The Tellers

chapter 5

The emotional rush of controlling a 240-mph tornado that literally blow your enemies away is hard to articulate. The way Psome explained it to me, my control of the weather is tied to my emotions. Its almost like a mental on/off switch to channel what I am feeling into the environment around me. A tornado is pure anger and frustration, unleashed upon everything around me. Imagine being really angry and smashing a plywood door with an axe. If you have ever done anything like that, you know that when you actually act on your anger, it reinforces it. My power is the same way- whatever I am feeling, once I flip that switch and channel it into the invisible current around me, it reverberates and magnifies whatever I am feeling, so that anger turns to rage, and rage into a tornado. And a tornado, once it is going full force, is nearly impossible to stop. You get something like tunnel vision, forget everything except the storm around you.

Its also incredibly draining, although that part never hit me till afterwards. Physically, emotionally, mentally. When I said you forget everything, I wasn't being figurative- you really can forget everything for a bit. I had experienced this before, but not to such a degree. I lost awareness of who was around me. In my mind I was protecting Psome's dead body again. Except part of me knew it wasn't Psome, it was Neve and Derron. It was like falling into a dream state- everything seems to make sense but when you wake up you realize your mind had taken a snapshot of reality and begun mixing it with your memories and subconscious to form something not real at all. When I finally pushed the tornado far enough away that I couldn't control it any more, I turned to Neve. I was trying to tell her that Derron wasn't dead- I knew the soldiers' weapons had been set to 'stun', but also trying to say a benediction over Psome at the same time. It was Jardine who snapped me back to reality.

"Sir, you are speaking in the tongue of the Tellers." Jardine's voice interrupted my stream of speech. "She cannot understand you."

I switched over to common tongue and cursed myself mentally for being so out of it. Was it the cryosleep that had made me this fragile? I watched Derron wake up, letting myself breathe and regain my grasp on myself. I knew their weapons were set to a very light stun setting because I had been grazed with a blast and had only been immobilized for a couple seconds. Pulling the tornado out of nowhere was lucky. I hadn't known I could do that, and if the conditions hadn't been ideal for whirlwind formation we would likely all be prisoners now. I had Jardine note that thunderstorms on a tangent pathway created a tendency for vortexes that could be manipulated to great effect.

I was shaking like a leaf. Emotions and memories were coming to the surface, images I was trying to suppress. Comrades, men I had lived and fought beside, were screaming in pain, were crying out for help. I shook my head. If I didn't keep moving, this could cripple me. I forced myself to think ahead, to focus on the present situation. Keep moving, I thought. It was the first rule of survival in combat. Stay in one place too long, and you would die.

Jardine informed me he was running a check on the global networks, to see if he could find any background on these soldiers, and any information circulating on me, or Derron or Neve. His military programming meant he was often one step ahead of me in gathering information. Meanwhile, Derron was reviving on the ground. As soon as he came to himself, he picked himself up and ran for the crashed hovercraft. For a heart-stopping second I thought the hovercraft had been within range of my tornado. To my relief, it was still lying on its side where the soldiers had downed it. I tried to follow Derron, but my knees were unsteady. I cursed my frailty. And also made a mental note that Derron was an extraordinarily tough kid. He had just eaten a dozen bolts of energy designed to incapacitate much bigger men, and he bounced right up and was in a dead sprint toward that hovercraft. Love is a strong motivator, but not many men are capable of recovering so quickly; my arm was still numb from where the energy bolt had grazed me. I added Jardine the assignment of running a background check on him.

Derron was way ahead of me now, almost at the hovercraft. I tried to quicken my pace, and suddenly my knees buckled. I swore under my breath. Neve was beside me suddenly. Without asking, she put my arm over her shoulder and took some of my weight on herself. It took me by surprise, and our eyes locked. For a second, I saw into the girl's soul, saw relief, saw guilt, and- this is what really got to me- saw compassion. Something passed between us in that moment; I understood her, and I knew she understood me. From that moment on, Neve and I were friends.

Derron was tearing the hovercraft apart with his bare hands. It was a collapsible design, of fabric and carbon tubing, and was partly crumpled anyway. He ripped away the parts in his way, and dragged a limp figure out onto Merensol's spongy surface. Derron should have known better than to move him, I thought, and then wondered whether it would even matter. He laid the body of his brother gently on the ground; We were almost to him by this time. He didn't look up when we approached.

"He's breathing."

Neve knelt by Ko's prone figure, feeling his pulse at his neck. I didn't want to look. This scene seemed all too familiar- Jack had looked much the same way at the end- and my stomach was still unsteady. I dropped to my hands and knees, focusing on holding myself together. It seemed that had been my entire goal for the last three days, and I knew my control was fragile. I had the urge to turn my power on, to let myself channel the enviroment around me. It would let me forget the images flooding through my head, images that may have been 200 years old but felt like a week ago.

I heard Derron and Neve conversing as if from a long ways away. I wanted to chime in and point out that the soldier's blasters had been set to stun, so Ko was almost certainly going to be fine, especially if he had his brother's constitution, but I couldn't open my mouth to speak. Jack's lifeless face kept flashing through my mind. It was my decision that led to his death, my decision that had killed everyone on the Azzurri. In my weakened state my emotions were hitting me like a boxer who had me up against the ropes and was ripping me with hooks to the body. I let out my breath in a long slow sigh. The decision to turn on my power came as a relief. I let myself feel the reverberations from the invisible currents around me, and remembered nothing after.

This chapter is dedicated to my brothers, Joe and Phil, for being men of adventure, and inspiring me to write.

I'm sorry for taking so long to update, and for the brevity of this chapter. Although I haven't been writing much lately, I have been thinking about this story a lot, the characters and direction it will take. Thanks to Mitch for giving me ideas which will come into play later on.

Please vote, comment, etc. I love input. Now that I'm attempting to make this a worthwhile story instead of just writing whatever comes to my head, the writing process is more difficult. Constructive criticism is appreciated.