Opposing Counsel

(English)

Jordan’s superlocator was ironic.

Mostly because…we didn’t actually need it?

Not only had Jordan created a superconstruct to rival my own, she’d also forged an accompanying construct as impressive as my original psionic radar.

As fantastic and convenient as the superlocator was, we could have gotten by with just her absurd new emitter array. And that’s what it was, an array. It unfurled from her mind like a titanic flower, well exceeding the confines of her own mind. It had real volume too, expanding out from her until it was the size of a baseball field.

The fact that it persisted in physical space was odd. It was still invisible and completely noninteractive to physical matter; it only showed up on psionic senses. She’d stabilized it somehow, having the core of the construct remain within her mind while the peripheral arms unfurled around her.

It could blast psionic signals further than anything we’d put together in earlier testing. But even at minimal signal intensity, the frequency options were a lot more limited. Maybe if she and I put our heads together we could figure out how to send more complex messages through her emitter. But as long as she had the superlocator, we didn’t need to.

The emitter could fling our simple carrier wave in every direction and pick up the return ping wherever it bounced off the constructs we’d left in the minds of the Jack’s crew. Once the return ping reached Jordan, it was a simple matter for Jordan to…well, I wasn’t totally clear on this part. Best I could understand her explanation, Beacons could abridge space: force two distant locations to behave as if they were one. Real matter and energy could move through that abridged space.

But only psionically encoded information could cross through Jordan’s superlocator. It didn’t make wormholes in real-space. It only abridged whatever strange psionic thought-space that interacted with consciousness. Which was weird. It seemed to imply that there were ways to store and manipulate information without moving around any energy. I didn’t know much about entropy or quantum physics, but I was pretty sure information doing anything without any change in energy was…potentially epic.

However it happened, it worked. And that was what mattered.

“They are on their way,” Jordan confirmed for the umpteenth time.

“Awesome,” I grinned. “Kemon’s clock is officially ticking.”

“Tick tock,” Jordan nodded.

·····

The fact that Kemon was going to be up in orbit for at least another day was a huge bonus. Jordan and I got to spend some quality time going over her psionic breakthroughs. The only downside to her flash of inspiration was that, between her superlocator and the emitter array, she’d more than tripled her load. She was nearing the limit of her capacity, and the process of making her massive creations had cost her all but one of the candled-radars Nai had shared.

I could cover those losses, but even if I didn’t balk, sharing from my stock stung. I’d been quite happy with the fact that I hadn’t needed to spend any more radars since first confronting Knox. But, safety first. Redistributing our arsenal of single-use constructs left us with four radars, two javelins, and one of my new junker constructs apiece.

She got a copy of the combat-flowchart Madeline and I had put together too. After seeing it in action in her spar with Johnny, I’d revisited the interface especially. It had been too easy to ignore in the heat of battle. Or rather…it was too easy to second guess and get caught up in the moment, trusting knee-jerk reactions rather than planned strategy.

Hopefully neither Jordan nor I would need to do any fighting. Once the Jack got here, we won by default. Kemon’s crew was good, but Serral was a high-ranking Coalition officer and Nai was an interstellar war hero.

Kemon had made a mistake keeping his circle of trust so small. Because no one could do everything alone…

Turns out just two people don’t fare that much better than one.

That said…it wouldn’t do to get complacent. We were in the home stretch, and I wasn’t lucky enough to get through it scot free.

So when I heard the distant roar of Win’s shuttle touching down in the early hours of the morning, I trusted my gut and woke up.

Kemon was back on the ground earlier than expected. Not a good thing, that. But not catastrophic either…what had prompted the early return?

Not unlike my accommodations back at Demon’s Pit, I’d taken over a closet for my bedroom in Kemon’s camp. It was little more than a storage shed that was still used as such along with the cot I’d set up.

Peeking out from my shack, I spied Kemon making his way down from the shuttle outcropping…not toward the A-ships and the prefabs for his crew, but toward the grounds that Win and the Ronin used.

I should have followed him. But with the Jack on the way, I didn’t want to raise any suspicion. But coming back from the morning jog later, I noticed Win was nowhere to be found. He usually awaited the Ronin, so he could drag them off for more practice.

The only other incident of the morning was a small fire breaking out in one of the shacks for Kemon’s crew. It left a dozen grumbling Casti standing out in the mud while Win flagged down Knox to help extinguish the flames.

Something was wrong.

I could feel it.

Kemon coming back early, Win breaking schedule…

I’d missed something. Something critical.

I could just tell.

·····

At lunchtime, I was found out I was right.

A few people were missing, but lots of people skipped or delayed lunch some days. The Ronin especially loved to train long into the afternoon, and finally crash in the evenings for dinner.

Keeping my head down, chewing my nutrient block, I was scrambling and retuning some psionics just for practice when someone rang me.

Knox said frantically, in Starspeak no less.

I asked.

And because Fate is real and eager to punish those who tempt it…it was that moment a gunshot rang out in the same direction as Knox’s signal.

“Son of a..” I muttered, and bolted toward the noise.

There was a very short list of reasons why Knox would call on me. None of them good.

Jordan asked. She’d have heard the shots too.

I said.

The gunshots were at least infrequent. Four more shots rang out in the time it took me to cross the camp. Everyone could hear the violence unfolding, and plenty of people saw me rushing in that direction.

Thankfully, no one tried to intervene. This was going to be a delicate situation enough as is.

I blew past Kemon without stopping, and he shouted at me.

“They’re down by the—!”

I didn’t stop long enough to listen, pulling the pin on another candled radar. Three left now— darn it, was I going to regret splitting my stock with Jordan? I was probably going to be left with a lot fewer after today…good thing Nai would be here soon to make more.

Whatever today’s disaster was, when I saw the first of Johnny’s iron spikes peeking above the tops of the boulder field, I knew how badly I’d underestimated the insanity.

By the time I got in radar range, I’d seen four more iron stalagmites taller than houses. Johnny’s mass limit was enormous… he’d be a monster with real training.

On radar, I clocked five Adepts chasing haphazardly after a sixth—Knox, surely.

He was moving quickly and desperately, weaving between boulders and breaking line of sight every single chance he could. Another gunshot rang out, and I saw Madeline leap into view wearing her comically oversized mech-boots.

She crashed down ahead of Knox, cutting him off. The sound of iron tearing through stone marked the Ronin further penning Knox in.

They had to be joking…

Wishing I didn’t need to, I materialized my backup plan. Examining Michelle’s chaotic psionics and witnessing her creating psionic prosthesis had given me inspiration to dabble in the same hardware.

My maneuvering jets were one of my best tricks, but I’d perfected their design while Coalesced with Nai. Operating them optimally was literally beyond my abilities alone. The concept of propelling myself by creating bursts of pressurized gas was simple enough that I could still do simple jets, but it was a far cry from the genuine article’s mobility.

Unlike Michelle’s horns, my psionic prosthesis was a little less conspicuous: a small black disk at the base of my skull. It was a regulator-prosthesis, tied into preformulated psionic algorithms, ready to adjust how much pressure I needed to put where to keep my maneuvering stable.

It still didn’t make up for the lack of mass I was missing in lieu of Nai, but it helped me be as efficient and precise as possible with what mass I could use for the jets.

Flipping the throttle to full, I rocketed down toward the most immediate threat and the only one wielding a gun: Donnie.

He rounded the corner last, taking aim at Knox and I skidded to a halt inches away from him.

My hand snatched out for Donnie’s gun, and I made sure to get a finger between the hammer and the body. Unable to fire, I took his moment of confusion to wrest the pistol from him. Tearing the slide away from the frame left the weapon decidedly nonfunctional, but I couldn’t stop with him.

Johnny stomped forward angrily, little metal thorns poking up in his footsteps. The sight made my blood go cold. It reminded me of the spikes and razors Daniel had materialized out of our A-ship’s walls.

“Who are you!?” Johnny shouted, an iron stalagmite lancing up toward Knox’s throat.

I flipped on my maneuvering jets and kicked Knox out of the spike’s way, grabbing the spike to pivot me mid-air and send me toward Johnny.

Slow to react, I grabbed Johnny’s wrist as I spun past him, pulling his weight down, backwards, and spinning around him. The end result spun him into a sitting position on the ground before he could blink.

Madeline had already materialized a giant mech-gauntlet, Ben had his ice gun out, and Aarti’s eyes were darting between Johnny on the ground and Knox backing away fearfully.

“ALRIGHT then…” I said, making sure to get between the five of them and Knox. “We’re going slow down by about five notches here…”

“Out of our way, Ted!” Donnie said. He was the highest strung by far. I didn’t like that he knew how to make a gun so consistently. At least he hadn’t dematerialized his ruined one and replaced it.

“I don’t think I’m going to do that,” I said, keeping my voice level.

“That’s not Knox!” Johnny hissed, climbing back to his feet. “He’s not even human!”

“He’s a Vorak,” Ben said coldly.

Only Maddie was collected enough to recognize the lack of surprise playing across my face.

“…Holy shit, you already knew,” she said.

That garnered a few shocked glances toward Madeline, and I had to fight my instinct to attack when they looked away. That was such a big opening…

But despite my plan to knock the Ronin down a few pegs, fighting wasn’t the goal right now.

“It’s obvious if you paid any attention to his psionics,” I said. “With a little know-how, you can read thought patterns, and then it’s easy to tell alien minds apart from human ones. Kinda like how you could still know human voices from alien ones, even if you don’t know any of the languages being spoken.”

“How long have you known?” Ben asked, turning his ice cannon from Knox toward me.

Did that count as progress or not?

“Are we sure he’s even human too?” Donnie asked.

I gave Madeline an exasperated look. “You wanna field that one?”

“Help me out, Ted,” she said grimly. “Why defend him?”

“Pretty sure I’ve said it all before,” I said. “You going to magically start listening now?”

“He’s been here for months,” Donnie fumed. “He’s dangerous.”

“No he’s not,” I tried.

“How would you know?”

“Because I already beat you to this song and dance,” I said, materializing a card and flicking it toward Aarti. “Hey Knox, what did I do the first night I got here?”

“Is someone going to shoot me if I open my mouth?” he asked.

“Just spit it out,” I said.

“You interrogated me at gunpoint. You liked my answers enough not to kill me.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because I’m not here to hurt anyone. I was hired by another group of humans to investigate Kemon incognito.”

Aarti read along what I’d written and flashed the card, written with information to the same effect, to the other Ronin.

“Big deal, you could have fed him the answer psionically,” Johnny pointed out.

Hmm. Even if he hadn’t actually noticed anything, he knew I could be that sneaky with psionics.

“It’s certainly possible,” I conceded. “But it would be kinda pointless.”

“Ted, you need to back off on this,” Madeline said. “He’s been lying to us for months.”

“Sure, sure,” I nodded. “Problem is…even though I’m human too, I’ve been lying too. You going to do to me whatever you do to him?”

“What do you mean?” Johnny frowned.

“Come on,” I scoffed. “You think it’s coincidence I showed up and started coming after Kemon ASAP? I came here for a reason.”

“I thought you were trying to build bridges,” Aarti said.

“I am,” I said. “I have to trust that it’ll be clear once this all shakes out, but I really am trying to help. It’s just…before I build bridges, I need to burn a few first.”

I really wanted to blow the lid on my identity now. But I didn’t. Firstly, because they wouldn’t be in any state to believe me until after they’d both calmed down and been thrashed. And secondly because Kemon was still around. The last thing I wanted was to show my hand too early because it would be satisfying.

No, I needed to deny him as much information as possible, at least for another day or two until the Jack arrived.

“Last warning,” Johnny said, stepping forward. “Get out of our way.”

Rats.

I sent.

But out loud, I just said, “No.”

Johnny lunged forward with Donnie right on his heels, but I threw up a cloud of thick orange smoke. Johnny’s cascade rippled underfoot, but I gambled, grabbing my newest psionic weapon: my junker-construct, and fired it straight into Johnny’s mind.

The junker was a cruel thing, seeming so sweet at first, only to quickly spoil. The construct provided a cloyingly convenient way to format the feedback from a tactile cascade. But it was arranged so that as soon as my opponent let themselves use that clearer picture, the junker would start muddling and ruining the picture until it was all reduced to unusable garbage.

My gamble paid off, and his mind was too distracted to reject the construct on reflex. When he got more wits about him, it wouldn’t take more than a few seconds to pry out of his mind, but at least for this fight, Johnny’s cascade wouldn’t be a concern.

As for everyone else…

Smoke was devastatingly effective against newbies.

Red sparks flashed from Aarti’s general direction, but I dismissed them as a threat. They weren’t an attack. She was trying to illuminate her way out of the cloud. Fat chance.

Ben on the other hand made my blood go cold. And not just because he fired his ice gun right at me. The stream of quasi-liquid came inches from my face. Had that shot been blind?

Scratch that: he was definitely firing blind. Exotic fluid colder than liquid nitrogen sprayed toward me. Good grief. Thankfully, none of the bursts came closer than his first shot.

“Okay, you guys are going to hurt someone,” I started, dematerializing the cloud.

Madeline was the only one who didn’t try to go for me or Mirsus immediately. Donnie dashed toward the spot Knox had been standing moments earlier, but the Vorak had heeded my advice. I pointed at Donnie’s head and another blast of orange smoke engulfed his head, sending him sprawling.

Ben fired his cold gun at me, and my maneuvering jets fired, carrying me out of the way. The regulator-prosthesis was doing its job well.

A red-hot line of plasma whipped forward from Aarti, but I was ready to dodge it and the iron spikes that Johnny threw up to corral me.

I made finger guns and pointed at the two of their heads. Two more bursts of smoke engulfed their heads.

“Agghh!” Aarti let out a shout as she contended with her sight being cut off. Johnny handled it more stoically, but was no less hampered. Eyes and cascade both circumvented, he did not try to fire any iron spikes blind. Thank God.

With three of the Ronin stumbling around with clouds of orange smoke billowing around their heads, I turned my attention to Madeline and Ben.

They didn’t get any smoke yet. Madeline because she hadn’t actually attacked yet—though it looked like she would. And Ben because I didn’t want him blind firing that stupid ice gun again.

“The smoke is just on your heads,” Madeline called out. “He stuck something to you.”

“It’s an adhesive that sublimates into an opaque inert gas,’ I explained. “Neat, right? Can’t fight if you can’t see.”

Ben leveled the gun to fire more ice at me, but I aimed a finger gun at him.

“Don’t,” I warned.

Madeline approached me wearing a pained expression, and Donnie scraped enough of the sublimating residue off his face to clear some of his vision. His furious expression helped remind me of my own mindset.

I was the only one with a clear head here. Ben was going to hurt someone by accident if he didn’t check his fire, and Donnie was ready hurt someone on purpose given the chance. Maddie, Aart, and Johnny might have seemed calm, but only by comparison. Each one of them was angry, hurt, and confused.

This had gone on long enough, and I had my priorities straight.

The Jack would be here in less than two days. Kemon’s schedule didn’t have us leaving for another ten. Easy math. The last thing I wanted was anyone getting killed, or even injured.

So instead of continuing, I dematerialized the smoke and put up my hands.

“I give up,” I said.

Distressingly, that wasn’t enough to call off Donnie at first. He looked furiously between me and…

Knox who was nowhere to be found.

“You let him escape,” he accused furiously.

“Ensured it,” I agreed. “You guys were going to kill him otherwise. I’m trying to keep violence to a minimum.”

Madeline caught Donnie’s shoulder before he could keep coming at me.

“If this is a trick, someone might kill you,” she warned.

“I surrender,” I repeated. “No tricks.”

“Then you’re coming with me,” Kemon said loudly, lurching down the slope toward us.

“I’m not welcome down here anymore?” I asked wryly.

“Not for the time being,” he said icily. “If the Vorak are coming, I won’t accept your presence here after this disaster. You’ll be detained aboard the Fafin in orbit.”

I frowned. It was unexpected. But the price might just be an all-out fight with higher stakes than I was willing to play for yet. Two days until the Jack arrived. Just two days.

“…Fine,” I said, holding out my wrists.

“As if handcuffs could hold you…” Madeline scoffed.

“True,” I said, putting them down.

“Speak for yourself,” Johnny disagreed, taking my wrists and materializing thick iron manacles over them.

“Take him to Win’s shuttle,” Kemon advised. “We can have him out of here in an hour.”

Jordan asked from back at camp.

I admitted.

I admitted.

she affirmed.

I agreed.

Jordan said.

She hurled a white-hot pearl of psionic ichor toward my mind. On instinct, I wrapped it in half-a-dozen layers of insulation as I took it into my mind. One end of her superlocator, it must have been.

I said.

Jordan and I were subtler with psionics than anyone else here, but it was impossible to hide that I’d just taken in something psionic. It was too distinct.

Johnny noticed…but couldn’t identify it, or where it came from.

“What was that?”

“You really think I’m going to tell you yet?” I snorted.

That was enough to encourage his bad mood that he forgot his curiosity.

But just like tossing data-wormholes wasn’t a subtle activity, neither was parading me in irons through the camp. Eyes widened and heads turned as we plodded toward the shuttle outcropping. Sid stomped up to us.

“What the hell is this?” he asked. “What the hell was that? What are you doing?”

That last one was directed at both me and Johnny.

“Ted’s getting put up on the Fafin.” Johnny growled. “Knox wasn’t human; he was a Vorak! He’s been lying for months, and Ted helped him escape.”

Sid frowned. “Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I asked. “They were going to kill him.”

“You’re seriously lucky we didn’t kill you,” Johnny said darkly.

“Mmm, yeah, Kemon hasn’t been winding you guys up at all…you guys are just the picture of rationality and tact right now, aren’t you?” I mocked.

Johnny just shoved me further up the slope toward Win’s shuttle.

But Sid looked like he’d just had a bitter pill forced down his throat.

I told Sid quietly.

Sidney gave a hard stare, but didn’t protest while Johnny hauled me into the shuttle.

·····

My first clue something was wrong should have been the fact that neither Win nor Kemon flew the shuttle with me to the Fafin. Instead it was Win’s subordinate Adept, Vez watching me with engineer Dansi doing the flying.

Neither of them seemed very interested in talking, though for different reasons.

But I could tell I was unnerving them. Vez didn’t take her hand off her pistol holster the whole trip.

Eventually, it was Dansi who broke the silence.

“Why?” was all she asked.

“Because Kemon’s helming a ship straight toward the rocks,” I said in Starspeak. “And he’s going to drag every last one of you down with him if you let him.”

I could practically see Dansi’s urge to reply ‘not me’. Yeah, I was pretty sure I knew what her deal was…Serral had warned me after all.

Vez’s frown only deepened.

Whatever. It made no difference to me if they came around. I settled in for the ascent towards the Fafin in orbit. How many more hours did Kemon have?

As it turned out?

Enough.

·····

Hours later in the Fafin’s brig, I was mulling through possibilities.

I still didn’t know I’d made a mistake when I felt Jordan’s pearl hum in my mind.

Jordan had been pretty insistent that I’d need to be asleep to properly connect to the pearl’s thoughtspace. Something about being unable to stay connected to my own frame of reference and the pearl’s—which existed in two ‘places’ at once.

‘Unable to stay connected’.

Please.

I fired up my own superconstruct and aimed it internally toward the pearl in my mind.

I asked.

she said.

I asked.

she said.

I said.

she agreed.

That was my leading theory too. It made a certain twisted kind of sense. Discovering a spy in your midst was distressing, but Kemon had seen it for the opportunity it was. He’d been stoking everyone’s fears about the Vorak so long, he must have been giddy when he first realized who, or rather what Knox was.

I said.

she said.

I followed.

Jordan asked.

I said.

Jordan pointed out.

I nodded.

she asked, immediately finding an answer to her own question.

I followed.

Jordan finished.

Jordan asked.

I conceded.

she asked.

…Oh, Caleb you idiot…

Kemon was smart. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t also be stupid. Not only that, all his information on the Coalition would come from soldiers lower on the chain of command. Hakho and Sturgin had all but said their own troops were leaking information to him.

He’d even been blamed for an Admiral’s death before. This was not a Casti with friends in high places. His picture of the Coalition’s war was not a wide-scale one.

I agreed.

Jordan breathed.

I said.

But he was a lawyer, not a naval campaign strategist. When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Even turned insurgeant, Kemon saw things in codified structures and laws. He thought as long as he provided a solid cause to justify the offensive, the Coalition would leap at the chance to take the fight to the Vorak. And he’d get in on the ground floor.

This was a stepping stone for him. Earn the abductees’ trust, and be the champion for their outrage. They would entrust themselves to him, and Kemon could ride that position into higher circles.

Kemon was going to take this to the Coalition admiralty board, like a child bragging about their new Lego set…From his perspective, he was bringing them a golden opportunity gift-wrapped and sealed with the righteous anger of hundreds of First Contact refugee-abductees.

It might never have occurred to him that the opportunity itself was rancid—even if he hadn’t lied to make it. It was pure logistics.

He’d been managing a camp of abductees for months, a crew of privateers for years! How did he not have a better understanding of supplies and strain?

But that didn’t matter right now. Jordan was right. Kemon could be situationally dumb enough to make that mistake, and was certainly pulling the trigger, now. And I was stuck in orbit.

No… no! This had started moving too fast!

I forced myself to breathe steadily. Calm down, I told myself. I was stuck on the Fafin because I’d prioritized avoiding a fight with my fellow humans. That was still a worthwhile goal, Kemon’s strategy was exploiting that priority, whether by coincidence or design didn’t matter.

What could I do? He’d temporarily gotten me away from the board at the perfect moment. But even if removing me from the board was a serendipity for Kemon, the timing had not been a coincidence. Neither was Knox’s identity coming out…a perfect betrayal to get the Ronin nice and furious, ready to lash out?

Win wouldn’t even have to make a tough sell. The Ronin would eat it up.

That was our new priority: keep the Ronin from being thrown into the meat grinder—scratch that; keep them from leaping in.

Some of my thinking must have bled through, because Jordan followed my train of thought.

Jordan whispered.

I warned.

she realized.

I advised.

I said.

Jordan said.

I started.

Jordan said. Not a doubt in her mind.

I told her.