"Sir, no, sir," Ia denied. "I simply did what anyone else would do, sir."
"What anyone would do, were they in your shoes," Secondaire Mandella agreed, emphasizing her choice of words, "but not necessarily what anyone else could do."
A gesture from the Secondaire brought a black-uniformed lieutenant up to his side, a silver tray in the other man"s gloved hands. He was a match for the uniformed sergeant standing behind Ia"s shoulder, carrying the tray burdened with the paraphernalia of her honorifics from the other governments.
"For your acts of extraordinary psychic service...simply extraordinary...it is my privilege to bestow upon you the Blue Heart," he informed her, opening and displaying the distinctively shaped medallion. Eyeing her jacket, Mandella snapped the box shut. "Normally, I would pin this on your jacket, since our records show this is your first official Blue Heart, Lieutenant. But it seems you lack the room to display it on your chest."
"Sorry, sir," she apologized.
"Are those all of your medals?" he asked, lifting one brow.
"Sir, yes, sir," Ia replied, straight-faced.
Curious, he arched a brow, looking her over from head to toe. She turned around crisply, toe tucked behind heel, and displayed the ones carpeting the back of her jacket. Another about-face allowed her to face him again. The only spots not covered in medals were an inch or so from the bottom of the jacket hem, her collar points and shoulder boards-reserved solely for the silver bar of her rank-and the actual lapels of her jacket, save that the left one held her Star of Service from two years before. The only medal that ever went on the right lapel face was either the Red Heart of an honorably retired soldier, or the Black Heart, for service unto death, which was only ever pinned in place postmortem.
Facing him again, Ia spoke. "I won"t stop saving lives, sir...but I may have to ask that my superiors stop recognizing me for it. As you can see, I"m sort of running out of room, sir."
The corner of his mouth quirked up. "I"ll just pa.s.s a note to the Command Staff to look into designing a floor-length Dress Coat. In the meantime, consider this duly pinned."
"Sir, yes, sir," Ia agreed, accepting the box from him.
"And this one, the White Cross, for rescuing a fellow sentient being. Six White Crosses, one for each member nation of the Alliance whose people you rescued, the Solaricans, the V"Dan, the Tla.s.sians, the K"katta, the Gatsugi, and your fellow Terrans..."
Accepting each box, she stacked them on the tray carried by the sergeant standing stoically at her side. Other awards pa.s.sed through her hands, Ten Skulls, for known, confirmed kills of high-ranked Salik generals. Crossbones for the lesser ranks slaughtered when the base was destroyed. A Rearguard Star, for being the last of the two ships to flee, holding off the enemy"s counterattacks with her abilities, and another Screaming Eagle for successfully tailgating Viega"s vessel through that hyperrift without destroying either ship. A White Heart for rescuing herself, and a Purple Heart for the injuries she had suffered.
"And finally, most importantly," Secondaire Mandella presented, "the highest peacetime honor the Terran government can bestow. As much as we have made it a standing practice of honoring the honorable and extraordinary efforts of the meioas in our s.p.a.ce Force and its Branches, it is a very rare individual who goes so far above and beyond the call of duty that they risk not only life and limb for their fellow soldiers, but risk life and limb for the civilians and soldiers of all our allies.
"Like its wartime counterpart, the Medal of Honor, the Star of Service is not bestowed lightly, Lieutenant. You have earned this-again-literally through the efforts of your blood, sweat, and tears. May all who see you and hear of your deeds draw courage and inspiration from your shining example of what it means to be a true and honorable soldier of the Terran s.p.a.ce Force. Lieutenant First Grade Ia," Secondaire Mandella told her solemnly, "I salute you."
Lifting his hand to his brow, he matched actions to words. It was a breach of protocol, and Ia knew precognitively that he would catch quite a bit of flak from the Command Staff for it, as well as some political repercussions from the more conservative factions in the Terran United Planets. The Secondaire and the Premier never saluted anyone in the military first. They were the Commanders in Chief during times of peace and war, respectively; others saluted them first. But he saluted her now, in a broadcast that was being streamed not just to the Terran worlds, but to every other world in the Alliance.
Blinking hard, Ia saluted him back. When she lowered her hand to accept the last commendation box, she found herself pulled into an embrace. Under the cover of patting her back, the Secondaire murmured into her ear, "You do realize you"ll have to face a Board of Inquiry regarding your gifts, right?"
"Sir, yes, sir. I"ve already prepared my defense, sir," she murmured back, strengthening her mental walls to keep from foreseeing his future. She couldn"t block out the sincere admiration lurking behind his words, though, forcing her to blink rapidly a second time.
"If I can arrange it, I"ll be there to speak on your behalf. You may not have followed the letter of the regs, but no one will be allowed to deny or set aside the results of your efforts." Releasing her, he handed her the Star of Service box, speaking aloud for the broadcast pickups once more. "Remember this day, Lieutenant. Let it be an inspiration to you and to those around you. May the soldiers of all nations look to you as their role model in the years to come."
That"s the idea, sir, Ia thought, though she kept it carefully under shield, mindful of the other psychics on board. She saluted him one last time, shoulders back and chin level. The salvation of the Future is counting on it.
SEPTEMBER 10, 2495 T.S.
The aching, nauseating pain ceased abruptly as the mind-blind technician manning the sucker hands on the machine carefully tugged and pushed, shutting it off. Everyone else let out a sigh of relief, or the species-equivalent. From her perch on the table serving as her podium-since the knee-joints of most K"katta barely reached one meter high, rendering them rather short in the presence of the other sentient races in the room-Meioa Nik"ikk addressed the others, her translator box projecting her words in Terranglo over the chittering of her native tongue.
"Thank you, that should be enough for now. We now have enough information to calculate a baseline formula for the rate of interference. Meioa P"hrrn, have you calculated the numbers?"
The Solarican psi in question nodded and stood, writing pad in her hands. "Based on the technician"s calculllations, compared to PsiLeague rrratings, this machine blocks our abilities at a rratio of nearly four-to-one. At full strength, anyone of lless than eighth rrank is completely blocked...but that is due morrre to the painn of this machine, since at Rrrank 2, they could still technnicallly use their gifts to a tiny poinnt."
"We know that prolonnged exsssposure overwhelms the pssssi," one of the crested Tla.s.sian priest-castes in the room hissed, his crest-spikes dipping in displeasure. "Even our ssstrongest priestesss among the captivess could not concentrate pa.s.st the first half hour, and ssshe iss Rank 16. In short durationss, I can usse my Rank 15 sskill at almost a Rank 4 rating in spite of this machinne, but not for very llonnng."
One of the grey-clad Humans snorted. "Smack anyone with a headache that strong for that long, and see how well you"d function. We need to figure out how to counter these d.a.m.ned machines. It doesn"t matter if it"s a Kinetic, a Pathy, or a Clairancy, or one of the wild gifts, these devices interfere with all of it. Our psychic abilities are the one thing the Salik don"t have, the one weapon in our a.r.s.enal we can still hold over their slimy heads. But this machine changes all of that."
Nik"ikk lifted one leg, claw-tips snapping against each other to catch everyone"s attention. "We will discuss that later. Meioa Ia had requested that, once we have ascertained the dampening field"s strength and effects on a KI meter, we test her for an official ranking."
"Can"t we do that later?" another Human complained. This one was clad in the dark red uniform of the V"Dan military. "The problems posed by this machine are far more important than someone"s mental ego-stroking."
Rising from her seat, Ia moved toward the center of the room, where both the KI machine and the anti-psi generator sat on a pair of carts. Still a bit weak, she moved slowly, but she moved. "As much as I"d agree with you, Meioa Jin-Palu, this machine will be necessary to help successfully gauge my rankings."
"What I/myself want/need to know/grasp/understand," one of the Gatsugi psis spoke up, "is who/what authority made/gave you/you/you the right/privilege of ownership/control of/over this/this thing/machine."
"I will answer that question, meioa, after I have been tested. First, I need my gifts officially ranked," Ia told them. "I know what they are, and I have an idea of their strengths, but I have not been officially, formally tested. For reasons you will soon see."
Reaching the bench seat the other volunteers had used, Ia settled onto it. Each wave of headache-inducing interference had weakened her temporarily, but with her reserves slowly regaining strength, she had managed to bounce back a fair bit. This, however, would leave her weak and sweating once it was done. Nodding at the technician, she gave him silent permission to wire her forehead and hands to the KI monitor, a necessary precaution to prevent her testing from picking up too much interference from the others.
"We"ll do this in reverse order, from weakest to strongest gift," Ia stated as he applied the sticky patches to her skin. "I need a volunteer from one of the other species to test my Xenopathic abilities."
One of the Gatsugi volunteered. Of all the other species gathered in the room, their thoughts were least like a Human"s. Only a Choya or a Salik would have been more different among the oxygen-breathing, carbon-based sentiencies, but neither race had psychic abilities. When the four-armed alien settled onto the bench across from her and had composed himself into a light shade of calm-blue, the Solarican technician instructed Ia to begin.
"First test. Conntact the meioa-o"s mind from a distance."
"I"m not very good at the non-touch-based Pathies," Ia muttered in warning. Breathing deeply to center herself and settle her thoughts, she reached out, sensing the Gatsugi"s whirling cascade of thoughts. The alien obligingly kept his mental walls lowered, but did not reach out to her in any way. Politely, she kept to his surface thoughts. Not that she could have read much of anything at a greater depth; Ia simply wasn"t that strong.
"Rrrank 4," the technician stated. "Now, trrry it via touch."
Shifting forward, Ia held out her hand. The Gatsugi extended one of his lower arms, four digits meeting five. His flesh was cool-calm, his walls still down, his thoughts a swirl of polite welcome. (Greetings/Salutations/h.e.l.lo...) (h.e.l.lo/h.e.l.lo, thank you/my grat.i.tude,) she returned, shaping the thought along his alien patterns. She had practiced a little bit by reading Salik minds during her various boarding sorties, increasing her original rank, but hadn"t been able to practice a lot, nor all that much on the meioa"s own species.
"Rrrank 6," the tech concluded as Ia and the alien released each other"s hand. "Next?"
"Biokinesis, others. Xeno or otherwise, it"s the exact same," Ia stated. "My ability to affect others is several ranks below my ability to affect myself."
Nodding, the Gatsugi picked up one of the sterile razor packets on the table. Opening it with his upper fingers, he made a small, careful cut on the palm of one of his lower hands. Ia cupped his injured hand in hers and focused, pouring some of her personal energy into his biology. The bleeding slowed and the centimeter-long wound clotted faster than it would have on its own, but not by much.
"Rrank 5," the technician a.s.serted. "Test your ownn biokinnetics, pllease."
Picking a fresh packet, Ia obediently cut her own hand. Compared to the headaches induced by the Salik machine, the pain was a minor annoyance at best. She had it sealed and headed toward pink in half the time of the other cut, giving her a rating of Rank 9.
The technician remained unaffected by the sight of her blood. Undoubtedly he was used to it. The technician was an honorary member of both the Seer"s Council of the Solarican Empire and a technician in the employment of the PsiLeague of the Terran United Planets. Mostly because both organizations" charter rules stated that a non-psi should be the one to operate the testing machinery, guaranteeing non-interference with the results.
Of the thirty-plus beings occupying the chamber, only Chaplain Benjamin and four of the Solaricans-the technician, the two guards at the door, and a male felinoid who had come in with a cart loaded with fresh cups and pitchers of water-were not there as gifted representatives of the various psychic organizations in the Alliance.
To test her telepathic abilities with the minds of her own species, another volunteer took the place of the Gatsugi, a Human clad in the dark red uniform of the V"Dan Empire. This was a gift she had exercised even less than her xenopathy, and it showed during the testing. With a touch, it was a 7; without, it was merely a 5.
"Annny otherr gifts?" the Solarican technician asked her.
Razor still in hand, Ia nodded. "Pyrokinesis, telekinesis, battlecognition, electrokinesis, postcognition, and precognition."
Scoffing noises erupted across the room. Even the chairwoman of the meeting, Meioa Nik"ikk, chittered skeptically. Her translator box obligingly emphasized her disbelief in modulated Terranglo. "That would be three more gifts than the greatest of us! No one has just one ability, yes, but no one has that many!"
Ia let go of the flat, rectangular blade in her hand. It floated upward. So did Meioa Nik"ikk, the Human volunteer still seated across from her, a dozen other startled aliens, several tables, a.s.sorted chairs, and all the unopened packets of razors. This was one she had definitely exercised over the years, pushing it as high and hard as she could make the gift grow. Sheer survival had demanded she develop it to its fullest.
"Rrrank 17," the technician stated phlegmatically, though the tip of his tail twitched. "Is that sheer strrength, or manipulationn as wellll?"
Not wanting to exhaust herself, Ia set everyone and everything back down gently, sending the used razor into the biohazard bin. "Sheer strength. Manipulation...I used fifty, sixty gla.s.s shards to slit the throats of various enemy combatants back on Sallha. I could even play a full symphony on a concert wall harp, if we had one available."
Craning his neck, the technician looked around the room. He pointed at the cart. "Lllevitate those cups, meioa. Individually."
Ia nodded. Three of the stacks of cups on the water-cart lifted up, separated, and whirled around the room over their heads. Four pitchers of water followed. Water sloshed and poured, angling in long arcs that made the sentient below them flinch, though every drop hit its target. Ia brought the display to a quick end, pouring the water back into the descending pitchers as the fifty or so cups came back to a rest on the cart. All save for one, which she topped up and floated her way.
"It is still Rrank 17," he confirmed while she caught the cup, sipping from it. "Next?"
She held up her left hand, and the air above it caught fire. That was gauged at Rank 8. She followed it, still drinking from her cup, by a crackle of miniature lightning that consumed her arm down to the elbow and glowed brightly enough to make everyone wince.
The technician, his fur fluffed by proximity to the static energy she was arcing, phlegmatically announced her electrokinesis as "Rrrrank 19."
The V"Dan male shook his head, staring at Ia. "That"s impossible. Even Mama Mishka is only a Rank 18 at the highest. Is that thing calibrated correctly?"
The technician didn"t even flick an ear at that. "We have alrrready ascertained that it is callibrated, meioa." He glanced at Ia. "Though I wonnder how her otherrr gifts rrrank, if these arre her weakest."
"The remainder are considerably stronger," Ia stated. She nodded at the Salik machine. "If you don"t want your KI machine short-circuited from an input overload, you"ll have to plug me into that thing first."
"Well, aren"t you just full of yourself?" the Human quipped. He started to say more, but subsided under the weight of Ia"s steady gaze.
"I think we"ll have to forgo testing my battlecognition for now," Ia said once she was sure he wouldn"t scoff any further. "I"m in no shape physically to get into a fight, just yet. Suffice to say, it"s stronger than my electrokinetic abilities. Which leaves us with postcognition and precognition. I"ll need a volunteer to help me test those abilities."
Meioa Nik"ikk addressed that. "Postcognition can be verified through object-reading, but precognition is...nebulous," she chittered. "Why would you need a volunteer?"
Ia looked at the arachnoid. "Come with me, and find out for yourself." She looked back at the technician and lifted her chin at the array of salvaged headgear sitting on the table behind him. "Hand me one of the Human-sized helmets, and plug me in. Set the machine to full strength. I"ll try to make it quick for the sake of the others, but you"ll definitely want it running before I begin."
He shrugged and twisted in his seat, selecting one of the wire-draped crowns. Taking the metallic, clunky circlet from the Solarican, Ia settled it on her head. She strapped it in place, then glanced at the K"katta heading the meeting.
"Well? Aren"t you going to come over here?"
"I should remain neutral in these proceedings," Nik"ikk demurred. "Do we have another volunteer?"
The Solarican by the now quiescent water cart sneeze-laughed. "I will volunnteerr."
"You will not interfere with these measurements," Ia countered sharply. She pointed at the Solarican server. "Guards, make sure that male does not leave this chamber. Keep your eyes on him at all times."
"You are rrrather presummptuous, Human," one of the higher-ranked Solarican psis countered, lacing her clawed fingers together as she stared at Ia. "What makes you thinnk you can give orrders, here?"
"Aside from the fact I am now a War Princess of Solarica, and we are technically in a war zone? You"re asking the wrong question, meioa. You should be asking how he got into a closed meeting," Ia retorted dryly. "But that can wait. Right now, I need volunteers. Preferably more than one, so you can countercheck with each other on what you"re about to see."
"Fine," the Human across from her offered, the one who had subjected himself to her attempts at same-species telepathy. "I"ll do it. Nothing quite like a skeptical witness, wouldn"t you agree? I"m certainly strong enough to think through the anti-machine, provided we don"t take too long. Anyone else?"
Two others volunteered, a Tla.s.sian and a K"kattan. They moved up close enough that the K"kattan could touch Ia"s blue-clad leg with a foreclaw and the Tla.s.sian could touch her shoulder with his callused, scaled fingers. The Human scooted close enough to grip Ia"s left hand. Nodding at the technician, Ia braced herself for the pain.
"Postcognition first," she stated, and winced as grey mist stabbed through her head the moment he turned it on. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the minds of the three touching her and dragged them onto the timeplains, aiming each one into a point in that particular person"s past. Specifically, a strong memory from each one"s childhood...and then she swapped them, dunking the Tla.s.sian into the Human"s stream, the Human into the K"kattan"s, and so forth...and followed them with a third swapping.
When they were reeling from that, she dragged them far, far into the past. Into the dawn of V"Dan civilization. Only for a few moments, though; mindful of her reserves, Ia didn"t join them herself. She also let them see only a few moments of the event she had targeted before she pulled them out of the river-scene. A lift of her hand and a slash of her finger instructed the technician to turn off the anti-psi machine.
Her gaze wasn"t on the volunteers, however. It was on the Solarican cart-pusher, who had slumped against the back wall, eyes wide and ears flat. If he had been Human, she knew he would have been pale and shaking. As it was, he did not look well.
Of the three volunteers surrounding her, the V"Dan was the most shaken. He gaped at her. "That...That was the Valley. That was the Exodus! I saw the Exodus...Everyone coming through the Gate of Heaven, animals, people...It was as clear as I see this room!" he exclaimed. "This wasn"t holokinesis, was it? Some sort of illusion? It had to have been..."
Ia shook her head, looking at her fellow Human. "No illusion, meioa. Just pure postcognition, projected directly into your brain. Or rather, with your brain pulled into Time itself. You were there, seeing it through the eyes of one of the overseers of the Exodus from Earth. His name was...?"
"Nahmed Ik Mann," the Tla.s.sian confirmed at her prompting. "He wa.s.ss counnting flockss of sssheep...but thinnking about the earthquakesss back home. The tectonnnic shifting mentioned in the Book of the Sssh"nai. But before that, we sssaw our hatchling yearsss. The day I broke my firssst tooth, the meioa-e"sss firsst hunnt..."
The V"Dan shook his head. "No...no. It"s a trick. It has to be a trick-holokinesis, telepathy, some sort of combination-well, not the first part, not my seventh birthing-day. I remember that day very clearly. But surely..."
Ia shook her head again, a slow back and forth that countered his denial.
The technician looked up from his portable workstation. "Based on the interferrrence from the Salik machinnne...my calculations place that gift, whateverrr it was, at approximately Rrrank 54."
"Confirrrmed," agreed another voice. It was the female Solarican a few tables away, the one who had double-checked his earlier calculations on the suppression rate of the anti-psi machine. "Her Postcognnnitive Rrrank is 54."
That caused an instant commotion. Ia endured it up to a point. When the noise threatened to give her a non-machine-induced headache, she grabbed for their attention with a short, sharp shout.
"Enough!...Calm yourselves, meioas. The KI machine is calibrated, the calculations are accurate, given the anti-psi machine"s fully demonstrated interference capabilities, and I am that slagging powerful. Now, if you don"t mind, my strongest gift has yet to be tested. So, if we could kindly have some peace and quiet?"
"The KI monitorr registerred her gift at 13.7," the technician stated in the silence that followed her words. "At the calculated suppression rate of approximately 3.9, the math places her Rrrrank at 54. These nnnumbers are slllightly approximate, meioas...but they do not llie."
"I saw the meter move that high myself, even with the anti-psi machine fully active," Nik"ikk agreed, shifting restlessly on the table serving as her podium, "but I do have difficulty believing it. Meioa Ia, you say this is not your strongest gift?"
"No, Meioa Nik"ikk. It is merely an offshoot of my strongest gift, like how xenopathy is often an offshoot of telepathy, or telepathy an offshoot of empathy," Ia confirmed.
"Demonstrate your strongest gift to us, then," the K"katta instructed her.
"Turn on the machine again," Ia instructed. The Tla.s.sian touched her shoulder and the other K"katta her leg, but the V"Dan hesitated when she held out her hand. Lifting one brow, she challenged him. "Or are you afraid of what else you might see?"
Tightening his mouth, he placed his fingers once more in hers. Waiting just long enough for the machine to spew its counteracting waves, Ia plunged them back into the timeplains. This time she brought them in carefully, yanking them out of their streams quickly and sending them racing high over the streams, like a quartet of birds flying over a swamp-soaked briar patch.
This time, she showed them everything, if from a distance. Starting with their own mist-shrouded streams, she pulled back, and back, and back, revealing the near-infinite tangle of intertwining lives, and all their side-possibilities, in near-endless configurations.
Something banged at the farthest edges of her awareness. The mist vanished, giving them an even clearer view of all the interwoven pathways. Diving back down, Ia dropped each of them into their immediate future, giving them a glimpse of three memorable moments, of conversations later on that day, moments that would convince them beyond a doubt that she was indeed able to foresee what would and could happen.
Pulling back from those intimate views, she released each mind in turn. In turn, they each drew in a shaken breath, releasing her from their grasp. They also coughed. The circuits of the KI machine had exploded, overloaded when the buffering of the anti-psi machine had been switched off. A smoky haze now permeated the room. Ia looked at the technician, who was calmly rechecking his calculations on his workpad.
"Well?" she asked him, trying not to breathe too deeply. They were lucky the fire suppression system hadn"t activated, but the smoke was dissipating. "What"s my ranking?"
"I am...not completely surrre. The meter onnly goes up to 20," he informed her. "The needle smacked the farr side of the window. A baseline guess would be...84? Prrrrobably higher, though. You, Meioa," he added, directing his next comment at the K"katta overseeing the meeting, "owe me a nnew KI monitorrr."
Meioa Nik"ikk dipped her body in the best approximation her species had for an acknowledging nod. "I will pay for it personally," she chittered, her translator box flavoring her words with the nuances of her meaning. "The experiment was worth the expense, in my thoughts. Shutting off the nullifying machine proved the excessive levels of KI emitted by this meioa-e exceed all prior experience. Whatever that gift is, pathic or clairant, it is..." She paused, then stated carefully, "It is not Human. Which begs the question of what you are, meioa-e."
It wasn"t widely known in the Alliance where most psychic abilities came from, but these weren"t the average ma.s.ses. The meioas around her were the psychic movers and shakers in their respective militaries, and there was one blatant conclusion which would leap immediately into their minds.
"You"re only half right, meioa," Ia confessed in the wary quiet following that statement. "My mother was and is fully Human." Lifting her hand, she pointed at the Solarican still leaning against the wall, looking ill. "But since I have no choice, I"ll admit my father-progenitor was one of them."
The male felinoid leaning against the wall started and straightened upright. He looked around the room, eyes wide, ears back. "Me? How could I be rrrelated to him? I am not evenn the same species!"