“They cost about as much as five apartment modules. I thought we could get along without it,” he said.
“I hope you’re right.”
“I have to be,” Calan said.
Chapter Eighteen
During meditation a few days later, Calan sought out the cage fighters telepathically while guiding Ajha to follow that path with him. Introspectively, their psionic quest took them from mind to mind to discern whether the fighters yearned to be free.
Not all of them did. Mostly those who were good at it were content to stay. They got the best food, the best accommodations and their pick of women or men as they preferred.
Even on the ultra-civilized Aledus, they had brothels and fight circuits. The fight circuits were limited to the alien martial artchackrinof which Calan was well trained. The difference was the Aledan’s chose those professions, and they were paid to do them.
About half of the hundred sixty fighters on the overlords’ fight circuits wanted to leave. Therefore, Calan and Rax went for them in the hover cargo transport to pick them up. They went shortly after dawn when the fighters and organizers were settling in for the night. Security was at its lowest.
They completed the operation without incident, pulling out seventy-seven fighters males and females. They weren’t at the top of their games, losing more fights than they won. Even the non-winning fighters were fed well, but they enjoyed few other luxuries---and they couldn’t quit.
Almost all of them had old injuries that required treatment. The simplest way to fix those old injuries was to use the nanocybots that were used to heal the injuries in the cyborgs. It was less invasive than traditional surgery and seemed to work just as well.
Calan and Rax figured the overlords would send in the gangers at any hour through the next few days. Nothing happened, except for more refugees walked up for admittance. A Normal might have suspected they were ringers sent in to infiltrate after Berke’s visit.
Since none of them were psions or Tregans, Calan could easily read them. He knew within seconds of their arrival they had come for sanctuary and for a better life. Only Mikki, Rax, and Ajha knew he was a psion. He kept that secret on purpose.
Many people still feared and hated psions. It was the main reason that Jamerin and Parei spent most of their time in space. His brother had told him how they had fooled the space pirates with psionics and scared Parei’s stepfather by what they had done. It made him realize the magnitude of mind power in their grasp. Together they were capable of great destruction---and great good.
So were Calan and Ajha.
Calan and Ajha sat together on their meditation mat facing each other, their legs touching and holding hands. They had been communing psionically for over an hour. This was how he shared his psionic skills with her, how he had learned them from his parents and his siblings.
Once they had gone through their mental exercises, they began to extend their combined consciousness into the minds of the overlords. They surfed through their thoughts like other people surfed the AI-net, sorting through useless information seeking anything to alert them the overlords were planning to make a move against the refuge.
All of the overlords were Normals they had no way of knowing Calan and Ajha were doing this. There were a few mid-level psions in Starport City and some young ones living in the ruins. None of them were associated with the overlords.
Calan had tried several times to lure them to the refuge, but they wouldn’t come because there were too many people there. They were just dawning to the point where other people’s thoughts intruded into their minds---like voices in their heads. They were safe for now, Calan would seek them again when he’d settled with the overlords.
A full week after Redmyn Berke’s visit the overlords mobilized the gangers to converge on the refuge. Most of them were armed with projectile weapons that could do little damage, but there were ion blaster cannons pointed at the refuge on each side.
They could blow the place apart. Even the force field generator that Rax had discussed with them would not hold off ion cannons.
Calan knew they were coming as soon as the overlords decided what to do. They wanted him to give up all the people they rescued from the brothels and the fight clubs. He’d already asked all of them if they wanted to leave. Everyone said they wanted to stay at the refuge. He told them not to worry.
As soon as Calan knew they were coming with ion cannons, he looked up the schematics of the weapons in Rax’s memory banks. As Calan memorized them, Rax explained how they worked… And how to disarm them.
Next, he put the refuge on lockdown, reassuring all the residents he would keep them safe. They suspected the overlords were after the people he ‘stole’ from them. Some thought he should send them back to the overlords. He gently slipped the thought into their minds, asking if they would feel the same if they were among those people they wanted to sacrifice.
When the overlords arrived with their gangers, Calan and Ajha stepped out the front door together holding hands. The two psions were operatingen rapportwith the psionic energy they had built through multiple days of regular meditation.
So, while Redmyn Berke was calling him on his com, Calan was telekinetically disarming the ion cannons. Ajha was melting the firing mechanisms and jamming projectile weapons. They completed all of this in the half hour Berke had given them to send out their former slaves.
When the overlords gave the command to fire the ion cannons, nothing happened. Berke told his gangers to shoot at Calan and Ajha, but not a single weapon would fire.
Next Calan made fifty combat armored cyborgs appear to pour out from each side of the building. They lined up on each side of the refuge and pointed rapid-fire ion rifles at the overlords and gangers. Snipers appeared on the roof on each side of the buildings.
While Ajha helped maintain the illusion, Calan called Berke back. “Mr. Berke, we will not be relinquishing anyone who has come to our refuge to live. Had you treated your former workers with dignity and paid them fairly, perhaps they would not have left.”
He cut the connection before Berke could reply. Next, Calan reached into each overlord’s mind and pulled them together, then he reached into each of the gangers’ minds and pulled them altogetheren rapport. Then he took out the horrible memories that he had hidden in the back corners of Mikki’s mind and turned them loose into their minds.
He let them feel her raw pain of being captured and separated from her best friends. The pain of being beaten and raped and forced to fight in the cages at least three times a week even though she won a fortune for the overlord. He let them feel the despair of the men and women they imprisoned and forced to provide sexual favors in the brothels with no hope of freedom or any kind of better life.
