Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 02 (5 page)

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Wandering through the Nevada badlands at night, she felt the presence of the snake well before she saw it or heard the warning buzz of its rattles. She turned and saw it in the moonshadow of a large rock. A coiled mass of muscle, with black circles running down its tan spine, only its head and the quickly vibrating scales at the end of its tail stood out.

The snake’s buzzing increased as she reached her hand out to it. The creature’s threat-panic emanated out from it as if riding the sound waves. She recognized the terror rising from it and knew instantly that this creature would strike to protect itself. Squatting down on her haunches, she pulled her hand back and stuffed both of them into the pockets of the leather flight jacket she had stolen from the base.

Drawing in a deep breath of cool night air, she banished her fatigue and concentrated. Envisioning the snake’s fear as ripples circling out from a central point, she fashioned her thoughts as a spear and drove them back through the reptile’s primitive display.

Do not fear me, little brother. You would not find your venom very effective on me. She smiled as the buzz dropped in tempo. Iamyourally. Iamasmallsun to warm you and shade to cool you. If you will guide me, I shall protect you.

Though she composed her thoughts in words, she sent them as emotions of safety and satisfaction. The Mohave rattlesnake ceased its threat display altogether, then slowly and languidly uncoiled. Gliding forward effort-lessly, the four-foot-long snake slid from the rock and approached her. It stopped two feet away and half coiled to strike but did not begin rattling again.

She slowly withdrew her left hand from the jacket and extended it.
I am Rajani. I will not harm you.

The creature flickered its tongue over her hand, then withdrew a bit.

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Yes, I taste different. Not your prey at all. We will be allies.She opened her jacket and unbuttoned the fatigue shirt at the waist. The snake slid forward and entered the darkness between her flesh and the rough cotton fabric of the shirt, it went all the way around her waist better than two times, its scaled hide feeling slick and warm against the flesh of her belly.

Rajani stood slowly, waiting for the slap of rattles against her flank to warn her if she was in danger of a strike. She felt confident that the snake’s venom would not hurt her because of her alien constitution, but she was not absolutely certain of that fact. Since she knew she could process food from Earth, and her parents had told her that humans and her people could produce hybrids, she realized that the basic protein chains that made up her body were the same as those found in most of the things the snake ate.

Her two-day trek out of the base designated “Area 51”

had not been an easy one. The actual escape from the base had been much easierthan she expected, but she put that down to security having been arranged to keep snoopers out instead of people in. The guards directed all their attention to things happening outside.

Emerging from the depths of the mountain, she had managed to steal the flight jacket to ward off the cold. She initially took finding it as a grand stroke of luck: It had been packed away with other warm clothing in a trunk. The barracks room was obviously used for storage—she sensed no impressions of anyone having visited the room within the last three months. She could not understand why such a valuable coat would remain forgotten when it was so cold.

She took it, a smaller pair of boots and a boonie hat into which she stuffed her hair. Looking in a mirror in the room, she imagined seeing herself through the eyes of a human and concluded, because of the way the clothes draped her so completely, she would easily be mistaken for a juvenile wearing an adult’s clothing. The benefit of the oversized clothes was that they deemphasized the fact that her head was a bit disproportionately large for her body.

The most difficult part of her escape came as she attempted to leave the secure portion of the base. Luckily for her, two black, bat-wing planes swooped low for tandem landings on the long airstrip. As they touched down and raced along the dry lake bed, the two air police manning the gate turned to watch.

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She took that opportunity to telepathically add in the image of a spaceship, one of the ships on which her parents had arrived on Earth, to the tableau. While that addition clearly interested them, they accepted it far more readily than she had expected. She sensed no surprise from them, and no anxiety, which is what she had largely recalled a ship’s presence creating before.

“Looks like they’ve got the F-42 out for night maneuvers.”

The African-American guard pulled off his cap and scratched his head. “Wonder if that thing can see the Stealths?”

His partner laughed aloud. “C’mon, my kid’s got a radar gun that can spot those antiques on the wing. The tech those onion-heads have can read it molecule by molecule.”

“I guess.”

Rajani raced out into the Nevada desert With the term
onion-head
had come an undercurrent of fear and hatred.

That immediately sparked a bitter memory of the fights Dr. Chandra used to have with his research assistant, Nicholas Hunt. Whenever the little man with a lopsided head had looked at her, she had sensed the same fear-based hatred, and it abated only slightly when his focus of attention shifted from her to Dr. Chandra.

He called itprejudice. On an intellectual level she had understood how fear of the unknown and uncertainty about the future can fester into a knot of hatred for anything different and possibly superior. Because of her empathic abilities, however, Rajani had experienced the virulence of the hatred in a way that Dr. Chandra never could, and she wondered if its strength had been what warped Nicholas’ features and head, instead of the childhood accident he claimed.

The gentle tickle of the snake’s rattles against her side brought her back to the present. At first she thought the snake had been picking up on the emotions triggered by the memories, but then the night breeze brought the sound of the whimpering dog and a sobbing child to her.

Though faint, she knew the sounds came from very close by. Pointing her face into the wind, then turning her head left and right in two scans, she located the source of the sound and headed toward it.

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She used a dry wash to make her approach. The banks only rose up about three feet above the sandy bed.

Tumbleweeds and some small prickly-pear cactus grew up along the edges, which helped shield her, but she still had to crouch. Working forward slowly, her night vision allowing her to avoid stepping on anything that might make a sound, she reached the outskirts of a small campsite.

Huddled in the darkness, she studied the situation using all her senses. She saw two children clinging to each other, and a mutt of a dog with them. The larger one spoke softly to the smaller, but her words did nothing to dull the terror radiating from the boy like heat from a blast furnace. Both wore rags, and dust caked them except where it had smeared across their cheeks from wiping away tears.

Though the larger one did her bestto hide herfeelings, she became the minor star in a binary system of fear.

Like the mongrel beside them, the children had both been chained to a metal stake driven into the ground just beyond a small fire. Rajani sensed a connection—an alliance—between them and the dog. Beyond them, almost eclipsed by the strength of the young boy’s terror, she picked up the random emotional patterns of two other individuals. She could not determine age or sex because of the degree of interference caused by the boy, but the steady level of their feelings told her they were unconscious.

Like a shadow, Rajani moved into the camp. The sheer shock of the surprise exploding from the girl when she saw her nearly made Rajani cry out. She raised a hand in caution to the girl, then held it out to the left so the dog could get a noseful of her.
Yes, brother mine, I have
come
to strengthen your pack. I will free you and your companions.

The hair on the dog’s spine, which had risen abruptly, slowly settled back down. The dog licked her hand, which made the girl less anxious. The boy, who Rajani knew was her brother, peeked out at her with one eye. Rajani smiled at him and his sister, then took another step forward and grasped the metal stake.

The girl waved her hands. “No, no. Go away. You have to go away!” Her harsh whisper barely carried the six-foot length of the chain, but the fear backing it slammed into
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Rajani like a pile driver. The little boy’s anxieties spiked upon hearing his sister’s words. His hopes for rescue had been raised then shattered. Panic pulsed from him like blood from an arterial gash.

His panic was the empathic equivalent of staring at the sun with a telescope. She tucked her head down and raised her fists to her temples. Immediately, the shields she had once relied upon to keep her sane amid a world of emotions dropped into place, shutting everything out.

Looking up, she could see the fear in the children’s eyes, but it no longer assaulted her.

She twisted the stake to the left, then back to the right, and yanked it out of the ground. The chains rattled a bit, but no more than they did when the children moved. She stood and slipped the ends of the chains off the stake. “You are free.”

A hand grabbed her right shoulder and spun her around. A huge man whose belly stretched a dirty plaid shirt to the point where it gapped open between the buttons looked down at her. “Whadda we got here?” He tried to bat her hat off, but the chinstrap held, leaving it to hang at her back.

The flood of golden hair clearly surprised the man.

”Boxer, check this out. We got us a night-thrill.” He reached inside her jacket and grasped the lapels of her fatigue shirt. Pulling left and right, he popped buttons and exposed her breasts to the night air. “Oh, yeah, fine. She’s mine first.”

Rajani, stunned and surprised by the man’s appearance and the malignancy of his lust, could think of nothing as his big calloused hands brushed across her breasts and around to her back. He started to pull her forward, then he jerked sharply and screamed. Reeling backward, arms flailing, he stared wide-eyed at the snake hanging from his right wrist by its fangs. His heels caught on a rock and sent him flying back into a stand of cholla cactus.

Boxer had awakened when his name had been called, but the scream brought him to his feet. Wearing only frayed jeans and holed socks, Boxer charged at Rajani like a bull. He snatched her up in a hug, but she managed to rake his face with her gold claws. Shrieking madly, he dropped herto the ground and clutched at his ruined face.

She landed hard on the ground and fell back as blood
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streamed from between the man’s fingers. Before Rajani could move, the dog shot at the man and sunk its teeth deeply into his right leg, bringing him down. Moving in concert with the dog, the little girl scooted forward on her butt and looped the length of chain around the man’s throat. Planting her feet on his meaty shoulders, she yanked back with her hands while straightening her legs.

The man’s neck popped with a gunshot sound that made Rajani wince and the boy cry out. Rajani looked over at the other man, but she sensed nothing in the way of active emotions from him. His body twitched a bit, but his breathing came raggedly and his lack of reaction to the cactus festooning him told her he was suffering from a total central nervous system collapse. With its rattle playing an accompaniment to the sound of the man’s dying breaths, the snake coiled itself on his chest.

She scanned the area one more time, but felt nothing beyond the quartet of Earthlings around her. She shut herself off from the anger and hatred pouring from the girl, unprepared for such harsh emotions. The little boy continued to radiate panic, but it began to drop off as the dog trotted over to him and licked his face.

Squatting down by the fire, Rajani used the one remaining button to close her blouse. “Are you unhurt?”

The fire layered bright highlights into the girl’s honey-blond hair as she nodded. “Boxer knew I’d do him if I got the chance.”

The edge in the girl’s voice shocked Rajani. She looked more closely at her and, through the thin fabric of the girl’s soiled T-shirt, she detected the initial budding of the girl’s breasts.
She can be no more them 12 LMUs in age
physically, but her voice and her anger.
.. “I am Rajani.”

The girl let the chain go slack and slip through her fingers. “I’m Dorothy and that’s Mickey. The big one, the one your snake got, that’s Uncle Andy. Boxer was his friend. They brought me up here to sell me. I brought Mickey with me.”

“Sell you?” Rajani looked from Dorothy to the little boy, who remained hidden in the folds of the thin blanket they had been given. “But your parents, do they know?”

“Know?” Dorothy pointed at Andy’s body. “Check his pockets. My father gave him a bill of sale.”

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“What?”

“Well, daddy’s not been right since Mommy died.”

Mickey began to whimper, so Dorothy turned toward him.

”Quiet, quiet. It’s not your fault. Daddy didn’t mean it when he said it.”

The boy fell silent, but his anxiety began to radiate out again. Rajani smiled at his silhouette in an effort to draw him out, but he hunkered down, trying to make himself small and unnoticed. “Your brother is certainly shy.”

“Yes, he is. And I’m giving you the wrong impression of my father. He is a good man, really he is. Honest. He brung us up proper, too.” She waved her brother forward.