“Did you get any information?”
Kuta repeatedly bashed their head against the table. They had been doing so for a good five minutes. Anything to distract them from the dizziness, the migraine, the bubbling anger in the back of their mind, screaming that Kuta wasn’t safe and needed to lash out. Eventually, they calmed down enough to pay attention to who was talking to them.
The 151st Legion was a Legion that worked in tandem with the 10th Legion and the police force 115th Legion as an intelligence arm, working to gather evidence and information for investigating crimes and criminals. However, it being a separate Legion also protected it from bias as well, allowing them to work more quickly and cleanly. Of course, with the attempted assassination of the High General, the 151st Legion had gotten involved, and because Kuta had stupidly tried to chase down the being behind the attempt, they had been brought in for questioning.
“I did.”
“Care to talk us through what happened?”
There were two Rethans present. One was a higher-caste Rethan with black skin and pink armour, the other was a friendly soldier-caste Rethan with blue and red armour who had introduced themselves as Captain Kedril. The pink-armoured Rethan was just writing stuff down and hadn’t mentioned their name, but they were clearly a general, they had a gold General’s Insignia around their right arm.
“Of course…” Kuta sighed. “But I will be blunt, right now, I do not trust my own memories.”
“Why is that?” Kedril asked.
“The being I confronted had access to deep-level telepathy, akin to that of Vohra. They scrambled my senses and I can not think straight.”
Kedril tilted their head to one side. “Is that why you keep on banging your head?”
“Yes. It is also a distraction, stopping me from going Defensive Stance as my superior just got shot in the arm and my poten-partner is still unconscious.”
“Ah, uh, understandable, I guess…” Kedril muttered. “Well, uh, how about we start with the being you saw and what they looked like?”
Kuta took a deep breath, then pressed their head against the table again. “They were a Rethan. Very young. My height, maybe a bit shorter. Pitch black skin, darker than mine. Purple main plating, pink plating on their arms. They were higher-caste, maybe even queen-caste considering how many extra strips they had, and they also had small strips running down their tail the same way General Vaksavar has.”
“What were they wearing?”
“Governmental armour. Ill-fitting. But they had a very heavy gold collar around their neck and something covering their right eye, potentially Torr-based technology…” Kuta took a deep breath and closed their eyes.
“Are you well, General Kuta?” the pink Rethan asked.
“No.”
“Do you need medical assistance?” Kedril asked.
“I need some painkillers. And maybe a sedative. And some time alone. I also want to see Retvik.”
“Are you being uncooperative?”
“No. I want to cooperate. But I am in too much pain right now. I can barely hear you over the static in my head…”
Kuta glanced at the pink-armoured Rethan. The Rethan glanced back, then sighed.
“Kedril, can you go and get some aspirin for General Kuta, please?”
Kedril immediately nodded, got up and left the room. Kuta breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that they could now speak more freely.
“I apologise, General. Firstly, I do not recall your name. Secondly, I have information that is General-above only. Thirdly, I really do have a bloody awful headache.”
“Understandable, Kuta. My name is Jeliira. What information do you have?”
“First off, are you aware of my unholy abilities?”
Jeliira nodded. “According to the 10th Legion, you have the ability to shadowjump, you can create a paralytic venom and you have some sort of telepathy, akin to that of Vohra.”
“I have telepathy yes, but it works differently to how Vohran psionics work. Consider it similar to different programming languages. Different languages are written and compiled in different ways. Some of them are closer to assembly language and machine language than others. The Vohra use a very common telepathic language, akin to a programmer using Python, while communication-only combat telepathy is written in a widely accessible but very limited programming language akin to MySQL, and can only be used in specific places. The telepathy I have, it is powerful because it is closer to the lower levels of the sentient mind, but it is… written in a language that most other beings do not understand. Like writing in some very strange fork of C that I developed myself. Are you with me so far?”
“I am, yes. What does this have to do with what happened?”
Kuta grunted. “The being had telepathy too. That was how they managed to sneak in, they used telepathy to blind their presence to other Rethans. But it was not like Vohran psionics, nor was it like the telepathy that non-Vohrans occasionally get. Every other non-Vohran psion I have met has used similar telepathic systems. However, this Rethan did not use the same telepathy I use either, it was some sort of mishmash between Vohran and non-Vohran telepathy, with some sort of anti-tampering mechanism that scrambled my head when I scanned their mind.”
“So… you do not have information?” Jeliira frowned.
“I have information. I picked up a name, an age, an allegiance. But I do not know if the information I got is accurate or not, or if they simply pulled something from my mind and re-fed it to me as a decoy.”
“Well… how about you tell me the information you got, and we can go from there?”
Kuta rubbed their eyes and sighed. “They were allied with the Torr, specifically a group called the Aurai Protectorum, and a Lanex group known as the Perpetual Abyss, a hidden group that claims to work for the Lady of Light herself. They are, apparently, 44 years old. And their name is Siona Kaldieridos.”
Jeliira wrote all of this information down, then copied the information to their communicator and immediately sent it off to the main unit running the investigation for the assassination attempt. They then turned back to Kuta.
“Why do you think this information is not accurate?” Jeliira asked.
Kuta didn’t answer at first.
“You are not in any trouble, Kuta. If anything, we want to keep you sweet, because you are the only lead we have. But we do need to know as much as possible.”
“Hmph. I do not know who my father was. The reason why I do not trust the name I just gave you is because Siona Kaldieridos is my mother’s name, and that is literally the only thing I know about them.”
Jeliira got up and patted Kuta on the shoulder. “Well, I would not worry too much. You said the Rethan you saw was very young, and 44 years old. You yourself are 100 years old, and you have served the Rethan government diligently over the years.”
A knock on the door interrupted the two Generals. Kedril had returned with a bottle of water and four aspirin tablets.
“Thank you…” Kuta muttered, immediately taking the tablets.
Jeliira smiled slightly. “No worries. Thank you very much for your assistance, General Kuta. You are free to leave. We have your contact details already, we will get in touch if we need to.”
Kuta staggered to their feet and bowed, then slowly made their way out of the room. Once they were in the hallway, Kuta telepathically scanned the area, looking for the recovery ward their poten-partner was resting in, then made their way in that direction. It took longer than Kuta liked to get to the private room, but the guards outside let Kuta in right away.
Lying in bed, fast asleep with a bandage wrapped around their chest, was Retvik, snoring rather peacefully, all things considered. Kuta muttered a quick thank you to the Thantophor, then squeezed into the bed next to Retvik and put their arms around their beloved friend, before falling asleep themselves.