Birthright: Book I of the Temujin Saga (31 page)

“No, but I’m close to getting written up if I don’t check on the sheriff.”

“Danielle?” he continued. “Deidra? Delilah?”

“Donna.” She sighed and brushed a stray strand of brown hair behind her ear. “My name is Donna.”

“Donna,” said Moe with an approving smile. “I like it.”

“I’m glad,” said Donna, reaching past him for the doorknob. “Now, if you don’t mind—”

Moe shifted his position, blocking the doorknob, “So tell me, Donna, what time do you get off work?”

She took a step back, flabbergasted. “I, uh… I don’t think that’s—”

“You have a boyfriend,” said Moe, looking dejected.

Donna sighed. “I—”

Moe grinned. “I could take him.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Could you now?”

“Sure. I know ten different martial arts.”

“Really?” asked Donna, feigning interest. “Which ones?”

Moe ticked them off on his fingers. “Kung Fu, Tang Soo Do, Ninjutsu, Capoeira, Hapkido, Krav Maga, Goju Ryu, Silat, Kendo, and Kempo.”

Donna nodded. “Not bad. But can you whistle?”

Moe twirled his finger in the air. “Turn around for me.”

Donna sighed and lowered her clipboard, making a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, giving him a good view of her entire body. Moe nodded slowly and wolf whistled approvingly, which sent her into loud fits of laughter until her face turned bright red.

Moe waited until her laughter subsided and shrugged. “I guess I can.”

She smiled and sighed. “
If
I give you my number, will you let me finish my rounds, Moe?”

“That sounds fair.”

She jotted her phone number down on a pink sticky note and stuck it to his shirt. “Now, I’m going to go check on my other patients, and if you’re still in front of that door when I come back in five minutes I’m going to rip that paper up. Are we clear, Moe?”

“Clear.”

“Promise?”

Moe looked at the phone number and held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“All right. I’m off at four,” she said. “Call me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As she walked down the hall, he began to whistle “Donna” by Ritchie Valens. She turned to glare at him, her eyes narrowed and her lips curled into a wry smile. He grinned back at her and waved.

“What are you doing?” said a voice behind him.

Moe shouted and almost fell back into the open doorway.

Sam stepped past him into the hall. “Some sentry you are. I tell you to guard the door and I come out to find you humping some nurse’s leg.”

“Hey! I kept her out of the room, didn’t I?”

“He did,” said Lamont, stepping into the hallway and slinging the duffle bag over his shoulder. “You’ve got to give him that.”

“And…” Moe snapped the pink sticky note between his hands. “I got her number.”

Sam raised an eyebrow and peered down the hall, taking a long appraising look at Donna’s backside. “
Hell-o
, nurse! Not bad, little sister. I’m actually impressed. And here I thought I was going to have to
build
you a girlfriend.”

“Come on, you two,” said Lamont. “We still have a lot to do today.”

As they stepped out into the cool morning air and walked across the parking lot toward Mrs. Walker’s car, they were nearly run over by an ambulance screaming into the parking lot toward the emergency room entrance with its lights flashing and siren blaring. The back doors of the ambulance opened, and the paramedics removed the gurney. Strapped to the cart was a national guardsman, his combat fatigues and face covered in blood.

A nurse met the paramedics halfway to the door. “What happened?”

“Gunshot wound to the head,” said one of the medics. “Self-inflicted.”

“He was investigating the crash site with two others in his unit,” the other medic chimed in breathlessly. “The others heard three shots. When they got there, the other two were dead, but somehow this guy was still alive and talking. He keeps saying the same thing over and over.”

The nurse slammed her fist into the door control and let the gurney through. “They
all
shot themselves?”

“Yes!” the soldier on the cart cried out. “To serve my Khan! To serve my Khan! Anything to serve my Kha—”

The doors slid shut, sealing off the soldier’s ravings. Moe looked at Sam, and the brothers shuddered in unison.

Lamont broke into a sprint, heading toward Mrs. Walker’s car. “We have to report back to HQ immediately. Alex has to know what’s happened.”

“What does this mean?” asked Moe.

“Two things, little sister,” said Sam. “One: you’re going to have to cancel your house call with the nurse—”

“Great,” Moe muttered under his breath.

“And two,” Sam continued, jerking the passenger side door open. “Temujin didn’t die in that crash like we thought.”

“How could
anybody
survive that?” asked Moe.

Lamont started the car and put it into gear. “That’s what I’d like to find out.”

Chapter Thirty

Temple of the Golden Horde

Gobi Desert, Mongolia

October 28th

Captain Sukh stood on the loading dock of the temple’s train house and waited anxiously, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword and the other with a thumb hooked over his belt. The message had come in the previous evening that his scouts had located the master and General Chuluun hiding in an abandoned farmhouse a few miles west of the
Ragnarok
crash site, and they were being transported back to the temple. This news was bittersweet for the captain; he feared the Khan’s wrath for his failure to destroy the alien and allowing him to escape.

The train whistle brought his thoughts back to the present, and he stood at attention as the train slowed to a stop in front of him. He swallowed hard as a boxcar door slid open and there, standing in the doorway with a bearskin cloak draped over his body and the injured General Chuluun leaning against him for support, stood Lord Temujin. A bloody bandage covered the left side of Chuluun’s face.

Sukh promptly dropped to one knee. “My Khan, words cannot express what I am feeling at this moment.”

“Nor I, Captain,” Temujin said venomously.

“I am so relieved to see you alive and well,” said Sukh.

“No thanks to you,
Captain
,” said the Khan, spitting the last word out as if it were a foul taste in his mouth.

“My Khan?” Sukh met his master’s hateful gaze with pleading eyes.

Without warning, Temujin thrust his free hand into the air and Sukh screamed as he felt himself being lifted off the ground violently. The Khan curled his fingers, and Sukh clawed at his own throat, futilely trying to pry away the invisible fingers crushing his larynx.

“I grow weary of your incompetence, Sukh,” Temujin said. He took a small step forward, his progress hindered by the weight of the general supported on his shoulder. “Your orders were simple: Destroy the alien. Yet there he was at the school, fighting alongside my enemies.”

“My Khan,” Sukh gasped. “The TDC—”

“Yes…” Temujin pulled the struggling Captain closer with a twitch of his wrist. “The TDC. Not the pathetic band of children playing soldier we were led to believe, eh, Captain? The battle was won. Alexander was in my grasp, but then—”

Temujin tightened his fingers, and Sukh’s eyes bulged from their sockets as he gasped for air.

“Then,” Temujin continued, “the alien, Samrai, appeared and ruined everything. He destroyed my weapons, crashed my
Ragnarok
, killed a hundred of my best men, and now my sarcophagus — my greatest treasure — is lost.”

“Please,” Sukh wheezed, “give me one more chance, my Khan.”

“Save your pleas for the gods,” Temujin said. “Their capacity for generosity far surpasses my own.”

Sukh managed one last plea for forgiveness. “Please, my Khan, I can get the coffin back.”

Temujin loosened his grip on Sukh’s neck, but did not release him from the hold suspending him in the air. “Speak quickly.”

“We intercepted a transmission… from the American Air Force… just before you arrived,” Sukh said, pausing to take a large, sweet breath of frigid air. “They have recovered the sarcophagus from the crash site… and are taking it to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.”

Slowly, and reluctantly, Temujin lowered Sukh to the ground onto his knees, allowing the captain to suck in large breaths of air. The Khan covered the distance between them in a few labored steps and gazed down at the man with utter contempt.

“You have one chance to redeem yourself, Sukh,” Temujin said. “Succeed, and all will be forgiven. Fail me again, and you will beg me for death, but I cannot promise I will grant it.”

“Yes, my Khan.” Sukh rose to his feet and reached for the wounded general. “Here. Let me relieve you of your burden.”

The Khan kicked Sukh back onto his knees.

“Do not touch him, you miserable cur,” Temujin snarled. “General Chuluun has served me faithfully, which is more than can be said for you. When I was a boy, fasting in the wilderness, he alone came to my aid when I was accosted by wolves. He carried me home on his back for two days while I slept and bled upon his shoulders. I am
honored
to return the favor.

“Your filthy hands will not touch him. You are not worthy. He is not now, nor will he
ever
be a burden to me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my Khan!” Sukh pressed his forehead against the cold ground at his master’s feet. “Forgive me!”

“Make preparations to move the temple to a new, secure location,” Temujin ordered. “I will not have Alexander’s forces attacking us on our own ground, since you allowed the one person with that knowledge to escape.”

“Yes, my Khan,” said Sukh.

And with that, his master strode out of the train house and into the temple, his blood-soaked bearskin cloak flowing behind him.

Sukh’s fingers curled into a tight fist. “It shall be done.”

Epilogue

East Van Buren High School

Farmington, Iowa

Alex surveyed the devastation littering the school parking lot from his perch on the edge of the roof. All the wrecked remnants of the Death Walkers were gone, collected by the military when they swept the area after the attack. Their discarded weapons were gone, too. The idea of the government possessing the same technology as his team worried him.

Quintin tapped his arm and passed him a paper cup with a straw sticking from the top. Alex accepted it and took a long sip; the thick chocolate shake soothed his raw, aching throat as he swallowed.

Quintin pointed across the lot. “There’s your car.”

Alex nodded. He’d already spotted it underneath the twisted wreckage of one of the police cruisers. He didn’t know if it could be salvaged or not; it looked pretty bad. He pointed about twenty feet to the right at a tangled mass of metal.

“There’s Pop’s truck.”

Quintin grimaced, remembering his painful arrival to the battle in the back of the truck. “Is he…” he struggled to find the correct word, “pissed?”

Alex snorted. “There isn’t a word in English
or
Phaedojian to sum up how my dad feels right now, Quint.”

“So…
really
pissed?”

“Oh, yeah.” Alex laughed. “
Super
pissed.”

Alex passed the cup back to Quintin and continued surveying the damage in silence. He picked up a broken piece of brick beside him and chucked it at the nearest wrecked car. It sailed through the broken windshield and landed in the back seat.

“Are you scared?” Alex asked.

Quintin placed the cup down between them. “No.”

“I am,” said Alex gravely. “You saw what he did this time. What will he do next? Who else is he going to kill just to get to me?”

“He’s not going to get the chance,” said Quintin. “We know where to find him now. We’ll bring the fight to him.”

Alex nodded. He already knew all of this, of course, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t going to be that easy.

A distant hum vibrated the air around them, and the twins looked up to see the
Saber
hovering in the distance. The engines’ hum grew in intensity and then suddenly became silent. Then, in a brilliant flash of light, the ship streaked through the air toward the upper atmosphere. They watched the craft for a moment until it disappeared above the clouds.

“What’s that about?” asked Quintin.

Alex just smiled and took another sip of chocolate shake. “Just a little unfinished business, Quint.”

*****

Office of Naval Administration

Federation of Allied Systems, Planet Phaedaj

Admiral Ohrb stalked down the corridor toward his office. An urgent communiqué had been delivered to him, interrupting some much-needed private time with his mistress. The message read that the Glynfarian ambassador was waiting in his office and refused to leave until he spoke to the admiral.

Ohrb had had quite enough of the little runt’s constant meddling and snooping around his office. This was the last straw. He planned to throw the feeble old bastard out the nearest airlock; inter-planetary relations be damned.

The door to his outer office slid open to receive him, and the admiral barged through the room, not paying his secretary any heed as he stormed toward the door to his inner office. The door opened with a hiss, and Ohrb stepped inside to find the ambassador, Jiri, standing beside his desk, leaning on his walking stick. The admiral was about to give the ambassador an earful when he noticed his chair was swiveled around with its back to him. Pale fingers tapped the armrest.

“Whoever you are, you’ve got about three clicks to get out of that chair before I wring your neck,” the admiral huffed.

The chair turned and the admiral found himself looking at a pale creature with strange yellow fur on top of its head and two forward-facing blue eyes in the center of its face. The alien held a plasma pistol in its five-fingered hand.

“Hello, Admiral,” Sam said with a friendly smile. “Let’s have a little chat, shall we?”