Quoted By:
Vis wasn't your first psionic Path - hells, it wasn't even your second. But there were very good reasons you all but abandoned the first, chief of them being that it lacked any purpose beyond destruction. Even this particular power was your own modification of an existing one: a modulated air vibration at a frequency that would temporarily stun the target, "blanking" their mind rather than the original power's aim of causing a potentially fatal hemorrhage - the actual "traceless assassination" technique that idiot Valsen tried to replicate with a Path completely unsuited to it. You recall it being an absolute bitch to tone it down and then to develop a functional frequency for the most commonly encountered species. At least the humans were easy.
You catch the man as he falls, preventing his head from hitting the metal of the bay's floor, and drag him out of sight, behind the forklift. There, you quickly restrain him with cable ties, using a few to fasten him to the forklift itself, to stop him from crawling around when he returns to being lucid. Then you pat him down thoroughly, finally retrieving the real FOB from an inner pocket of his jumpsuit. And then you once again look at the fake one hanging from the chain.
Beside it, there is a small digital display. It reads "23".
You make a face, then reach out and grab the chain. And send several tens of thousands of volts coursing through your body. Which would've certainly been an inconvenience if the pursuit of Vis hadn't made you all but immune to electrocution.
You look at the display again - it now reads "24".
"I now feel less terrible about stealing your ship," you inform the unconscious man. "Only slightly though. For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
And then you make your way onto the ship, closing the cargo ramp behind you.
A Vesper's narrow profile means getting lost on one is functionally impossible, but you still find that you remember the exact layout: cargo to engineering access, to personal cargo and supplies, to living space with a bed set into the wall, a foldout table, chair, entertainment terminal, wardrobe, ladder leading up to galley and down to the bathroom... the actual airlock with suit storage, though everyone would always use the cargo bay to not have to fuck around with stairs or umbilicals - and then finally the bridge with the regulation pilot and co-pilot seats, even though you've never heard of anyone flying this ship tandem.
(cont)
