Protector (The Vigilante Chronicles Book 7) Read online

  Chapter Five

  In a little conference room on the other side of the complex from the main hub, Jeltor was pacing as he stared at the information on the screen.

  “What do you think?” Grisor asked finally.

  Jeltor said nothing for a long moment. This was a risky plan. The Committee was planning to lure Admiral Jeqwar in by having Jeltor offer to speak to one of her aides to prove his loyalty. When she got there, they would kidnap her and bring her here to be converted.

  Every instinct told him that Admiral Jeqwar would be difficult to abduct and convert. She was famously strong-willed, and he had learned that the original scientists who’d developed the program were dead, with only partial notes left behind. This certainly wasn’t an ideal setup for a quick turnaround.

  On the other hand, she was dangerous, since she knew what the Committee was up to and she had the support of her generals. Even if they did not convert her, they would rob the Navy of one of its greatest assets.

  “She will know it’s a trap,” Jeltor mused slowly. “She’s not stupid. She’ll know that we’re trying to—”

  “Help her,” Senator Qarwit emphasized. His voice was gentle, but there was an edge to it.

  He was the one, Jeltor knew, who was doubting the conversion.

  And he wasn’t wrong to do so. Barnabas’ words had haunted Jeltor. He had put himself in danger specifically for Jeltor. He had known where the laboratory was, and he had not just destroyed it but had gone inside to try to keep Jeltor safe.

  It wasn’t that Jeltor felt any loyalty to Barnabas. No, that was gone—wasn’t it?—and in its place was the overwhelming rush of devotion that came over him when he thought of Grisor. It was the sweetest thing Jeltor had ever felt. It was intoxicating; he could not get enough of it.

  But why would someone come to save him when he did not want to be saved? None of Barnabas’ actions suggested that he’d meant Jeltor harm. In fact, they suggested that Barnabas was risking significant harm to himself in order to…

  Well, Jeltor didn’t know, that was the thing. He didn’t understand.

  When he’d spat those words about Barnabas caring for petty freedoms over his own species, when he’d said that Barnabas wanted to be a hero, it had all been true—in a sense. But what did it mean to believe so much in little freedoms that he would come to “save” Jeltor at great cost to himself? What did it mean that he wanted to save aliens as well as his own kind?

  Jeltor had seen heroism in many wars. Usually, those who wanted to be heroes turned and ran when they got their first taste of real battle. The fact that Barnabas hadn’t, that he had been willing to pick up a torch and walk into the darkness, said something about him that wasn’t all bad.

  He didn’t want to be called a hero. He wanted to be a hero.

  “Jeltor?” Grisor’s voice broke into his reverie. “Did you hear the senator?”

  Jeltor was annoyed but struggled not to show it. “Yes, Excellency.” It was easy to be polite to Grisor. He felt a rush of happiness when he did so. And so, because Grisor would want him to, he gave a respectful nod to Senator Qarwit. “My apologies, senator. It is not that I doubt what we do for Admiral Jeqwar, simply that I think we can all agree she will fight us. If she would simply come here of her own accord for conversion, you would not have made this plan.”

  Qarwit relaxed slightly. “That is true.”

  “What we need to do,” Jeltor continued, “is make her think she can win me back to her side.”

  He felt a strange thrill at that idea. Was such a thing even possible? Since his conversion, he was not upset by what had happened. He understood that not long ago he had believed one thing, and now he believed another. They had needed to put him in a tank to make him understand the right way to think, because he had not understood on his own. He was ashamed of that.

  He liked the way things were now. He felt happy whenever he thought of Senator Grisor. He felt happy when he did things that would please the senator. He remembered the time before as one of confusion and worry. He had worked willingly with aliens, which was clearly something that should not have happened.

  Other species were not as good as the Jotuns. This was simply a fact.

  Or was it? He was confused. He didn’t like being confused. He thought about Grisor and felt calmer at once.

  “Are you all right, Jeltor?” Grisor asked quietly.

  Grisor was paying attention to him. Jeltor felt a rush of giddiness.

  “I don’t want to speak to her,” he replied. It seemed very true when he said it, but it was also a lie. For some reason, he did want to speak to her, even though he was afraid she might bring him back to the way things had been.

  Even though he wasn’t sure “afraid” was the right word for how he was feeling.

  Grisor and Qarwit exchanged looks.

  “I will speak to her,” Jeltor confirmed. “I just don’t want to. I don’t like sneaking around.”

  Grisor relaxed. “None of us do,” he assured Jeltor. “And when we have done our work and we rule the Jotun and the sector, we will not need to sneak around anymore, Jeltor. Remember, we are sneaking around because of others—because they do not see the truth.”

  “As I did not.” Jeltor was ashamed.

  “Like so many do not,” Grisor said. “We do not hate them. We convert them, Jeltor. Look at you. Once, you fought against us, and now you are one of the most honored members of the Committee. You saved my life. Why dwell on how things were before?”

  Jeltor nodded. He still did not want to speak to Admiral Jeqwar, but he knew it would make Grisor happy.

  “I’ll do it. Open the channel.”

  The two senators exchanged looks, then Grisor used his personal comm device to murmur a command. In a small alcove of the room, a screen came to life. Jeltor went to sit in front of it so he would appear to be alone in a small, deserted room.

  The Jotun who appeared was one of Admiral Jeqwar’s senior aides. He was a deep blue Jotun named Gorsik, and he fluttered back against the wall of his tank in alarm when he saw who it was.

  “Yes,” Jeltor assured him, “it’s me. I’m close.”

  “I cannot speak to you,” Gorsik replied at once.

  “Wait—please!” Jeltor filled his voice with pleading. “I need your help. I need you to come get me and bring me back somewhere you can lock me away. No, that’s not right. I…I need you to kill me.”

  Across the room, Qarwit started, and Grisor gestured sharply for him to stay silent.

  Gorsik was also shocked. “What?”

  “I need you to kill me,” Jeltor repeated. “They’ve done things to my mind, Gorsik. I recognize you, but things are different. There are…orders. That’s not right. There aren’t any specific things to do, I don’t think, but they made me loyal to them. I can only break out of it for a few moments at a time, you see?”

  “Jeltor—”

  “You need to come get me!” Jeltor insisted, his voice rising. “You need to send someone to kill me. I’m afraid I won’t ever get better. And what if I hurt you if you try to make me loyal again? You have to tell them not to get close. You have to tell them not to trust me. No matter what they do—” He broke off and stared at the screen, pretending to be angry. “Disloyal,” he spat at Gorsik. “Alien-lover. You would see us ground into dust for the rest of them. You and her! She’s a traitor to the Jotuns!”

  He ended the call and turned to look at Grisor.

  “It’s done,” he stated when Grisor and Qarwit said nothing. “I asked them to do the ‘honorable’ thing, which will make her want to save me. But she’s too honorable to send anyone else when I might be dangerous, so she’ll come herself, you see? And when she does…”

  “Clever,” Grisor admitted. “But what if—” He broke off and shook his head. “Nothing. Not important. We will wait. You have done very well, Jeltor. You know the admiral well. And do not worry, you will not have to speak to her when we retrieve her.”

  Jeltor nodd
ed and wondered why he felt so disappointed by that. He almost wondered if he could sneak in to speak to her while they were converting her.

  He wouldn’t, of course.

  But he could.

  * * *

  “Barnabas.” Shinigami flickered into being as a holographic representation. “Admiral Jeqwar is on the line, and she says it’s urgent.”

  Barnabas sighed and turned away from the window. He should have felt a jump of adrenaline when he heard those words, but he felt nothing. He nodded for Shinigami to open the holo channel.

  “Admiral Jeqwar,” he began. “It’s good to—”

  “I’ve had word from Jeltor,” the admiral interrupted him.

  Barnabas tried to keep his face flat. “Oh?”

  “Yes. He wants…” She considered her words. “He asked us to kill him. I thought you should know, as a courtesy.”

  “As a—” Barnabas realized what she meant a second later. “You’re going to do it?”

  “Of course I’m going to do it,” she snapped. “He’s been converted. He isn’t trustworthy. As far as we know, it can’t be undone. Meanwhile, he knows classified information, and far too much about how the Navy operates. Not only that, he’s beginning to contact people. We need him out of the way.”

  “It might be genuine,” Barnabas snarled at her. “Did you ever think of that?”

  “Yes.” From the grief in her voice, she was telling the truth. “I have. And it is too big a risk. If this is a trap, which it almost certainly is—”

  “If it’s a trap, then he’s working with them, and he can give us information!” Barnabas would have pounded his fist on a desk if there had been one. As it was, he clenched his hand and then flexed it, forcing himself to stop making a fist. “Let us go retrieve him. We aren’t a Jotun ship, so he doesn’t know our internal workings—and couldn’t get into your ships via ours, even if he did. We have a brig we can put him in, and we know enough about him to ascertain whether he’s being truthful.”

  “No.” Admiral Jeqwar shook her head. “I’ve seen what your ship can do. I’m not giving him the chance to command it.”

  “He won’t command it.”

  “You’re not thinking logically,” she told him. “He’s your friend—or he was. That Jeltor is gone, human. The truth is that we have plans to execute, plans that involve getting our forces into position to head off the Committee—and we cannot risk a traitor in our midst. I should not even have told you about this.”

  Barnabas closed his eyes for a moment. “No. It was a kindness. I…thank you. Let me tell his wife. I will say it was an accident.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. The call ended.

  Barnabas turned to Shinigami’s projection. “We need to get there as fast as we can.”

  She looked relieved. “I’m glad you agree. I’ve put us up to…well, faster than we should be going. And if we skip the early checks against the satellites—”

  “Skip them,” Barnabas stated flatly. “We don’t have time for any of that. We have to get to him before Jeqwar does.”

  Chapter Six

  The rest of the crew—including Gilwar, now housed in one of the Shinigami’s many extra cabins—had withdrawn after Barnabas left the conference room. Now, however, summoned by Shinigami’s alert, all of them arrived on the bridge at a run.

  Barnabas nodded to each of them as they arrived, pleased by their obvious engagement. Even Gilwar, still grieving for his partner in Intelligence, seemed determined.

  Then again, it was hard to tell with Jotuns. Barnabas had no idea if he was interpreting the jellyfish flutters correctly. He simply knew that Gilwar had once been leery of allowing Barnabas to know about the Committee, even going so far as to tell an assassin to take a shot at him if she got the chance.

  He now seemed to believe that Barnabas would not hurt the Jotun species as he destroyed the Committee.

  “He cannot understand fighting for one’s species.” Jeltor’s words rang in his head, and he closed his eyes briefly. It was not genuine, he reminded himself.

  He had spent too long as a monk not to be aware of himself, and he knew exactly why Jeltor’s dismissive words cut him to the bone. Once he had become one of the Nacht, Barnabas had no longer felt much allegiance to humanity as a species. The things he had done…

  They still made him shudder.

  It was Catherine—and the experience of loving someone—that had set him back on the path, and that had been snatched away. Since then, over his many very different lives, he had seen too much of the myriad foibles of humanity to have any particular allegiance to his species.

  Humanity, like every alien race he had ever encountered, had the capacity for great feats of goodness, and great depths of cruelty and apathy. What Barnabas had loved about Bethany Anne, in part, was that she sought what was best for the universe as a whole.

  Was it so wrong that he did not revere humanity the way Grisor revered the Jotuns?

  Logically, he did not think so, yet being called disloyal was something he could not simply shake off. Being accused of hunting fame and hero status shamed him deeply. Surely he was more than that.

  Oddly, it was Tabitha’s voice that appeared in his head. How fucking stupid do you have to be to think that?

  Barnabas gave a bemused smile. Tabitha was not here to know about any of this, but he was quite sure that she’d have said almost exactly that—only, perhaps, in more colorful language. The last time he’d seen her, she’d described a series of increasingly improbable acts with a variety of species in increasing detail.

  And she’d only been discussing a sandwich at the time.

  He collected himself and gave a little shake of his head. “Thank you all for coming so quickly. As you may have divined, we are heading back to Jotuna D with all speed. The reason is that Jeltor has contacted Admiral Jeqwar and asked that she send someone to kill him. She has apparently decided to accept his offer.”

  He had meant only to speak logically and get them to the planning phase, but Tafa gave a little cry and put her hand over her mouth. Her eyes were shiny with tears and Gar put an arm around her shoulders, glaring meaningfully at Barnabas.

  Why did you have to say that?

  I’m going to agree with Gar here, Shinigami chimed in. Dick move, man.

  It’s true! Barnabas repressed a sigh. “I don’t think she’s eager to do it,” he said to Tafa. “Also, she doesn’t know we’re going in to disrupt her plans, so we have a window. We will get him to safety.” He stopped short of promising it. He could not do so in good conscience, and he hoped she didn’t notice the omission. “I called us here to discuss how we will get him out. And rest assured, I would not risk any of you if I thought this was a lost cause.”

  Tafa took a deep breath and nodded.

  Barnabas decided to segue into facts before he could screw up on the emotional part again. “We will be going to Grisor’s private estate, which I think we can assume will be very well fortified.”

  “We’re going to kill Grisor while we’re there, right?” Shinigami asked.

  Gilwar nodded to show his agreement with the sentiment. “We should take our chance.”

  “I don’t think so,” Barnabas replied.

  There was an incredulous silence.

  “What?” Shinigami asked finally. “If we’re there—”

  Barnabas held up a hand to stop her, but it was another moment before he spoke. These thoughts were only just becoming conscious, but he had been fighting the sense in recent days that they were going about this all wrong somehow.

  Now he knew why.

  “In every society, those like Grisor rise in secrecy and silence.” He looked at the vast expanse of space showing on the ship’s viewscreens. “The fact that there is a Committee, and that they’ve risen so high, shows that there is something in Jotun society enabling this.”

  “No,” Gilwar exclaimed furiously. “They would brainwash the rest of us. They know we would not accept their ideas any other
way. They are not an expression of who we are.”

  “No?” Barnabas looked at him calmly. “We had a man on Earth who was the embodiment of forgiveness and kindness, who died gladly as an act of redemption for the very ones who killed him. Centuries later, his followers were killing one another brutally for speaking slightly different words of remembrance about him. Some of those followers believed that the exact words were so critical that forcing people to say them out of terror rather than genuine belief was more important than letting them speak whichever words they chose.”

  Gilwar stared at him silently.

  “I do not know a single culture or species that has not grappled with this,” Barnabas continued. “And by this, I mean the belief that they are superior to all others. And they are always wrong, but they go through cycles of believing it anyway. When they do, people like Grisor rise. Grisor and the other members of the Committee are not alone in their beliefs. They are a symptom.”

  Gilwar turned away, his frustration clear.

  “And because of that,” Barnabas said, “killing him will do no good. If he attacks us and there is no other way to save ourselves, of course, we will defend ourselves. But the Jotuns must put him on trial for what he has done. They must deal with this, and do so publicly. Secrecy and vigilantism on my part will do nothing to help them.”

  There was a silence.

  “But you are a vigilante.” Shinigami sounded confused and frustrated. He could hear the question under her words: “If vigilantism won’t help, why are we even here?”

  “There are limits to what I do,” Barnabas replied. “To what we do, Shinigami. We are here to help those who have no other recourse, but right now, there is other recourse. We will help as we can, but the Jotuns must do this for themselves.”

  “He’s right.” Gilwar gave an unwilling chuckle. He clearly did not want to admit that he agreed. “It was what we said, Wev and I, when Kantar wanted to involve all of you. We said this was a matter for the Jotuns. Of course, we wanted to deal with it without anyone else knowing.”