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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 226: Takano 155
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 364
Vashti awoke. Tommy knew it when she said, “Ouch. Why did you do that?”
Sockajawea once more apologized. “I’m so sorry. Nightmare made me believe that you were Sewer Savage and she was you.”
Vashti looked around at each of the others. “Do we know that we’re all who we appear to be now?”
“Yes,” Tommy said. “I found a way to run all psionic energy to ground, so it doesn’t work. I’d give you the pattern, but I can’t send it while using it.”
Vashti nodded, and turned to look up. Tommy followed her gaze. The ship was rising, but the scriff sense said that there was a verser there who had to be Derek. The fight wasn’t over yet.
Then the ship started slipping sideways and tilting slightly toward Yellowstone City.
“That doesn’t look good,” Vashti said, then after a moment, “I can’t grab it.”
“Oh--of course not, I’ve got all psionic energy grounded.”
“Do you think you could unground it?”
Tommy looked at Lady Nightmare. She had already proven that she was a threat, even tied securely. To lower the defense would mean allowing her to act as well. On the other hand, Derek was on the ship that was slipping and tipping more and more as she considered this.
She would have to do something else.
Derek had mentioned the hazard of brain burn, a mental overload that sometimes happened if you botched on a psionic skill. Could she create that in someone else? It was worth a try.
“Go for it,” Tommy said, and dropped the defense. Immediately she telepathically targeted Lady Nightmare, and having connected dropped as much psionic energy as she could into the connection.
The villain seized and collapsed.
“You’re more dangerous than I imagined,” Sockajawea said.
“Well, I’m learning,” she responded, and turned to look for the ship.
It had been falling, but now seemed to be leveling out. Vashti was staring at it, apparently using that heavy object telekinesis skill to alter the course of the ship. This was working.
Suddenly Vashti vanished. Tommy blinked a few times, but then realized that Derek must have died aboard the ship. She turned to look at it again, and saw it falling again toward the city; there was no scriff sense in that direction.
This was up to her.
She focused on the ship, taking hold of it with that same telekinetic skill Vashti had taught her not so long ago. This ship was huge; could she manage it?
She remembered the words of a little green alien in some old movie her parents sometimes watched: size matters not. She got hold of the ship, leveled it out, slowed its descent, and set it on the ground outside the city.
“We need to get our prisoners into custody,” she said, “and get to that spaceship in case Cutter is still there.” The others agreed.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
