gaian consortium 06 - zhore deception Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  If You Enjoyed This Book…

  Also by Christine Pope

  About the Author

  THE ZHORE DECEPTION

  A NOVEL OF THE GAIAN CONSORTIUM

  CHRISTINE POPE

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  If You Enjoyed This Book…

  Also by Christine Pope

  About the Author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE ZHORE DECEPTION

  Copyright © 2015 by Christine Pope

  Published by Dark Valentine Press

  Cover design and ebook formatting by Indie Author Services.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems — except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews — without permission in writing from its publisher, Dark Valentine Press.

  Please contact the author through the form on her website at www.christinepope.com if you experience any formatting or readability issues with this book.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Trinity Knox sat in a sterile chamber precisely ten feet square. The only furniture the room contained was a plain steel table and two steel-framed chairs with mesh seats. She tried to sit as quietly as possible while she waited in one of those chairs, eyeing the empty one across the table from her with mounting dread. Sooner or later someone would come in and take that empty seat, and that, she knew, was when the real fun would begin.

  There was no sign of any surveillance devices, which of course meant nothing. The designers of a facility like this one would have made damn sure that every bit of tech was carefully hidden. However, the smooth, uninterrupted gray-beige surfaces of the walls and ceiling didn’t mean that every movement, every breath she took wasn’t being recorded.

  So she sat quietly, hands folded on the table in front of her, and stared into what she hoped looked like the middle distance. Not that there was much of a middle distance in a room as small as this one. However, schooling her features to a careful blankness helped a little to hold back the panic within her, the small frightened beast inside her ribcage that threatened to burst out and show her captors how truly terrified she was.

  She’d really screwed up this time.

  How could she have been so stupid as to confide in Caleb Prescott, of all people?

  Because she’d thought she was in love with him. And he’d told her that he loved her. That was her first mistake, she supposed. Caleb was one of the rare few she couldn’t read. His thoughts were opaque to her. And she’d appreciated that quality, because it meant there was an aura of mystery around him. She’d never catch him thinking that her ass was too big or her nose too long, or any one of a myriad of faults that a man might comment on during any given day. No, Caleb had said she was beautiful, and he loved her, and then, one night after making love, she’d confessed her big secret.

  “I can read minds,” she’d told him, and his eyes had widened in the darkness.

  “No shit. Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  A flash of his teeth. He did have very white teeth. “So what am I thinking right now?”

  That had been awkward. She’d had to explain that there was one person in a thousand — maybe one person in ten thousand — whose thoughts were invisible to this strange talent of hers. And he’d looked skeptical…of course he had…until the next day at work she proved she wasn’t exaggerating to him, by reciting word for word what their supervisor had said to Caleb at a closed-door meeting regarding the latest security upgrades to their computer systems.

  Caleb hadn’t doubted her after that. No, he was very enthusiastic about her “amazing talent.” Problem was, it didn’t take long before he was scheming, thinking of ways he could use that talent to benefit himself. Of course, he was smart enough not to put it that way. He talked a lot about how the corporation was corrupt, and how it would never miss a few measly million units. Then he’d gone on to explain how they could be away and off-world before anyone could figure out what had happened, and living a life of luxury on Eridani or some other planet that didn’t have an extradition agreement with the Consortium. After all, Trinity would be stealing the passwords right out of their supervisor’s own mind. How could anyone ever detect that kind of intrusion, since there would be absolutely no hacking involved?

  Trinity had known it was wrong. She’d resisted for a while. But she was so desperate to believe Caleb — to believe in his love for her — that eventually she’d given in. It was victimless crime, wasn’t it? Maybe their supervisor, Lisanna Cruz, would get her hands slapped for funds disappearing from her department without a trace, but because she was in fact innocent, there wouldn’t be anything that the authorities could actually pin on her. Besides, Trinity could desperately use some of that money herself. When her mother had died halfway across the country, she’d left a mountain of debt as her sole legacy, and Trinity was doing the best she could to pay it off with the tiny amount she had left after covering her expenses each month. Half a million units could do a lot to erase that debt.

  The problem was, once the funds were in his hands, Caleb promptly disappeared. Yes, he had planned to go off-world…without Trinity. There was a whole galaxy full of interesting women waiting for him, so why would he want to saddle himself with dead weight like her?

  And how kind of him to drop a little note to the local authorities explaining exactly how she’d done it.

  When she’d first been arrested and locked up in a cell at the main jail facility in Barstow, she’d cried tears of fear, of anger, of self-recrimination. What an idiot she’d been. She should have known better than to trust Caleb. Didn’t she have the example of her own mother to show her that placing your trust in a man was the quickest way to a broken heart and an empty bank account, or worse? And yet Acantha Knox had gone from partner to partner, always thinking the next relationship would be “the one.” Right until the end, when she’d been murdered for her vehicle and the contents of her wallet, and not a whole hell of a lot else. There hadn’t been anything left.

  Now, though, as Trinity waited in this room that frightened her because of its cold functionality, she didn’t weep. Dry-eyed, she stared at that fixed point in the middle distance, the one she’d chosen because she hoped it would make her lo
ok untroubled by her current predicament. What else could she do?

  This wasn’t a police station, or a holding tank for low-level criminals. No, she would have bet her cut of the take she never received that this was some kind of government facility. Everything was just a little too clean, a little too polished. The guards who’d escorted her to this room had worn no insignia, not one badge or patch to show who they worked for. And that frightened her more than anything else. People were brought to places like this so they could disappear.

  She swallowed, then couldn’t avoid startling as the door hissed open, sliding into a cavity hidden inside the wall. A man in his early thirties, some ten years older than she, entered the room. He wore a dark gray suit and had eyes almost the same gray, piercing against his tanned skin.

  Some women would have probably found him handsome, but Trinity reflected that she was done with handsome men. They just weren’t worth the trouble.

  The newcomer carried a black plastic file in one hand. He set it down on the tabletop before pulling out the empty chair and sitting in it. The entire time, those dark gray eyes were fixed on Trinity, and something about the way they scanned her face sent a cold little thrill down her spine.

  Maybe it was a mistake, but she couldn’t help pushing out a small ping, just to see if his thoughts would be as opaque to her as Caleb’s had been. To her surprise, she could hear him quite well.

  I suppose you wanted to find out if you could enter my mind. Yes, you can…but only those parts I will allow you to see.

  Her mouth must have dropped open, because he smiled. “Yes, Ms. Knox. I’m not like your erstwhile lover. On the other hand, I’m probably not like anyone else you’ve ever met, either. I’ve been trained to block the sections of my mind I want to keep concealed from people with your particular…talents.”

  Trinity finally found her voice. “Trained? Trained by whom? I thought the Consortium government didn’t even recognize psi powers.”

  “Officially, no.” He pulled some papers out of her file, and her eyes widened. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen anyone use actual physical paperwork. Everything was digitized and electronic. Far more efficient that way.

  And hackable, she supposed. Maybe this faceless agency had decided that it was safer to commit sensitive data to paper, records that could be easily — and permanently — destroyed.

  “By the way,” he went on, after organizing the paperwork in front of him, “my name is Gabriel Brant. I’ve been assigned to your case.”

  “So you’re my attorney?”

  Another smile, although it was only a slight lift at the corners of his mouth. It never reached those gunmetal eyes of his. “No. I’m your…well, let’s just call it ‘caseworker’ for now. You have no need of an attorney, Ms. Knox, because you will not be put on trial.”

  “I won’t?” she asked, a sort of disbelieving relief beginning to flood through her. “What, you mean the charges have been dropped?”

  “There were no charges,” Brant said smoothly. “All record of your involvement with the TransCal embezzlement case has been expunged. In fact, Ms. Knox, all record of you has been expunged. Mr. Prescott is being tracked as we speak — it seems he was headed to Iradia — and that should clean up most of the mess.”

  She didn’t reply to that revelation, only pressed her lips together.

  An eyebrow lifted. “Not a very social person, are you?”

  In response, Trinity gave Brant a stony look. No, she wasn’t a social person. Moving every six standard months at a mother’s whim could do that to a person. What was the point in trying to make any sort of connection if it was merely going to get ripped away when you were just becoming comfortable with someone? There had been men before Caleb, but he was the first Trinity had ever confided in.

  And the last, she thought drearily, although she was careful to keep that part of her mind walled off, beyond her captor’s reach. I kind of doubt Mr. Brant is going to give you the opportunity to have any more love affairs.

  Brant appeared nonplussed by her lack of reaction. “Very well. Moving on. I would like you to provide more information about your father’s identity. Since your mother’s records show no sign of the kind of psychic talent you possess, we would like to know if it came to you on the paternal side. Unfortunately, your birth records have your father listed as ‘unknown.’”

  “That’s because my mother probably didn’t know,” Trinity replied, not bothering to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “She was too busy partying to keep track.”

  Gabriel pulled an old-fashioned ballpoint pen out of his jacket pocket and made a notation on the paper in front of him. “She never described him? Never mentioned where he was from?”

  “No.”

  “And you never asked?” The eyebrow went up again. “Never tried to pick it out of her mind?”

  God, no. Trinity supposed she might have done such a thing, but invading her mother’s thoughts was something she could never bring herself to do. Well, except for that one time, but she learned her lesson on that one and afterward left well enough alone.

  She shook her head, and Gabriel wrote something else down. “We’ll try to find a match through the genome database.”

  That was something she supposed she could have done herself, if she’d been willing to pay the price, or take the risk of discovering something she would have been happier not knowing.

  Considering the losers her mother had picked up throughout Trinity’s childhood, she really didn’t want to know. In her mind, she’d always imagined her biological father as some handsome, dashing type — maybe a spy — who had a brief passionate fling and then had to move on. If he’d known of her existence, of course he would have made sure to be a part of her life, but since Acantha Knox had kept her existence from him, he’d never returned.

  It was a nice romantic fantasy. Trinity knew that was all it was, though. For one thing, her mother would have had to get black-market shots to counteract the birth control meds all women on Gaia were given, just to avoid little “accidents” like Trinity Elizabeth Knox. Acantha had known what she was doing. Why, though…that was something that Trinity had never dared to ask. Had her mother thought she could keep this particular lover around by having his baby, or had there been something special about him, something Acantha wanted to ensure lived on in his child? Those questions had danced around in Trinity’s head her entire childhood, but she hadn’t been able to summon the courage to demand that her mother give her the answers. Instead, she’d let her daydreams take the place of the truth. Better to have a pleasant fantasy than an ugly reality, especially when her life already had its fair share of ugliness.

  She’d never had any close friends. How could she, when her mother had dragged her to a new city at least twice a year ever since she could remember? And as her gift developed and grew, she isolated herself even more. A friend was someone you were supposed to confide in, and she didn’t dare take that risk, let alone face the problems of being friendly with someone whose every thought she could read. Once she was done with her mandated fourteen years of school and working as an admin, Trinity had moved out on her own and tried to build some kind of a life that was hers and hers alone. That had never seemed to work, though, maybe because she still couldn’t allow herself to get close to anyone. Men were different — you could be intimate physically without revealing anything of yourself, your true self. Besides, she’d always been able to hear what they were thinking about her, and that sort of unvarnished truth was the kind of thing that could drive a stake right through the heart of a romance.

  Until Caleb. If only she’d been able to see into his black heart as well, she probably wouldn’t be here.

  “Good luck with that,” Trinity told Gabriel Brant, placing her hands flat on the tabletop. Maybe her father hadn’t even been from Gaia, but from Nova Angeles or New Chicago or someplace even farther away. He might not be in the database at all. She had far bigger things to worry about. Voice flat,
she went on, “It sounds like I don’t exist anymore. I suppose that’s your call. But now that you have me, what do you plan to do with me?”

  Brant cocked his head to one side and studied her carefully. She didn’t flinch, but gazed back at him, noting his fine straight brows, his strong nose. Yes, he was very good-looking. For all she knew, he’d been chosen as her handler just because he was so attractive. But if the people pulling his strings thought she was going to fall for him and then be easy to control because of that, they didn’t know her very well.

  At last he smiled. Well, smirked, really. She knew the difference. Then he said, “You, Ms. Knox, are going to be our secret weapon.”

  * * *

  Zhandar entered his counselor’s office at the agreed-upon time, precisely one hour before noon. Because their relationship as counselor and counselee was considered intimate enough, she had allowed the hood of her robes to drop down around her shoulders, and her black hair gleamed with bluish highlights under the light streaming in through the bank of windows that overlooked her balcony garden.

  Counselee. On other worlds, he would have been referred to as Rozhara’s patient. That was not the way on Zhoraan, however. Wounds of the mind were not seen as a sickness, but rather as a temporary condition, one that could be overcome with the proper guidance and compassion. This was why he had been assigned to Rozhara, although he had begun to wonder how much longer she would have continued their professional relationship if she were not under instructions from the local council to do so for as long as necessary. Perhaps once Zhandar would have taken some pride in the notion that the council found him valuable enough that he required such cosseting, but now he was only impatient, thinking these sessions a waste of time better spent elsewhere.