Star Force: Cascade (SF73) Read online

  “Good point,” Paul admitted.

  “And since we don’t usually get laid, you should be really ticklish right now,” she said, running her finger across the left side of his waist and seeing/feeling another distortion manifest from his skin.

  “Am I to take this to mean you’re wanting to help with my training?”

  “Whatever keeps me here and you naked.”

  Paul reached out telekinetically and hit the door controls, lowering a very wide door down and closing off the hallway from view.

  “Alright then, I’ll indulge you in the name of more goosebumps. I figure I’ll numb up to your touch eventually, but do what you can now and hopefully I’ll hop the learning curve before that happens.”

  “Why’d you shut the door?”

  “Just in case someone else walks by.”

  “Think they’d get the wrong idea?”

  “No, but your touch is having a secondary effect and I’m a little bit shy regarding volume increases in public.”

  Synthia couldn’t help but laugh, not at him but the idea that she could do that to him with just a finger brush on his back. “But you’re ok with me seeing it?”

  “You’re standing behind me.”

  “I have Pefbar,” she reminded him.

  “Just shut up and poke,” he said, trying to keep from peeking himself to know when and where she was going to tickle him, for that would definitely lessen the effect. “But don’t mention this to your master.”

  “Embarrassed?”

  “Just don’t want to make him jealous.”

  “I will admit…he’s not as hot as you,” she said, stroking his neck with two fingertips this time and giving Paul easy access to another wave of goosebumps.

  “That’s working fine,” he said, trying to focus the slippery energy inside his body and redirect it even a nudge before it automatically released. “You don’t have to add innuendo.”

  “Waste not, want not,” she said, touching his waist and running her finger laterally across the small of his back.

  3

  Paul was waiting outside the training chamber in the sanctum when Rio walked out, drenched in sweat but not looking overly fatigued. The trailblazer pointed in the direction of the equipment room and Paul walked with him, getting the feeling that there was something he wanted to discuss in private. There weren’t many other Archons in the sanctum, but he sensed something was up so he went along quietly until they got into the equipment room and Rio still wouldn’t say anything.

  What? he asked telepathically, almost shouting it as the other titan began to pull a set of fresh clothes from a rack on the wall.

  Rio didn’t say anything, but he did stop picking out clothes and turned around to look at him.

  Paul crossed his arms over his chest and stared back, wondering what the hell he was up to and deciding to wait him out. After a few minutes he got a battlemeld prompt from Rio and accepted it, then a series of images/thoughts flashed into his mind.

  Rio immediately pointed a finger at him when he felt a twitch in his fellow Archon. “So you do recognize them?”

  “I don’t know…what are you showing me?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I just said I…”

  Rio raised his eyebrows, waiting for a response.

  “Those aren’t sensory. Where did you get them?”

  “A dream. A repetitive dream that is very illusive. You’ve had it too, otherwise you wouldn’t have reacted that way.”

  “What way?”

  “That flinch of recognition.”

  “Dude, I really don’t know what this stuff is. I can’t remember ever seeing it before, and I don’t typically recall dreams so…”

  “Well I do,” Rio said, dropping the battlemeld link. “I always have. Maybe not for long, but a few minutes after waking up they stick around…this one, however, is very elusive. What I just shared with you is fragments I’ve pieced together, and is probably half crap. It’s familiar to your subconscious mind, I sensed it in you, even if you can’t remember. That’s why I didn’t say anything coming over here. I wanted a raw response.”

  “What is it you just showed me? For some reason I can’t picture it again.”

  Rio shook his head in dismay. “Son of a bitch, they’re at it again.”

  “They?”

  “V’kit’no’sat, dragons…whoever wrote this part of the psionics. I’ve been having these dreams ever since Ubven, and I think I might have been having them even before that and the ascension just kicked them up a little higher into my consciousness. I’m wildly guessing here, Paul, but I think they might have started with Sav.”

  Paul raised an eyebrow. “Show me again.”

  “This is pretty much fiction I’ve compiled, like notes, because I can’t pull up the actual images when I’m awake,” he said, reestablishing the battlemeld and sending Paul a series of flashes of…

  “The architecture looks V’kit’no’sat.”

  “Yeah it does. I don’t know if that’s legit or my mind is just filling in the blanks with what I know, but that’s not the point. The glowy thing is.”

  “Why do I see a whip and hat?”

  “Again, filler from my memories. Focus on the context.”

  “This is so muddled that…”

  “You reacted to something in there. Try to find it,” Rio insisted.

  Paul sighed and tried to go passive, feeling what he was ‘seeing’ and trying to get a sense of it. “Run it through a few times more quickly.”

  Rio did as asked, but Paul couldn’t come up with anything definitive.

  “I got nothing.”

  “Focus on what’s missing.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Compare a moment ago when you didn’t know it was coming. Like a scary movie that you jump out of your seat at.”

  “For the record, I’ve never done that.”

  “Quit fighting me on this, it’s important,” Rio underscored. “Before your memory fades, compare the now to the then and see if anything is missing. A scary movie you don’t react to still has the memory of when you should be jumpy and don’t until you’ve seen it a lot of times.”

  “Run it again,” Paul said, taking Rio at his word and trying to focus. It took seven more play-throughs of the collage of images and flashes of emotion before he finally spotted a tiny discrepancy.

  “I don’t know if this is my imagination or not, but there feels like a dead spot.”

  “Where?”

  “Run it through slowly and I’ll stop you.”

  Rio did as asked then Paul mentally pinged him when he hit the spot. It was an image of a forest landscape viewed from just above the treetops.

  “This it?” Rio said, focusing and pausing that bit of the sequence.

  “Yes, but I don’t know why.”

  “Every time I run this through my head I think it degrades even more,” Rio admitted. “I get the dream again and if I can hang onto a piece of it, it realigns. Sharing it with you might be causing the degradation to snowball.”

  “So what now?”

  “Now I try and focus on that bit the next time I have the dream.”

  “You mean when you wake up for those first few minutes?”

  “That’s my note taking time, but I think I’m still active in the dream. Just a hunch, because I’ve got nothing to back it up with.”

  “So you think this is psionic related?”

  “I thought I was being stupid earlier but couldn’t let it go. Now I know I’m not because you’ve seen the same thing whether you remember it now or not.”

  “Why did you say Sav?”

  Rio cringed.

  “Just spit it out already.”

  “This is so without merit that I’m afraid I’m going to bias you going forward.”

  “Bias me then. I want to know what you’re thinking.”

  Rio held up his left hand and extended two fingers out in a ‘V’ then pointed them up to his eyes in the old scho
ol hand signal for ‘keep your eyes open.’ It took a moment for Paul to realize that wasn’t what he was doing. Rather, he was just pointing at his eyes…

  His twinkling grey eyes.

  “There’s no mention in the database for the color change,” Rio reminded him. “And if I’m guessing right, the dream started when I got them.”

  “Tier 3,” Paul echoed, his mind racing with the possible implications…which were numerous considering they had so little data to rule anything out with. “To what end?”

  “I don’t know, but I doubt it’s there without a reason.”

  Paul glared at him. “And this was the first you thought about mentioning it to us?”

  “Do you mention every whiff of thought that passes through your head? The only thing I have to go on is corroboration from you. Beyond that it’s just a daydream.”

  “Oh no, you’re not getting away with that, buddy. You’ve been suspecting this a while, confirmation or no. You should have said something.”

  “There are only four of us that have a pair of Tier 3s, and you’re the only addition since me. Your ascension is fresh, so I thought I’d try out this stupid theory and probably get made fun of for it…which is also why I wasn’t going to tell you if you didn’t respond to the images I sent you.”

  Paul rolled his eyes. “Just because we make fun of you doesn’t mean we don’t care,” he said with a touch of sarcasm.

  “Have you ever tried to put meaning to your dreams?”

  “Not when I’m awake, no. I figure they’re just incoherent nonsense that’s the result of thinking with only a piece of your brain active.”

  “Well, I’ve always thought there was a little bit more to that and I wanted to explore those stupid notions in private.”

  Paul held up a hand. “Alright, alright. You win. I have side projects that I’m working on and haven’t told you guys about, and won’t, unless they pan out, so I can see what you mean.”

  Rio frowned. “What kind of side projects?”

  “The kind that keep Clan Saber ahead of you morons. Don’t change the subject.”

  The titan pointed an accusing finger at him. “Sharing is caring…especially when it involves new toys.”

  “Like I said, I don’t share until I have something worth sharing…which basically means I’m arguing against myself as of two minutes ago. Fine, you kept these dreams to yourself but now we know a bit more. Where do you want to go from here?”

  “I got more conscious access to the dreams after my second Tier 3. We need to confer with Jason and Morgan.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “I sense another stupid idea you’re holding back.”

  Rio frowned. “The dreams are random. I can’t predict when they will happen, but it seems to be, on average, every two weeks or so, but with wide fluctuations. The stupid idea would be you trying to peek on my dreams and consciously see what I can’t.”

  Paul sighed. “Yeah that is stupid…but it makes sense.”

  “Except that we can’t realistically do that.”

  “Oh can’t we?”

  “You can’t lose hours staying awake watching me in the hopes of catching something.”

  “Me, no. I’m in too heavy of training and I’ve got this brand new psionic to work out…but we can always recruit a few dozen other Archons to take shifts with you at night holding your hand.”

  Rio cringed at the thought of having someone in his room and head while he tried to relax and rest. He wondered why that was, because he could sleep in the middle of a crowded, noisy room if he wanted to. His quarters, however, had become something of a sanctuary. A place he’d trained himself to let his guard down so he could more fully heal. If he was going to be watched he’d need to do it elsewhere so he didn’t break the habit.

  “They can be hot chicks, right?”

  “Is there an Archon girl that’s not hot?”

  Rio considered that, rifling through his memories. “You’ve got a point there.”

  “I’m sure you’ll get a fair amount of volunteers. Have each take a 1 or 2-hour shift and see if they come up with anything.”

  “Why didn’t I think of doing that before?”

  “Because it’s stupid,” Paul explained pithily. “But sometimes stupid works.”

  “Do your conversations with Jason go like this?”

  “No, ours are more intelligent. I only pick up the stupid vibe around you and a few others.”

  Rio nodded. “Thought so. Thanks for the suggestion,” he said, brushing past Paul and heading for one of the shower booths. “I’ll comm you the results.”

  “No problem,” Paul said, heading for the door and back to his quarters to do a little database digging before he dove back into his training regimen that had already been disrupted by the past day’s events. Something about what Rio told him felt…significant, and he really wished he’d mentioned it sooner so Paul and the others could have been on the look for it in their own sleep sessions.

  Ielia-521993 pulled up a chair next to Rio’s bed in an empty set of generic quarters as he layed down, head hitting the pillow and wondering which posture he should choose, which she could guess by his awkwardness.

  “Toss and turn all you want,” the striker said agreeably, “I’ll adjust to you. If you’re stiff, odds are you won’t enter dream state, so try and relax.”

  “Thank you,” Rio said, rolling over on his right side as she slid her chair closer and put a hand gently on his neck. “If you see anything weird bouncing around my head I’m pleading ignorant.”

  “I’m just a passive observer unless we hit pay dirt. Don’t want you kicking me out of the Clan for snooping around inside your head, now do I?”

  “Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about that.”

  “I’m here for the mission,” she said quickly. “I’ll stick to it, curiosity or not. Trust me or you’ll never get to sleep.”

  “I can trust once…but not twice.”

  “You won’t need twice. Me and the others have already discussed this. No prying, pranks, or anything other than business. If there’s a V’kit’no’sat secret buried in your dreams we want you to find it so you can pass it on to us down the road.”

  “Kiss goodnight?”

  Ielia leaned forward and gave him a peck on the side of his head. “Goodnight. Dream of superpowers.”

  “Would if I could,” Rio said, closing his eyes. “But I’m afraid this is going to be totally random. Go ahead and knock me out, then let me surf on my own.”

  “Alright,” Ielia said, using her touch to bypass the Ikrid blocks and Rio’s own defenses, which he had lowered, and force him into unconsciousness. He went down into a sleep state without a fight, then she released her influence and just became the passive observer. When she let go he didn’t push his way back to consciousness, meaning that he really had trusted her and was now in a fairly deep sleep that was sliding even further. She didn’t know when the dreams would start, so she kept a link to the tiny piece of his conscious mind that was functioning, watching the blank ‘movie screen’ for about 20 minutes until bits and pieces of random stuff started popping up…all of which was skewed due to the lack of full brain power being applied.

  Ielia had never looked at someone’s dreams before, and these looked like an artistic attempt at a stylistic cartoon that didn’t care for physics. Rio’s dreams held that semblance for a while until they crystalized a bit when Mario and Luigi got into a pie flinging fight with the Three Stooges…who had telekinesis and bioshields.

  Halfway during that fight, which was in far more detail than the rest of his dreams, Ielia’s relief quietly snuck into the quarters through the unlocked door. The mage had a brief telepathic conversation with her so as not to wake Rio, then she lightly grabbed his wrist and they both watched another minute of the odd fight before Ielia let go of his neck and the mental feed shut off. She snuck out of the room ninja quiet and got halfway down the hallway before she busted ou
t laughing, no longer needing to hold it in.

  She’d always wondered what went through a trailblazer’s mind, and had suspected there might be all kinds of high end intellectual thought all the way down to primal, lustful fantasies…but honestly that pie fight was way better and fit their reputation to a ‘T.’ The image of Luigi slinging a trio of pies at Curly and the bald guy blocking them all with a raised hand and a bioshield before uttering a ‘whoop, whoop, whoop’ taunt was too much for her to handle and had Ielia giggling for the next ten minutes.

  She’d be back two days later to take another shift, one that had her coming in when Rio was already asleep. After that she’d drop in for one or two a week for the next two months before one of the ‘watchers’ hit what they thought was pay dirt.

  4

  January 30, 2889

  Solar System

  Earth

  “Define block?” Paul said, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against a wall in the hallway as one of the watchers explained to him and Rio about the anomaly.

  “It’s pretty self-explanatory,” Paula-610445 said, a bit miffed. “I was monitoring his dreams just like I have every other night I’ve pulled a shift, then a piece of his mind disconnected from my vision. I didn’t lose my connection. I was still in his head and could monitor his body and most aspects of his mind, but wherever his bit of consciousness transitioned I was not allowed. It lasted through to the next shift for about five minutes then he came out of it and into a dreamless state. I stayed the entire time until he reverted back to normal. There was nothing external triggering it, or releasing him from it. I was simply blocked from seeing whatever he was thinking or dreaming at the time.”

  “Well that was a gigantic waste of time,” Rio said, blowing out a frustrated breath.

  “Yes and no,” Paul differed. “We’ve found a camouflage tarp. That means there’s something underneath meant to be hidden. Something important.”

  “Well I can’t get at it,” Paula said apologetically. “Maybe someone stronger would have better luck.”