All-Patron Reward: Demons of the Past, Old Draft: Baptism of Fire, Chapters 9 and 10

With these two short chapters, we finish the piece of this old draft that I had to post.  There were older drafts, but they were either lost in computer transfer (written on an ATARI ST or even an ATARI 800) or destroyed in one of my two basement floods. 

I think this series of posts has shown how I both had much of the overall concepts for Demons in place many years ago, and yet how I had yet to know how to properly WRITE the story. 

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ix.

All my little plan crumbled to nothing in an instant. I knew with absolute certainty that I had no hope of hiding my mental aura from Shagrath, who undoubtedly had spent years honing his abilities.

But maybe I could still survive this. I had PSI talents now, but there was no way he could tell which ones I had or how much I knew about them... I hoped. And he sure as hell didn't know that I'd seen into his mind already, or he'd have dumped me out an airlock.

I pulled the Tor discipline around me again, this time trying to create a deliberate mental surface that reflected the me before I saw into the Prime Monitor's mind. That, at least, I thought I could do; and I didn't have much choice, because just as sure as Atlantis sank, he was going to try reading my mind sometime soon. For all I knew, he already was; what did it feel like to have someone in your mind if you were a PSI? 

"The nurse mentioned you had a headache." Shagrath said. "You seem recovered now."

I was about to answer that the inhibitor had worked, stopped immediately; the Monitor had to know about the effect of a neural inhibitor on an active PSI. "I used some meditation to make it go away. A Tor technique."

Interesting! His aura rippled at the word Tor... and I got the feeling it was not a pleasant ripple.

His face and voice didn't show any sign of that, however, so I had to wonder if I was wrong; I was more than a little new at this, after all. "Excellent! Did you have any idea of the cause?"

How stupid should I play? I wondered. Not very, I decided. My file was pretty explicit on my talents, and the Prime Monitor was an expert in ferreting out liars. "I think... I think I was hearing the thoughts of everyone in the ship." I let my voice tremble a little with the nervousness I had felt on that first realization.

Shagrath smiled cheerfully. "Exactly! You're doing very well, commander. Anything else?"

I shook my head, keeping the Tor control rigid. "No, sir. To be honest, I haven't the faintest idea of how to go about things.. and it scares me, anyway." Not too much untruth, but enough, I hoped. Every advantage helps.

He seemed to accept it. "Don't worry about it, Captain. Most PSI's take years to learn their talents; Sssooovickalassa thinks we can cut that time to weeks or perhaps a few months. I hardly expect you to have complete control before you're steady on your feet again!" He laughed, a sound that somehow seemed inhuman, like a machine imitating a cheerful sound. He slapped me gently on the shoulder. "You'll be up and around in no time, Captain; then we'll start the training." He smiled and walked out.

I waited until I could no longer hear his footsteps, then counted to one thousand. I wondered if I should wait longer. Who knew how long a range he had, or how close attention he was paying to me? 

"Sink it!" I said, and dropped the false front. I couldn't maintain control forever. Might as well find out now if I could afford to drop it at all.

Five minutes oozed by with glacier-slowness. Finally, I decided that Shagrath either couldn't sense at that distance, or, more likely, that he felt that he had more important things to do than keep tabs on me personally. Or else he knew exactly what I was up to and was playing with me. But that last option made the whole thing futile, so I had to assume that my secret was safe for now. I turned to the platters and finished my dinner.

x.

I knew that I had to get out of here quickly. Shagrath was a Monitor and a PSI. A deadlier - or more contradictory - combination I couldn't imagine. All it would take would be just one single uncontrolled thought, a wrong word - Torline, it'd just take one wrong muscle twitch, and I'd be a dead man. I couldn't maintain perfect control forever. If it weren't for the discipline of Tor I'd have been dead twice over already. I swore that if I got out of this that I'd go back to a Tor Master and continue, I'd been slacking off.

I hadn't gotten much new out of that interview,either, except that I had a gnawing certainty that Shagrath wasn't just more experienced than I was; my baby-new senses tingled with a conviction that he was also incredibly powerful.

It also made me wonder about something even more unsettling. Shagrath was a PSI... but he ran the part of the Empire devoted to killing PSI's, and he was the right-hand man of the Emperor. I remembered Emperor Graemil, he had given me the Order Of Empire after the Emissary episode. He was a kindly sort of guy, but if you looked at him as a man instead of as The Emperor... he seemed more like just someone's grandfather. I remembered what Jearsen had said about Helkoth's death... and the Starhawk's utter disdain for the Empire. 

Could Shagrath be the real ruler of the Empire? Because if he was... what kind of Empire could something like that want? I was more sure than ever that Shagrath was a something, not a someone. But a something that was so human physically that no one had ever caught him out, even in the beginning of his career? I shook my head. Either I was hopelessly paranoid, or I was missing a big piece of the puzzle. Entrance physicals were so exhaustive that they could tell you what percentage of direct Atlantean nobility was in your heritage; I knew, the recruiter had done a double take when he saw mine. So no nonhuman could play a part, and no PSI could get past the examining Monitors... unless...

That "unless" made everything fall into place. The Black Dragon. He had gotten past the exams. Because he was an ultrapsi, so powerful that he twisted the minds of three monitors and six physicians. They simply didn't notice or record any of the glaring differences.

Shagrath had to be an ultrapsi, as mentally warped as the Dragon had been, just more subtle. If he ever had the vaguest suspicion of me, he could erase me like a memory chip. Judging from what I had read in that single mind-flash, he wasn't even human, but something else. And in his position, he was now immune to suspicion; he could remove anyone, without question, and even plant evidence.

Atlantis' Towers, he could even remove the Emperor! Frame some poor sucker for the assassination, and put a new puppet in! I couldn't even hope to get word to our ruler... because Shagrath was in charge of security, Shagrath chose who saw the Emperor, Shagrath controlled everything! Niaadea only knew how long this had been going on! What if he had a lifespan like the Sovalites or the Chakrons, four or five centuries? 

What was he up to... and what did he want from me?

I had to find a way out of here, and fast. Because I could not hope to maintain perfect control for more than a week or so, and just one tiny flaw in my performance would get me quickly dead!