We went to the same spot I’d previously been testing in, hauling along the usual drone and medical monitoring chair. Selkie told me to attempt to visualise without projecting until I had some idea of how much energy it was going to cost me, then stepped back to let me try on my own.
I closed my eyes to do it, picturing Inisar as I’d seen him last, but not getting anywhere. Deciding that he mightn’t necessarily be dressed the same way, I just began repeating his name to myself. And saw him, not the tall, proud samurai, but a filth-smeared man sitting chained to a wall, wrists held above his head by glossy white manacles, face swollen and bruised, chest covered in burns. Shock made me open my eyes, and I found that as usual I hadn’t managed to just visualise. But the projection of a single room isn’t really that much extra energy for me, and being in the Ena had made other-planetary visualisation not nearly as hard as the first time.
"Nuri leaders not very nice people," I said, after a horrified moment. Inisar had been seriously tortured.
"Those burns–" Maze said, voice flat.
"Cruzatch." Selkie looked at me. "Are you able to move your focus point?"
I tried, but it made me feel queasy. Regan and Taarel were at the projection’s door, a very solid white slab. "Nothing we couldn’t break," Regan said.
"It’s likely the projection continues outside the room," Kaoren said, then moved forward and cautiously touched the projected Inisar’s shoulder with a gloved hand.
The Nuran’s unswollen eye flickered open, and he looked up at Kaoren, then turned his head and looked at me. Even so very battered he still managed the same look-right-through-you expression he’d been wearing the first time I’d seen him.
"Child of Gaia," he said, voice a hoarse whisper, then looked toward Selkie (who doesn’t let being short stop him from being the one obviously in charge). "Nuri is lost," he continued, totally without inflection. "Betrayed from within. They will hunt the Gaian child, for she is valuable to them. And a threat. As you have become. Guard your people."
"How has Nuri been lost?" Selkie asked, then paused when I stood up – which was really not an easy thing to do – moving and projecting at the same time made me totally dizzy.
Fortunately he was only a couple of steps forward. I knelt down and put the back of my hand to his cheek – the same gesture Kaoren had made for me once. His skin felt cold.
"It’s a projection, Cassandra," Kaoren said. "Aiding it will not alter the Nuran’s situation."
"But isn’t everything connected?" I asked, and pushed out as I had been doing at Mesiath, not to sense the living creatures around me, but to follow the link which had to exist for me to be able to see what was happening to Inisar. That was a weird moment, as if I’d moved out of a tiny box into a cathedral, except I felt like I was being smothered, like I was surrounded by glue. The projection faltered, but it was like when I was in Earth’s near-space talking to my family, and I could see Inisar still, a greyed-out image of him, and just vaguely feel his skin against my hand shifting as he woke and looked at me and his unswollen eye went very wide.
It took everything I had to lift my hand to the funny-looking seal thing which fastened the chains of his manacles to the wall above his head. Moving was harder even than projecting seal which was cracked, was shattered, broken, falling to dust. There was a moment like being at the bottom of a pit and having an ocean drop into it, a thooming resettling of whatever I was holding out of the way and then I was just kneeling in Muina’s near-space, dripping with sweat and shaking.
Kaoren, keeping himself out of touching distance just in case, moved into my line of sight and I flapped one hand to show I wasn’t about to have a heart attack. He nodded, then said to Selkie: "Those manacles were more than a physical restraint. Whether freeing a badly injured man will make any difference to Nuri being lost I cannot see."
I couldn’t tell if Selkie was angry that I’d gone and done my own thing, but obviously the news that Nuri had apparently been overrun by Cruzatch (or something) was an overwhelming development, and he ordered us back into real-space, upgraded Muina’s security status, and sent the Diodel screaming off to Tare with the news. After that was a nail-pulling delay because it’s a kasse to reach the rift on Muina, in addition to the time for a return trip through deep-space. Once the Diodel reached Tare they just waited at the rift until they had return orders. Kaoren said that one thing we obviously need to do is ensure that there’s a ship stationed at all times near the rift on Muina so that there’s less delay in sending urgent messages. The small Arenrhon settlement is closer, but unfortunately there’s no working platforms there (and apparently even with security clearance standing on the Arenrhon platform takes you nowhere – I hadn’t even known they tested that).
Naturally I spent most of this time in medical, having scans done (and sleeping, since I was pretty tired), but did manage before falling asleep to talk with Kaoren about my occasional tendency to be impulsive. He admitted he wasn’t exactly happy that I’d done that without any warning, but nor did he feel that he could ask me not to do anything like that again, since that would amount to asking me not to try and help someone who had tried to help me, and neither of us would be happy to be in that situation.
It was just after dawn when a response finally came back from Tare that they were going to send a ship to Nuri to investigate the situation. Setari squads were deployed to active guard at Kalasa and Pandora, and personnel withdrawn from Arenrhon and Mesiath. The remaining squads had been ordered to rest, though I’m not sure if anyone managed it. I woke up about an hour after this, and quietly fretted about the whole idea of three planets being put on security alert because of something I’d projected. And fretted more about how I’d feel if the ship didn’t come back, if it was destroyed investigating. Kaoren had me released from medical and we ate breakfast, then had a shower and lay down together to talk and rest more. We were both really keyed up, and though lying together in the dark helped a little, neither of us could pretend to be anything but really worried. It was mid-morning when a ship brought word of the Nuri investigation, and we were both beyond stressed out by then.
And Nuri was gone.
The investigating ship had recorded very odd readings from the Nuri gate and chosen not to fly through it – and lost three drones before finally succeeding in getting one to go into Nuri real-space and return. It came back incredibly damaged, its scans showing what looked like an asteroid field. No-one had expected that, and everyone’s seriously freaked. Even massives pale in comparison to moons blowing up.
After we heard the news I kept finding myself on the verge of making comments about Death Stars, or a million voices crying out at once, and despite being hugely upset I couldn’t get my mind off not-funny things to say. Nuri isn’t a place I’ve been, and so most of the people there weren’t more than an abstract idea for me. But Inisar was real, and tried to help, and was tortured for it. And whatever I did wasn’t enough.
There was a kind of frozen patch during the middle of the day where we were waiting to hear more orders, and no-one had any real suggestion about what we could do other than fret and watch ships take off, hastily ferrying more officials back to Tare and Kolar. Except for a handful of people who refused to return on the grounds that Muina was safer because of the Ddura. Orders finally came through after lunch, recalling most of the Setari squads to their home planets, with just First and Fourth remaining here with me. All Setari were given an overriding mission of finding the Cruzatch’s home space – the best defence being a good offence approach.