'Shut us down,' I said.
He obeyed, and the lift units hummed to a halt. The dashboard went blank apart from a few orange standby lights.
'Unstrap. Get out.'
He unbuckled his harness and slowly pulled himself up out of the pilot's seat as I covered him with the pistol. He was a short but well-built man in ablative armour and a grey flight helmet with a breathing visor.
He jumped down from the speeder's side hatch and stood with his hands raised.
I got down next to him. Take off the helmet and toss it back into the speeder.'
The pilot did as he was told. His skin was pale and freckled, his thinning hair shaved close. He regarded me wim edgy blue eyes.
'Unzip the suit.'
He frowned.
To the waist.'
Keeping one hand raised, he drew the zipper of the ablat-suit down, revealing an undervest and shoulders marked with old, blurry tattoos. The psi-shield was a small, disc-shaped device hung round his neck on a plastic cord. I snapped it off and tossed it into the undergrowth. Then I used my will.
'Name?'
'Nhh…' he growled, grimacing.
'Name!'
'Eino Goran.'
I nudged my mind against his. It was like rubbing up against something sheathed in plastic.
'Right, we both know that's an emplated identity. A rash job from the feel of it. Real name?'
He shook his head, his teeth clenched. Emplate IDs were cheap enough to buy on the black market, especially a fairly poor quality one like this. They were fake personalities, usually sold with matching papers, psi-woven over the subject's persona like a fitted dust cover on a piece of
furniture. Nothing fancy. If you had the money, you could buy fingerprints and retinas to match. If you really had the money, a new face too.
This one was like a false wall erected in a hurry to ward off casual minds. It lacked any sort of real history, not even vague biographical engrams. A mind mask as cheap and unrealistic as the carnival faces his comrades had worn.
But, though poor, it had been put in place with great force. I tried to shift it, but it wouldn't budge. That was frustrating. It was obviously false, but I couldn't get past it.
There was no time to worry at it now.
Out! I willed, and he collapsed unconscious.
'Eleena! Aemos! Come on!' I shouted, dragging the limp man back into the speeder. I checked him for weapons – there were none – and then lashed his hands behind his back wim a length of cable from the speeder's pulley spool. By the time Eleena and Aemos reached me, carefully bearing Medea, I had the pilot gagged and blind-folded, and tied to one of the speeder's internal cross-members.