Kingdoms Away 1: Jorian Cluster Archives (5 page)

The next day, Benny, with his red hair
carefully brushed behind his ears, and Jo, who was still sick but
had to come for the test, sat at their desks getting nervous. Jo,
his black hair slick from being in bed, had a box of tissues with
Elysians printed on the outside. The teacher came in, the crabby
Mr. Weffna. Benny told her Mr. Weffna was grumpy because he was so
old, but Jo scornfully told them that his parents were at least two
hundred years older that Mr. Weffna and they weren’t grumpy.

Silence filled the large, stark classroom as
twenty-three students of age seven to nine tried not to fidget. Mr.
Weffna had his old brown jacket on, grey shirt, bow tie and brown
pants. Feena caught Benny’s eye. He was sitting at the desk to her
right. Mr. Weffna was wearing one brown shoe and one black shoe.
She tried not to giggle.

Under the teacher’s arm was a package with
their tests. He solemnly opened the yellow package and took out a
sheaf of papers. He walked up and down the desk aisles placing
sheets of paper, wrong side up, on each student’s single desk. When
he got back to his large rectangular writing table he raised an
arm, looked at his watch, and said in a solemn voice, “You may
begin.”

Feena gave Benny and Jo a quick grin and
turned over her paper. There were three sheets and three questions.
Some tests they had to do on computer but the adults insisted
handwriting was still a required and necessary skill.

The first question was about the excerpt she
had recited the night before at dinner, so that was easy. She wrote
that down. Behind her, Jo blew his nose.

Feena finally looked at the last question.
She didn’t have a lot of room left on her last page. It read,
“Absolute Law was handed down to the Reos in eight hundred and
seventy-five EO time; name two of the eight laws.”

She only had to name a couple. That was
easy.

She wrote down the first law in her own
words. “You shall not neglect, abuse, kill or eat an animal.” She
breathed out, checking for spelling mistakes. Time was running
out.

Then, she squeezed in the fourth law right at
the bottom of the page about not doing anything that resulted in
the death of lots of living creatures or wasting resources.

“Time is up.” Mr. Weffna’s firm voice invaded
her thoughts.

Feena didn’t think she’d spelled resources
correctly but didn’t want to be told off in front of the class for
writing after the announcement. Mr. Weffna allowed Benny to collect
the papers and the three friends walked out into the narrow
corridor, relieved. They headed for the main passage.

“I gotta go.” Jo sniffed, his brown eyes
watering, and headed out of the school area.

Feena and Benny walked slowly down the wide
passage toward the school entrance. The wide, transparent doors
were still swinging from Jo’s departure. The reception and visitors
lounge were on either side of the double doors.

“How did it go, Benny?” Her friend had more
and darker freckles than she did, and was skinnier too. But he was
taller.

“Okay, I think. How about you?”

“I remembered most of the stuff. I remembered
the mantra that the Elysians sung.”

“I wrote some of it down too. Did you
remember to write down how the animals spied on the Joirans?”

Feena stopped suddenly. “No, I forgot, that’s
the most exciting part.”

“Na, it’s not, the Twisted Ones are more
exciting.” Benny said loudly, his green eyes twinkling with
excitement. “Do you think the Twisted Ones are going to come and
get us soon?”

“Shhh.” Feena smiled at the receptionist, who
was looking at them from over the front counter. “Don’t know. The
adults don’t like talking about it with us. I tried looking on the
Netcom in our quarters but it says it’s restricted.”

“Yeh, I tried too. I wonder why they are
going to come. Are they angry with us? Do you think the humans that
came to the Joiran Cluster were different-looking from us?”

“Don’t know to your first two questions and
no to the last. The only difference between humans and Joirans is
that humans grew old and died, although I heard Dad say to Mum one
night that the humans, except the Reos, had sex with another
species and had Joiran babies.”

Benny screwed up his face.

“Anyway, now we are Joirans that live a lot
longer and we’re smarter than humans too. Besides, the humans that
came here were all scientists. Maybe that’s why the Twisted Ones
hate Joirans.”

“Not all!”

“Okay, some were bodyguards or whatever. They
guarded the scientists.” Her tone spoke volumes.

“Boy, you don’t like scientists much. Is it
because of your parents?”

“They’re not really scientists, but they work
with a lot of them. We have them over for dinner and it’s so
boring. The scientists keep asking me lots of stupid questions,
like, ‘Are you sleeping soundly, Serafina? Are you dreaming? What
do you dream about?’ Sometimes, I make stuff up and they write it
down. They’re horrible; when I have nightmares, they love it. Once,
they asked me if I dreamt about Reos; why would I dream about him
or his descendants?”

“They asked you about Reos?” Benny made a
connection; he shut his eyes and then looked back at her. “The
Elysians sung about him in the mantra.”

She rolled her eyes, “Didn’t you write that
bit in the test?”

“I forgot. But I found out last month that
the first Reos was a founding scientist from Earth. The Elysians
did something to him when he was on the space ship, the one that
the scientists had built to escape Earth. The Elysians liked Reos.
I can’t remember the name of the ship. Two, Tue, something.” He
shrugged his shoulders in frustration.

Feena was interested. They had stopped
walking. “Where did you find that? I’ve always wanted to know why
the name Reos was sung by the space orcas.”

Benny shuffled his feet. “Mum forgot to
restrict the site when she got up to go to work and I had some time
to have a look. I did manage to read that the Weird Ones attacked
the ship Reos was on and the Elysians stopped it, but then Dad
walked in and I was sprung.”

“Too bad,” Feena said with feeling. “I wonder
what the Twisted and Weird Ones look like?”

“I bet they are big and hairy, with horns and
fangs instead of teeth.” He tried to make a scary face.

“Or maybe—” she replied with some scorn
“—they are just twisted and funny-looking.”

Benny twisted his body, but Feena tapped her
head. They walked out together, pushing the doors as far as they
could and watching them swing. They quickly ran off when they saw
the receptionist get up, and they kept arguing who was right about
the Twisted and Weird Ones. They stopped running after almost
bumping into an Anamoth cruise attendant around a corner.

“Aren’t the Twisted Ones also called Ill,
Illu …?”

Feena offered helpfully, “Illudere?”

“Yeh.”

“Yep.”

Benny gave her a dirty look. She grinned at
him, showing straight white teeth. “The scientists all call them
the Illudere, but I prefer to use Twisted Ones.”

“Why?”

“Cause the Elysians say Twisted Ones, that’s
why. But then they say ‘Sharith’ for the Weird Ones.” She changed
the topic. “Do you have time to, err, investigate?”

“Na, I have to go to the bridge. Dad wants me
to watch some more Verging.”

Feena exaggerated a yawn. Benny rolled his
eyes. Benny had dragged both Feena and Jo with him on one Verging
excursion. It was boring watching the adults on the bridge. The
crew stood around saying words the trio didn’t really understand.
It wasn’t as if you could feel the cruise ship verge into another
dimension. It didn’t feel any different when you were in the other
dimension.

They said their goodbyes and Feena
determinedly went to investigate. She wanted to get Mr. Pollocks
but thought she might have to crawl in the ducts to get to
somewhere interesting, like the hydroponics gardens when the water
was like a mist in the air. Mr. Pollocks wouldn’t like that.

Hours later, after crawling around in the
network of ducts and peeping through the grill, she checked to see
if the corridor was clear and backed out of the narrow tube. She
realized it was quite late and that her mum and dad would be
looking for her by now. The panel lay to one side on the blue
carpet. She picked it up and pressed it back in.

She straightened her green top and black
pants and turned toward the opposite corridor, taking a few steps.
There was a strange noise ahead. It sounded like their practice
alarms but it also sounded like the battery was dying. She stood in
the middle of the T-junction and then moved back against bulkhead
panel she’d just replaced. Feena heard a dull, thumping noise down
the corridor she was facing. She looked around to her left and
right, concerned. The passage she was in was still empty. She was
about to leave and report the noise when the emergency system began
its cry of alert. Explosions and vibrations began moments later.
Further thunderous sounds and weapon fire hurt her ears; she could
see falling debris and smoke.

Feena felt the heat on her face as she stood
up against the bulkhead of the cruise ship. All around her chaos
reigned. The once empty passage now had adults running up and down,
shouting words she couldn’t make out. Her ears were ringing from
the explosion. The overhead lights had gone from their usual
“white” to “red and blue.” Sirens sounded at all stations. Her
stomach lurched and her ears hurt. In the heat of the attack, she
looked down and saw that her best top was stained brown and red.
Her legs were wet from fright. Her pants were torn. When the urine
slid down over cuts obtained from shrapnel, she groaned. The
stinging sensation distracted her from the chaos.

“It hurts,” Feena cried, but no one paid her
any attention. Flashes of color exploded around her and she saw
bodies flung around, and those that were not lying on the floor had
faces filled with terror. She looked around, hoping to see someone
she knew.

“Feena,” a familiar voice cried out. She
looked around to her right and saw Mum. Feena cried with relief.
Just as she took a step towards her, she saw her dad just behind
looking at something else. The door between them slid closed,
sealing the damaged area. Her father’s screams and mother’s cries
cut off abruptly as the emergency panel closed down on her side
over the standard door, securing the undamaged corridor.

Feena was terrified. Weapons fired again
nearby but she had frozen in fear. As the terror lost its strong
grip, she shrunk down, trying to press herself further into the
grey wall and held tightly onto one of the metal support arches
that had large, circular cutout shapes. Her fingers grew whiter
with each passing moment. Her golden eyes widened at the scene.
Smoke erupted from the opposite corridor several feet from where
she huddled, and an exit hatch exploded, crashing into the bulkhead
opposite it. She felt the warm air on her face from that direction
and did not notice the small trickle of blood coming from her
forehead. Her brown hair was matted with it. She did not scream;
she did not utter a whimper. Her small, sharp face was deathly pale
beneath the freckles.

From the damaged hatch emerged creatures from
her worst nightmares. They were large beasts with broad shoulders,
hair that rose up from the center of the scalp and horns protruding
from their heads. The beasts wore armor and walked as men did. She
gulped. Benny was right; it must be the Twisted Ones. One of them
saw her and nodded to one of his companions. He approached her. The
weapons she saw looked like ones she’d seen on an excursion to a
museum on Saxe. No one used weapons like that anymore. The Joiran
Coalition said it was unethical. If you couldn’t face an enemy
without a sword, then you shouldn’t be in battle. Startled, she
realized the figure was looming over her, the dark eyes seemingly
piercing her mind. Darkness enveloped her as he grabbed her. She
came around while in the arms of the beast and heard him speaking
over his shoulder, “… we have what we want, let’s go …”

She cried out for her bear and just before
blackness closed around her, she heard her kidnappers respond to
her cry.

“What’d she say?”

“Dunno … Mr. Pollocks? Let’s get back to the
vessel.”

Her delicate job done, the EuroWasp sped
away; she was the fastest vessel in the Cluster. Now, the Genetic
Alteration Council would no longer be able to keep the project a
secret.

{[JOIRAN CLUSTER] [Pteraspis] [Saxe, Port Saxe]

[914857/2577/22/space]}

Amir Donaven was furious. He could not believe the
poor emergency and reactive time of the Emergency Response Team. He
wanted to change their name from ERT to inERTia. They should have
already dispatched a clean-up and emergency crew, begun to move
toward the damaged ship and sent word to EO about the problem.
Instead, it was slow in the process of sending out a message to EO,
had not laid out a flight plan to go to the ship in distress and
they were trying to figure out who had attacked the ship. Still,
the whole reason why he was there was to conduct emergency
scenarios and for some professional training. They got more than
what they bargained for.

The Pteraspis had received emergency signals
from the cruise ship Anamoth a day ago. The one thing they had done
correctly was to contact him immediately and request help. He
looked down at the screen in front of him, reading the signal and
its report. The cruise ship had received forty percent damage to
hull and interior, the engines were down and communications were at
best spasmodic.

That wasn’t the worst news; a little girl of
seven had been kidnapped, and her parents were alive but frantic.
Along with the girl some DNA samples had been taken. This was to
become his primary responsibility and he was to choose a number of
other ships to join him in a search and rescue mission. All other
ships in the Joiran Cluster were to be notified to act as
watchtowers. He sent for a captain who had been taking leave and
who had been recommended—he didn’t want to admit they forced the
issue—to him by his superiors.