The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption by YS Pascal Page A

reflexes trumped my rationality. My
practiced fingers had crept to my Ergal and were gripping it
tightly as I watched.
    Benedict was clutching a tablet on which he
was scratching furiously with a stylus. The low resolution of the
holo didn’t allow us to see what he was writing, but his mutterings
sounded like he was trying to solve some mathematical problem.
“Alpha … m-c squared … equation … trapezalnitaks … summeldare … ram
… catastrophe …”
    Suddenly, his face lit up and he cried,
“Eureka!” He looked up and, to my alarm, seemed to scan the room,
his fierce blue eyes finally resting in my direction with a
piercing, icy stare. I kept telling myself ‘it’s just a holo’, but,
faced with that penetrating gaze, I couldn’t suppress a cold shiver
that bored all the way down to my spine.
    And then, to my immense relief, Benedict
disappeared. I heard several deep breaths echoing mine from around
our table.
    Matshi was the first to speak. He looked at
Nephil Stratum with admiration. “How’d you do that?”
    Spud interjected, “Irrelevant. Where was he,
and what was he doing?”
    Matshi’s face looked appropriately
annoyed.
    “Short answer, Matshi, dark matter,” Nephil
Stratum appeased her host. “Zygint Central constantly monitors
“beings of interest”. Unfortunately, without an auxiliary energy
source I can only keep the download going for a few minutes.”
    “You tapped into Zygint’s comm feeds!”
Awesome. I was impressed.
    Nephil Stratum nodded. “I honestly can’t
determine where Benedict is,” she continued, responding to Spud.
“But, obviously at least one comm specialist at Central knows,
because they’re tracking him live. It looks like … someone will
have to go to Zygint Headquarters to get that information.”
    The knot in my stomach returned as the entire
group turned and looked at me.
     
    * * *
     
    Yes, I still carried a Zygan Intelligence ID. If it hadn’t already been pulled. My actions had caused us
to lose Sutherland. And, rather than returning to face the music,
I’d gone on the run. I was absent without leave, and Gary had
probably already reported me to Headquarters as a violator. If I
went to Zygint Central Headquarters as myself, Shiloh Rush, I’d
probably be busted with my very first WHO entry scan. And, if I was caught, I’d likely be sent to face the terrifying
judgment of the Omega Archon. I’d be kicked out of the Zygint
corps, and, at the mercy of His Highness’ harsh code of justice, I
could end up … a corpse.
    My only chance to succeed in tracking
Benedict’s location would be to M-fan into Zygint Headquarters
disguised as another Terran, and one who would have easy clearance
for Central Comm. Going as Gary was out. He was a well-known player
at Zygint, and my acting skills weren’t that good.
    “Everett Weaver?” Spud suggested, his tone
clearly ironic.
    Just envisioning pretending to be dorky Ev
for even a few moments made me nauseated.
    “What about the nice one?” Nephil Stratum
offered. “The one you said had fixed your ship.”
    Wart … Ward Burton. Now, that sounded better.
Wart was high-level enough to have access to Central Comm, but he
rarely made the hours-long trip from Earth to Zyga, so he probably
wouldn’t be well known by the Central team. That would work in my
favor. It would be a little, uh, embarrassing to be the second Wart
identified trying to enter Headquarters while the real one was
already there. I nodded. “Good idea. Okay, I’ll go in as Wart.”
    When we were on assignment, we were allowed
to use our Ergals to anamorph our superficial appearance and dress.
It would be easy enough to Ergal my appearance to look like the
tall, African American man in his early thirties that I’d be
pretending to be. With a change in my surface appearance, I might
even be able to skate through the WHO scans at Headquarters entry.
But, if I had to make it through the deeper NDNA scans to get into
Comm, I’d be in trouble. I