Triorion Omnibus Read online

“Leave me alone!” Jetta screamed, fighting the reaching memories.

  “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

  Her sister’s words barely broke through. Some part of Jetta felt them before she heard them as the dizzy world of rusted pipes, engine parts and drilling machinery reformed before her eyes.

  Pressing her palms into her eyes, Jetta tried to steady her senses and rid herself of the ghostly afterimages of their owner. When did Galm become so unstable?

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Jaeia whispered, helping Jetta to sit up.

  “We had to do something,” she said, not meaning to come off as gruffly as she did. “We can’t just coddle him. Sometimes you have to be aggressive.”

  “But it has consequences,” Jaeia said, turning so Jetta could see her brother. Jahx curled in on himself, face red and contorted.

  “Jahx!” Jetta said, scrambling to his side. How could I be so stupid?

  Although she bore the greatest risk entering Galm’s mind, the telepathic connection she shared with her brother and sister dragged them along with her, inadvertently exposing them all to the nightmarish realm Yahmen dominated.

  “Jahx, I am so sorry,” Jetta whispered, afraid to touch him.

  Of the three of them, Jahx feared Yahmen the most. Something about their owner terrified Jahx more than any of the other dark Sentients of Fiorah, and it usually took one or both of the sisters to calm him down.

  Guilt kept Jetta at bay. This is my fault. I should have known better—

  Luckily, Jaeia picked up the pieces. Wrapping her arm around Jahx’s shoulders, her grey-eyed sister whispered into his ear. Jahx’s face relaxed, and he slowly unfurled.

  Blue eyes would not look at her. “I have what we need.”

  Jetta twisted the ragged ends of her shirt. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know,” her brother said flatly. He looked to Galm. Their uncle sat limply at his console, lips once again moving in some broken conversation, completely unaware of what had transpired.

  “H-how did you...?” Jetta started to ask.

  Jahx crawled over the parts of the coolant subprocessor littering floor and started to fit them back together. “I picked up a stray memory. Just got lucky, I guess.”

  No, not lucky. Extraordinarily gifted. Jahx’s sensitivities gave him insights Jetta could never have—and in many cases, want.

  Jetta listened to her brother’s thoughts and in seconds understood how they would fix the problem.

  “I’m sorry,” she tried again.

  Jaeia gave Jetta’s hand a squeeze. “Let’s just put this back together. Then we can go home.”

  Jetta pretended to cough, giving her an excuse to wipe the tears from her eyes. “You know I would do anything to protect you and Jahx,” she whispered.

  “I know,” Jaeia said, handing Jahx the tools he needed. Grey eyes looked solemnly back at Jetta. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  KEEPING JETTA’S ANGER to a low simmer took almost all of Jaeia’s energy. There was no arguing that their situation was dire, but if Jetta had her way, everyone Sentient in the galaxy would suffer her rage.

  “She’s only human,” Jahx said half-jokingly as Jaeia helped him limp across the drillship toward the docks.

  Jaeia chuckled. “Don’t tell her that.”

  Staying up ahead, Jetta scouted around corners and down hallways for stragglers. The drillship felt empty, but some Sentient species eluded their senses. Any surprise encounter with a child labor gang, laborminder or adult, especially this late in the evening, could be disastrous.

  “Let me go—I can walk on my own,” Jahx said. “Concentrate on Jetta.”

  Jaeia frowned. “I can do both.”

  “Really,” Jahx said, stifling a grimace while working his arm out of Jaeia’s grasp. “She needs you. I’ll be okay.”

  Glancing over her shoulder, Jaeia spotted Galm still shuffling along, bringing up the rear. Jahx could manage for a short while, and if anyone snuck up behind them, their uncle would alert them.

  “Hey,” Jaeia said, joining her sister’s side. “We’re almost to the docks.”

  Green eyes stayed sharp, sweeping the area up ahead. The narrow corridors of the mining ship provided plenty of unusual spaces packed between the machinery and pipework for enemies to hide. “This is where Sniffer jumped me two weeks ago.”

  Jaeia avoided Jetta’s memory of the incident, trying to concentrate herself and her sister on better emotions.

  “I’m going mapping again tonight,” Jaeia said, brushing the back of Jetta’s hand. “We’re making progress. Soon there won’t be any more surprise attacks or double shifts and dirty engines.”

  The sensation broke her sister’s train of thought. Green eyes lost focus, shoulders relaxed. Jetta turned inward for a moment, but reemerged with a hardness in her thoughts. “No more topitrate,” she said, wiping her hands on her shirt. Engine grease and the tan rock dust smeared together. “I hate it. It’s always in my food, under my nails, in my eyes and mouth. It’s starting to feel like a new layer of skin.”

  Jaeia agreed with her sister, but kept the rest of her thoughts to herself. She had grown more concerned over the safety of the drilling operation for topitrate when Yahmen doubled production demands and workers became sick. Hallucinations and vertigo were common if you breathed the rock dust in long enough, but Jaeia had seen child laborers with lung infections, and even adults with new-onset dementia. Masks and filters were a rarity given out to laborminders and upper management, and certainly never afforded to her or her family.

  Jetta’s head snapped around, and her hands turned to fists. Immediately her tone changed. “No more Galm.”

  Jaeia looked back to see Jahx collapsed on the walkway and their uncle limping past him, oblivious to their brother’s distress.

  Does he just not see? Jetta yelled across their bond as she raced back to help Jahx.

  “Not anymore,” Jaeia said aloud, keeping up with her sister.

  Kneeling next to their brother, Jetta touched Jahx’s cold and clammy face. His mind squeezed tight around the lancing pains in his stomach, shielding his sisters from the agonies of his sickness.

  Please Jahx, Jetta called across their shared bond. Let me take your pain.

  No, Jetta, Jahx whispered back, curling himself in a ball.

  Just for a few hours, I could—

  “No, Jetta,” he said, slowly unfurling. The look in his eyes startled her. “Let’s just go home.”

  “What’s the holdup?” Galm called back to them without turning around.

  He’s tired and sick, too, Jetta, Jaeia said, trying to reason with her sister as they helped their brother back to his feet.

  “Not good enough,” Jetta grumbled.

  Jaeia saw Jetta’s side of things, and couldn’t deny that part of her agreed with her sister. Galm and Lohien were their adoptive parents—they were supposed to protect and look after them—not the other way around. But everything changed a few months ago when Yahmen took aunt Lohien away in some kind of debt.

  “Galm’s useless,” Jetta muttered.

  Jaeia looked for Jahx to back her up, but his energy waned with every step. “You don’t mean that. It wasn’t always like this.”

  “Don’t do that,” Jetta whispered, closing her eyes as Jaeia flooded her with memories from better days. Lohien, in the kitchen, humming as she cooked dinner. Galm, pretending to read the newsreels, chuckling as she and her siblings wrestled on the kitchen floor. One of them got outnumbered. He put down his pipe and joined the fracas until the four of them were laughing so hard that the neighbors banged on the apartment walls.

  It took everything Jetta had to firm up her voice. “That might as well be a different lifetime.”

  Galm stopped in his tracks and raised trembling hands in the air. Jetta immediately put herself in front of her siblings, spreading out her arms and making herself as big as possible.

  “W—what’s going on?” Jahx mumbled, head drooping off to the
side.

  Jaeia shared her sight with her brother as two soldiers in blue and black Dominion Core uniforms marched along the grated walkway, headed straight for them, plasma rifles in hand.

  Galm cowered, pressing up against the guardrail, shielding his face.

  This is it— Jetta projected.

  (She’s, right,) Jaeia thought, grimacing against her sister’s reaction. (It’s too late to run, and none of us, especially Jahx, are in any condition for an assault.)

  Jetta’s ferocity ransacked their connection. I will use my secret talent. It’s the only way!

  No, Jetta! Jaeia cried, calling out with her brother in unison. It’s too dangerous!

  Gritting her teeth, Jaeia drew from her brother’s strength, and clamped down on Jetta’s desire. Jetta could take down two armed soldiers—probably much more—but the price, even for the slightest usage of their individual secret talents, had already proven too costly.

  Jetta glared at her siblings, but did nothing more than hold tight to her brother and sister as the soldiers passed Galm and tromped toward them.

  Jaeia only chanced a glimpse of them. One, clearly human from his square jaw and blonde hair tufting out of his cap, griped to the other bipedal species resembling a lizard.

  “Gods, I can’t stand this heat,” the human said. “I hope this is an in-and-out operation.”

  The lizard-looking alien, bifurcated tongue poking in and out of its mouth, spoke with a heavy lisp. “Not likely. The Sovereign’s ordered another dropship this week.”

  “Chakking gorsh-shit. I didn’t sign up for this. I’d rather be out hunting leeches.”

  The footsteps faded away toward the cargo hold. Jaeia slowly exhaled and peeked over her shoulder.

  Thank Gods Jetta didn’t use her talent—they were telepath hunters! she privately thought to her brother.

  Jahx, barely holding on, returned the sentiment. I couldn’t read their minds, even the human.

  Then there’s no telling what other tricks they might have had.

  “Stop talking about me,” Jetta said, lightly pinching both of them.

  Jaeia tried to play it off. “You always say my thoughts are a nuisance. Aren’t I doing you a favor?”

  With a grunt, Jahx managed to lift his head just enough to give Jetta a wink.

  Jetta looked back and forth between them, but any tension she tried to hold on to quickly dissolved. They were safe again, for now, and that’s all that mattered to her.

  “Let’s get to the bus,” Jetta said, slinging her brother’s arm over her shoulder. “I’ll even let you have the window seat this time.”

  As Jetta helped Jahx down the ramp exiting the drillship and to the bus depot, Jaeia went back to help her uncle still clinging to the guardrail.

  “I’m afraid, Jaeia,” Galm whispered to her, eyes wild with fear. “The Dominion are not supposed to be here. Yahmen will be angry—very angry.”

  Jaeia took her uncle’s wrinkled hand in hers. His Cerran skin always felt so rough and calloused, nothing like the way she thought it should feel for such an infirm man.

  “It’ll be okay, uncle,” Jaeia said, guiding him out of the mouth of the drillship and onto the bus platform to wait with her siblings for the next transport. She looked up the tunnel toward the tiny point of light that gave hints of the boiling surface. “Maybe things are going to change for the better.”

  JAHX ALLOWED HIS SISTERS to help him into his seat on the bus, but only pretended to fall asleep. He closed his eyes, steadied the rate of his breathing and let his thoughts drift until he felt the internal eyes of his sisters look away.

  Keeping the seriousness of his condition from his sisters proved harder and harder each day. Sometimes his insides felt as hot as a blast furnace. Other times it was a cold knife-twist to the gut. He wanted nothing more than to allow his sisters to share in the burden, to barricade him from his miseries to allow him even the slightest reprieve, but he feared the consequences. If they knew—if Jetta knew—how sick I am, there’s no telling what extremes she’d go to.

  Jahx shuddered at the thought.

  Fiorah had taught him about death since the very beginning, from the overdosed junkies clogging up the alleyways, gang victims stuffed in dumpsters, to the child laborers beaten to death by laborminders. He had seen and experienced death behind many sets of eyes, but no matter how much he learned, and no matter what he believed about what lay beyond, it provided little comfort as his belly continued to expand while the rest of him withered away. Death frightened him.

  Jahx peeked open an eye. Galm and Jaeia dozed next to him on the same bench while Jetta, sitting across from them, stayed awake, watching out the window as they ascended the tunnel from the mining core station to Fiorah’s red rock surface. Fatigue and the soft whir of the anti-grav engines lulled Jetta’s mind, allowing him to see inside with singular clarity.

  Stolen worlds unfolded within his sister: lush, green places with winding rivers and jagged mountains. A dark, nighttime sky studded with twinkling stars. White sand beaches and palm trees overburdened with drupes. Some of the rare, good memories they had chanced upon in their telepathic gleanings, places, for Jetta’s own reasons, she usually kept locked away.

  Hope, pure and genuine, arose from a place within his sister she seldom shared. Jahx relished the feeling, and for a brief moment, forgot about his pain.

  Jetta’s inner voice sang across the psionic planes: Maybe we will surface on some other planet. Maybe I won’t have to fight anymore.

  Something foolish and impossible; a thought Jetta would have never dared think in front of her siblings. Jahx had to keep himself from smiling.

  The bus lurched forward, testing the strength of their seatbelts. Galm, not wearing one, pitched forward, nearly smacking his head on the opposing bench.

  “Watch it, Drachsi,” the operator called back, looking at Galm through his rearview mirror. “Wouldn’t want to get hurt, would ya?”

  Trembling, Galm worked his way back to his seat. Jahx let his senses expand, searching the other minds on the bus. Only two other workers had made the last bus to the surface, both too exhausted for any kind of altercation. If the operator hoped for a fight, it wouldn’t happen today.

  The transfer to the surface elicited its usual hisses and groans from the bus. The triple suns showed no mercy, even in the late evening hours, heating the bus in seconds. The operator blasted the air conditioner in his cab, but the rest of the main cabin quickly turned into an oven as they sped across the desert surface toward the protective airfield dome.

  Jahx watched the scenery change through his sister’s eyes. Windswept, hardscrabble surfaces whizzed by in burnt hues of red and orange. Mountains, off in the distance, looked like molten spires rising up to pierce the sky. When they reached the perimeter and transferred into the airfield, the circulators in the bus turned off, and the air from inside the dome filtered through. Taking in the first breath of the lone city’s recycled pollution caused everyone to cough and sneeze.

  Bars locked down over the windows as they passed through some of the roughest parts of the city. Jahx watched Jetta take it all in, pressing her nose and palms against the glass. Scanning the scores of homeless people waiting outside the social services office, Jetta extended her senses into the cloud of desperation hanging over each one of them. The vagrants had waited all day to see if the tight-fisted financial delegate—a friend of Yahmen’s—would hand out the United Starways Coalition food stipends, braving the heat and Yahmen’s watchdogs. Even though the plyboard doors to the social services office remained closed, and the city sanitation department had already come around twice to haul away those who didn’t make it, they remained. Jetta couldn’t understand why they would stay after all they had been through.

  But I do.

  They sped through scrap-yards, condemned refineries, and the ghostly high-rises that had once been slated to house rich businessmen back when investors thought that Fiorah might be worth more than its black mar
kets. Condemned signs, graffiti and crumbling walls now gave sanctuary to the rats, and any unfortunate soul that wound up in the outskirts of the city.

  Jahx kept himself tethered behind Jetta’s eyes, curious to see her reaction as the bus entered the city’s main drag. The hypnotic flicker of suspended neon ads and the electronic thunder of the stimulation boutiques jarred her from her lull. Forgotten were the impoverished outskirts of the city as painted streetwalkers paraded around in gaudy jewelry and fishnet stockings. Jetta pressed her face harder into the glass. Underhanders positioned themselves at each corner, throwing out hand jives to indicate what drug they were pedaling. Shop owners called out to vacant-eyed wanderers searching for something no guidebook listed. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen a hundred times before, yet it captivated her with fresh interest.

  Jahx didn’t understand why she was drawn to such sights, or why her subconscious yearned to know more of the dark secrets of the main drag. Then again, Jetta did not fear ugly truths of the Sentient heart. Not like I do.

  The bus came to a screeching halt. The operator slammed his hands against the steering wheel. “Get out of the chakking road!” Expletives in Starways Common and his native language followed.

  Jahx carefully shifted his attention behind the operator’s eyes to see what had happened. Infuriated and distracted, the operator didn’t notice his intrusion.

  “Chakking leeches!” the operator shrieked.

  “I know you’re awake,” Jetta whispered.

  Jahx opened his eyes. Jetta scowled at him, arms crossed.

  “At least let me see,” she said.

  Nervously, Jahx looked over to Jaeia. She remained fast asleep while Galm mumbled to himself, caught up in whatever his demons whispered in his ear.

  “You’re not going to like it,” Jahx said.

  “Try me.”

  With a big sigh, Jahx opened his mind to her.

  A camouflage truck swerved into the middle of the street, blocking traffic both ways. Registration Security was written on the side. The back door swung open and a ramp extended, revealing a bed full of freezer cases. Dominion soldiers poured out the side doors, shockwands hot and crackling, silver insignia flashing in the neon sting.