. Instead of silver, like you are now,” Sunrise pointed out, still eyeing her sphere warily. The sonic energies of her voice tasted like a savory puff pastry with some sort of mushroom filling. “I’ve never once heard of a Feyori turning gold. Begging pardon, Captain, but you are actually starting to unnerve me a little.”

(
You know I wouldn’t harm you unless you did something that would harm the future. And yes, I already know you’re not that suicidal, so that won’t be a problem,
) she added at Mara’s derisive snort.

(
They’re arriving,
) Kierfando warned her, still floating up at the top of the nearby tower. (
And she’s right, that was a little unnerving to watch.
)

(
I’m going inside now,
) Ia told Sunrise, sending a pulse of acknowledgment to Kierfando.

Mara frowned a moment, then asked, “Sir . . . does your arm unit continue to record while you’re shaped like that? Because you were missing a good six hours on the old one, and it just occurred to me that the Admiral-General might want to examine anything you do when your unit’s not recording.”

(
Ah, slag . . . no, it doesn’t, and even if it did, it’d run the risk of me misremembering events electrokinetically. I could bring you along, but you’d still miss out on most of the conversations, since the things don’t pick up telepathic conversations . . . I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,
) she thought, sighing. (
Get yourself comfortable somewhere, Sunrise, and keep your comm ready. I’ll call you when I’m through.
)

“Aye, aye, Captain.” She tucked away the datapad, then reached for the hoverbike controls. “I am in the military, so I do know the drill. ‘Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait’ . . .”

(
As Roghetti’s Roughriders like to say, “Infantry gets out of the way when the Artillery comes out to play.”
) She added a mental image of an old-fashioned, sailing-ship-style cannon clad in Dress Grays and a white wig, and heard Sunrise’s laugh. Humor was the best way either of them had to keep their morale up in the midst of this Meddler-based mess.

The thruster field from the hoverbike as the private revved its generator tasted like herb-baked peas. Hungry, Ia made a mental note to sup on some thermal energy during the coming wait.

 • • • 

It took seven hours, fifteen additional Feyori bubbles string-tugged into range, and a good twoscore dazed Petran Company technicians before Miklinn deigned to show up. The Humans and Solaricans manning the power plant and the smelting factory placed next to it watched the silvery soap bubbles swirling around their equipment with gaping confusion. One or two could successfully hide themselves—and the pair had—by nudging all those minds into “not looking” their way, but more than two dozen Feyori was a little too much to ignore.

Kierfando, acting as Ia’s highest-ranked supporter of the ones to show up, manifested as his graying-haired, dark-skinned version of a Human. He patiently explained to the two plant supervisors, security personnel, and even the planetary Peacekeepers who showed up that this was, “. . . Just us Meddlers having a little party. We deeply appreciate your tasty thermoelectrical snacks here, but there’s nothing to worry about, folks. We’ll be gone soon enough, don’t you worry.”

Undoubtedly, he used a bit of telepathic Meddling to get them to calm down since after an hour of nervous surveillance, the Peacekeepers finally left. He couldn’t keep the technicians from gawking at the mirror-bubbles floating overhead, though. Nor from flinching whenever a soap bubble swooped through the generators, dimming the lights a little, or through the melting vats, cooling the molten alloys a tiny bit. But when Miklinn did finally arrive, the swirling and swooping stopped.

Ia wondered if the sudden stillness of the Feyori as they spread themselves out and hovered in two broken, concentric arcs unnerved the technicians all over again. She couldn’t, daren’t take her eyes . . . well, her attention . . . off the newcomer, though she did peek out of the sides of her more or less 360-degree, highly alien view. Several tails among the Solarican employees twitched, and a few sets of ears pulled down and back. More than one Human brow was furrowed in worry, though they all kept monitoring their stations between furtive looks.

It was an impressive sight, too; more than three Meddlers in any one spot was a very rare sight, on the few occasions they allowed themselves to be seen. As it was, twenty Meddlers showed up. Ia wound up placed at the center-point of one arc, the smaller one, with Kierfando and the belatedly arrived Belini anchoring either end.

Miklinn took his place at the center point of the other, with Ginger and Teshwun forming the endpoints as the two local hosts. Both sides waited for the confrontation, hovering in pewter gray bubbles a meter or so off the plexcrete floor. Miklinn surveyed Ia, swirled his soap-bubble surface in contempt, and did not speak. Since he would not, it was up to her, the one who had called the Leadership Challenge, to speak.

(
Miklinn, you and I are in deep counterfaction to each other. This counterfaction has grown strong enough that our contentions threaten the very nature of the entire Game,
) she stated in preamble, carefully pitching her telepathic sending to each Feyori in the room, though the bulk of her attention remained on her enemy. (
There is a point at the start of the Right of Leadership Challenge where one of us may offer apologies and attempt amends.
)

He pulsed a thought at her, a mental scoff of derision that denied the thought that
he
could possibly owe
her
an apology.

(
No, Miklinn. I owe
you
that apology.
) This wasn’t the larger of the two main probabilities ahead of her, but in order to stick to her principles, Ia had to try. (
I wronged you when I exposed you. It was selfish of me to use you as a distraction to protect my own faction-standing among my pawns, and it was wrong. I ask you to end our counterfaction by allowing me to help strengthen your standing above what you lost, and above what you now hold, in exchange for you leaving my own efforts alone, without further interference from yourself or your cofactions.

(
Will you forgive my mistakes, Miklinn, put an end to this contention between us, and permit me to help you?
) she asked formally.

Another contemptuous swirl.

(
Will you forgive my mistakes, Miklinn, and join me in a factioning that will restore any lost ground and even add to your plays in the Game?
) she repeated.

Contempt; his surface focus was no longer fixed upon her. Silence stretched between them. She did not dare make her request a third time since her faction numbers were too great to stoop to such weak pleading. Twice was enough, so Ia waited in silence, trying not to let her own contempt, her rising anger, get the better of her.

(
You must answer the Challenge question, leader to leader,
) Kierfando finally reminded the younger Meddler. (
Or lose in rank.
)

His surface brightened, blocking out extra energy. (
I do not faction with
half-breeds
.
)

Ia checked the timestreams. That percentage was now lost. There was now only his winning the duel, or her winning, and the future could not afford to allow him the win. More than that, his contempt was going to make it hard for her own cofactions to hold her in high esteem, because she
was
a half-breed. Unless she defeated him
as
a half-breed.

(
So be it.
)

Energy arced inward from the cables and the machines spaced around the room. Bright lines crackled into her darkening sphere a second time as the dynamos recharged. Three siphonings were enough to allow her to pop back into matter-form. She dropped the half meter or so to the floor, knees bending to cushion and steady her landing.

“You’re right. I
am
a half-breed,” Ia stated openly in Terranglo as she straightened, making the technicians lurking at the edges of the humming machinery blink and stare. “As you insist on viewing my birthright as a weakness, I will destroy you
as
a half-breed, to prove to all of you that you are wrong.
As
a half-Human, I am stronger than
all
of you.”

Lifting her hand palm up, as if inviting him to step down and join her, Ia pulsed the wordless challenge in the Feyori way, the version with the ultimate price for the loser: to the death, either hers, his, or even both of theirs if they both spent too much in the contest.

(
Fool!
) Belini hissed in her mind on a tight telepathic pulse. (
You’re risking everything with that!
)

(
He can suck your biokinetic energy right out of you in that form,
) Kierfando added. (
He’ll do it as fast as you can blink.
)

“You shouldn’t have forced the issue to make me manifest to prove myself in the first place, Miklinn,” Ia told the sphere floating just a few meters from her, ignoring her cofaction leaders’ warnings. “I have tried to apologize and sought to make amends. You have been rude and uncooperative. All that is left now is for the two of us to fight. Get down here and fight me, or lose all status.”

He swirled his surface in her direction, then swirl-snorted and “looked” away. (
Your tele-
pathetic
powers are weak, and your words meaningless. Even if you were strong, I don’t deal with pawns who cover themselves in
shit
.
)

She’d forgotten she was still picturing herself covered in crysium plates under the loose fit of her now unshredded, whole camouflage clothes. Crysium dust was discarded matter from Feyori who made the transition to solid form and back. That meant she was literally armored in Meddler-made waste, so his words, while arrogant, were undeniably true.

Blinking, Ia belatedly realized she also now had two whole, sound, and perfectly functional eyes, left as well as right. As much as she wanted to touch the left side of her face in absent wonder, she refrained, keeping her right hand lifted toward her counterfaction foe, the other resting at her side. In the seven hours she had spent as an energy bubble, plucking at cosmic strings to get this one silvery-sphered idiot to show up . . . she had apparently forgotten her own injuries. Returning to matter-form had restored her to the way she normally thought of herself, as whole, sound, and strong. Human.

A pity I can’t use that trick on anyone else,
she thought privately.
I don’t have the time to learn how.
Marshalling her telepathy, she projected once more to all the Feyori gathered around her, though her words were aimed at only one. She let her irritation and disdain stain her mental tone as she did so. (
I have challenged you to the death, Miklinn. Are you afraid to die?
)

He ignored her. Ia felt her jaw tighten, hard enough to grind her teeth. Seven hours of waiting, days’ worth of plans disrupted, untold life-streams altered, and the
galaxy
at stake . . . and he was ignoring her?

(
If you don’t face her, I’ll spread the news far and wide that you’re afraid of a mere
pawn
,
) Belini taunted, speaking for her. The pixie-like overtones in the alien’s mental voice took on a dark tone, the kind found among the cruel, dark Sidhe of the Unseelie Court, not the Seelie.

One of the Human languages had a word for it:
Schadenfreude.
The enjoyment of someone else’s suffering. Of course, Belini could afford to enjoy the moment; she was merely a peripheral, a spectator. Ia, on the other hand, felt different emotions: irritation, resentment, even a face-heating level of anger rising within her, but she could not afford to give in to rage.

(
 . . . Hell, even
after
you lose, I’ll spread it. You’re no leader, and she
knows
it. That’s why this is a Leadership Challenge, not a mere personal Challenge,
) the bubble-shaped sprite added when Miklinn made no move.

(
A half-breed has more ability to lead in our Games than you do, child,
) Kierfando added, his mental tone soured with disgust. He pulsed an additional thought that was a mental
tsk
.

(
 . . . I am distressed to agree.
)

The sending came from one of the Feyori on Miklinn’s side of the broken ring. He—or she, the gender was ambiguous—swirled into one of the humming hydrogenerator machines, sucking up enough energy, clearly preparing to depart. He wasn’t the only one. A second one moved.