The Siege of New Terra (Star Sojourner Book 7) (16 page)

Dawn was breaking clouds apart, and dissolving them in a cauldron of hot fusion that peeked over an eastern ridge.

We dismounted and Chancey watered the draks by a swift-running stream that foamed white, while he refilled our two canteens. In the far west, blue mountains rose to glistening white peaks. Cloud shadows deepened their forested flanks in drifting mats. It was so much like the Colorado Rockies that I had to remind myself I wasn't home.

I sat cross-legged near a pile of rocks we'd gathered and beamed for warmth, while wind whistled over my head.

Spirit,
I sent,
I need your help. I don't think I can do this alone. I need–

Nor I, Terran.

I felt a pang of fear.
You always call me Terran when you're pissed at me. What'd I do now?

If you wish me to add my tel powers to yours, in a word, no.

I suppose you have a reason, because I really need your assistance! Did you forget that Lisa and I helped rid your world of the Dream Czar who was destroying your very being?

I forget nothing.

Then how about some payback? This alien tel is too powerful for me to tackle alone, and if I'm forced to back off…or if I'm killed, the Orghe Village will be–

Destroyed.

Yes! Now do you get it?

You, above all the beings of your race, Terran, are familiar with the geth state and how the kwaii goes on to new lifebinds.

In good time, Spirit. But this village isn't ready to go down under merc guns!

I cannot help you, though I wish it were otherwise.

I mentally sighed.
You always helped me in the past. I thought we were friends. I thought we could depend on each other. What changed?

I have been warned.

You, warned? By whom?

A messenger sent from Great Mind Himself. Sye Morth.

Sye Morth, the Loranth? I know Morth. We're friends! Is he back in geth state?

He was summoned by Great Mind to deliver the message.

What message?

Great Mind was not pleased that I forced you and your young offspring to Halcyon to destroy the Terran czar.

Morth told you that?

In no uncertain sends.

Why?

I do not question the Absolute Laws of the Creator and Designer of All Things. He decreed that I should no longer harm an alien race with His gifts to me of tel power. That we are all His children.

You'll be harming the Orghe people if you don't help me.

That is an indirect consequence of events and not the same as harming an Evgran to help others.

Is that what the alien calls himself, an Evgran?

She. It is the chosen name of her race for themselves. My orders from the Lord Creator are to keep hands off, in your language.

He's taking the wrong side, Spirit. And so are you.

You Terrans are a haughty race.

We've been called worse. So then I'm on my own?

Your future is in the convoluted twists and turns of your own mind.

Spirit, I couldn't look in a mirror if I sat back and let the mercenaries kill every Orghe on this island. The women. Children… And what about the other islands?

Have you ever considered that it might not be your task to save them?

No, I haven't. Not in this bind, or hopefully, the next! Have a nice day, Spirit. Say hello to Sylvia for me.
I cut the tel-link, stood up, and stared at the ground.

Chancey came back with the draks. “What'd he say, man?”

“The cavalry's not coming to the rescue, Chance.”

“Are you shittin' me? We're on our
own
?”

“I told you to go back. You still can.”

“Well, what the fuck is his problem? You risked your life, man, an' you had to risk your kid's life too, to help that scud on his own planet!”

“He got his orders from higher up, Chance.” I mounted the drak. I felt weary from the night's ride and from what lay ahead. “I don't want to talk about it right now.”

Chancey followed me as I turned my drak toward the mercenaries' camp and tapped his sides. He moved forward eagerly, swinging his long scaly neck and snorting in the cold morning air, unaware, in his reptilian mind, of the danger I was guiding him into. He trusted me, as I had trusted Spirit. Not the best approach for survival.

Chancey rode up beside me. I got a poem for you, Superstar."

“Go for it.”

"Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell,

Rode the two fools."

“Yeah,” I said, “that's a good one too.”

Evrill trilled anxiously below the sound level audible to humans as Big Mack left his desk and strode up to her in the cinderblock interrogation room. Early light filtered hazily through the window behind him, forcing Evrill to squint to see the Terran clearly. At least two feet taller than the short, squat Egruan woman, with two strips of thick hair above his narrow, forward-set eyes, and hanging in scraggly clumps from his head, the thick-lipped Terran appeared to hairless, tanned-skinned Evrill as a large predatory biped of her new homeworld, Equus. His smell of rotted fish had her holding her breath and calling on her reserve lung sac of oxygen. Her round amber eyes, placed on the sides of her smooth head, grew larger and moved forward to focus. Her stomach churned with fear and disgust as he approached. She spread her spindly legs for balance on wide hips beneath the brown smock, drew back thin lips in an attempt at a Terran smile, and took a step back.

Big Mack clenched his great white-knuckled fists as he towered over her. “You were supposed to stop the human tel,” he shouted. “To kill him, if need be.”

Her eardrums, vibrating above their normal range of waves, sent flashes of pain coursing through her skull. She maintained her composure against the onslaught, blinked her eyes, and wished she were back on Equus.

“I was not hired to kill,” she retorted in her tremulous voice, “only to threaten him into leaving New Terra.”

“Well, is he leaving New Terra, or is he continuing toward my base camp?”

Evrill probed, found the Jules mind and locked onto it. “He continues to approach with his cohort.”

“I didn't ask for a progress report. Why haven't you stopped him?”

She threw up mental images and chose one. “He is…
determined
to prevent you from exterminating the Orghes.”

“No fucking kidding, lady? An' the sun's gonna rise in the east tomorrow! I didn't need to pay you mucho creds to hear that.” He paced to a wall. “Goddammit!” He slammed his fist into it and turned back, rubbing his knuckles.

Evrill winced and tucked her eyes further back in her head for protection as Mack approached.

“That motherless fucker is coming here to kill me. You understand? He figures with me dead, my people will leave New Terra. He may be right!”

She nodded in Terran style. What was wrong with this human? She had told him that herself after reading the Jules Terran mind yesterday.

“I want to know,” Big Mack said too softly, “what you plan to do to stop him?” His bushy brows lifted further up on his forehead. She hadn't known that humans could do that.

“When he gets closer,” she said and trilled, “I will choose an image from my mental store, and confuse him into thinking he's someplace else.” She drew back lips in an imitation of a smile, and nodded.

Big Mack glanced at his two guards, stationed at the door.

“How about Hawaii, back on Earth, Evrill,” he said quietly. “He should like that.”

“Uh,” Evrill scratched flaking skin from around her left eye, “if you prefer, but… But I was considering a place that would confuse his mind, and while he was struggling to make sense of his surroundings…” She spread a dark, clawed hand. “I would attack.”

Mack straightened. “And kill the crotefucker?”

Only if he refuses to retreat,
she thought but wouldn't say. “Yes, Sir Big Mack, and kill the crotefucker.”

Mack strode to the door and a guard opened it. He turned and pointed at her. “Don't fail me. If he breaks through your defenses and mine, and I'm forced to run, it will be over the burned remains of your body. And I won't grant you the benefit of a quick brand through the heart first. I don't even know where your heart is, you freak.”

And as I die,
she thought, and conjured an image of Big Mack sprawled on the ground motionless,
my last act will be to slice your brainstem in half like the sinew of a loathsome beast.

She lifted her head, nodded agreement, and allowed her eyes to focus sharply on the humans as they left. She waited for their pounding footsteps to stop echoing down the hall, then flowed through the cinderblock wall and took a deep draft of soothing morning sunlight.

I stood upon a hill carpeted with pine needles, the drak's reins looped over my arm, and peered through graphoculars Chancey had hidden inside his jacket when he followed me into the woods. The morning air held the forested land in its grip, not yet loosened by the early sun.

In the far distance, I could just barely make out Big Mack's base, tucked in the arm of the silver river.

I rubbed my eyes and kneaded my sore shoulders. My brain was sending me messages that it wanted sleep.

I stumbled as I walked the drak back to our camp at the foot of a limestone cliff.

Chancey glanced up from skinning a large, brown-furred, unicorned animal he'd killed. The boulder we'd beamed earlier gave off a welcome warmth, and no smoke to target our position.

I don't know whether my stomach ached with hunger, or was queasy from the odor of all that raw flesh and spilled innards. I'm a biologist, and dissecting animals is nothing new to me, especially when I ran an alien animal sanctuary on planet Syl 'Tyrria. But I'd never associated dissection for a diagnosis of disease with purposely killing an animal for food. This time it was necessary, to maintain our strength.

I dropped the drak's reins. He licked scaly lips and drooled at the sight of all that raw meat.

Chancey's drak was happily crouched over a haunch, tearing into the tender rear flesh.

Chancey smirked. “You look a little green around the gills.” He threw my drak a rack of ribs. The animal caught it between teeth and I heard bones crunch as he settled down for his meal. “Any more messages from the friendly alien?”

“Not yet.” I stood by the heated boulder and unzipped my jacket.

Chancey sliced off two large steaks and threw them on the boulder. I stepped back as they sizzled and spat juices. “Sorry,” he shrugged, “no thermostat.”

I picked up a tough twig and moved the steaks so they wouldn't stick. Just as I wished that Chancey had spilled the animal's innards away from our camp, his drak trotted to the carcass and slurped up the smelly guts.

I turned my head away as my stomach lurched. But in the end, he licked up shreds and only smears of blood remained on the bare ground.

The gory odor was replaced by the pungent smell of roasting steaks. I breathed it in and now my own mouth watered.
How judgmental we are,
I thought, placed on these scales by our culture and our physiology.

With the steaks done, and the rest of the unicorned animal eaten by the draks, cracked bones and all, Chancey and I swallowed digestall tablets and tore into the tender steaks, while juices ran down to our bare elbows. Fresh meat is always tastier than mock, which is cloned from the DNA of living animals. But considering the good life of clone animal herds, I still prefer mock.

After our meal, we washed with broad, fuzzy leaves of a ground plant dipped into the raging stream.

By the time we returned to camp, our draks were asleep. I brushed debris away from the boulder and beamed it again.

Chancey and I made mats of pine needles and settled down for much needed sleep. I stared at the brilliant indigo sky and rubbed my eyes. “When you come down to it, Chance, we don't need much more than this, if our families and friends were with us, and a good supply of digestall.”

“Always the dreamer, Superstar. Winter ain't set in yet.”

“I've got one for you, Chance. 'If winter comes, can spring be far behind?””

He sighed. “So far behind, we'd never make it.”

I curled up and closed my eyes.
Good chance we won't make it anyway, buddy.

* * *

I drifted quickly into sleep, with the warm hand of a rising sun on my face, and slipped into a dream where Lisa, Sophia, and I cantered our horses across verdant fields of spring, with Lisa's dog Tikkie running through a bloom of flowers.

My black Arab stallion Asil sprang ahead and Lisa's horse Ginger followed, with Sophia's white Arab mare Stormy plowing through golden grass to catch up.

The sensation of joy was palatable, and within the dream I laughed. My forebodings sloughed off like a snake shedding an old skin.

Asil's ebony mane brushed my hands as a frozen wind suddenly howled, like winter's last breath, and lifted dead leaves to swirl into a rising whirlwind that loomed above, and chased us.

“Faster!” I shouted and kicked Asil's flanks. He leaped into a gallop, but as I looked back, I saw the growing tornado envelop Lisa and Sophia.

Each stiff leaf that struck my face bit like a viper. I tried to call to Lisa and Sophia, but the leaves scraped my lips and crawled into my mouth.

Ahead, the tents and vehicles of Big Mack's base materialized out of white fog.

Turn back,
a voice whispered inside my head.
Turn back or suffer the consequences.

I can't! I have a mission. Anyway, this is just a dream.

Are you certain of that?

Is this Evrill?

More than a dream, Jules, Terran of Earth. A warning. Turn your horse. He will obey.

When Big Mack is in his grave!
I tried to push my mind out of this dream. This nightmare. Evrill held me there.

We are not finished,
she sent.

Do your worst, scud. It's still only a dream.

Then dream this, for I will haunt you with this dream as long as you continue to the base camp.

Oh no! I saw Ginny sliding off the boulder again.

Julip,
she screamed. It was the name she'd always called me.
Save me. Please!

I'm coming, Ginny.
I threw myself off the cliff and caught her as we fell. We dropped like stones, and I felt the impact past dream.
Ginny!
I cried.
Oh my God.

Her skull was cracked open. The skin had been ripped from her face. One eye hung out of its socket. The other was a dark hole where brains oozed.

This, Jules Terran, is what your sister looked like at the bottom of the canyon.

I couldn't catch my breath. Couldn't think.

The small body stood up and jerked, as though drawn to its feet on puppet strings. The eyeball dangled from her broken skull. She turned to me, a limp hand outstretched.
This is what you did to me, my brother.

In the dream, I turned and ran.

Run,
Evrill whispered,
back where you came from. Continue to the base, and you won't dare to shut your eyes.

I screamed as I sat up. Chancey leaped to his feet in one jump and grabbed his rifle. “What the hell is it, man?” he almost fell backward. “What happened?”

I wiped a sleeve across my sweaty forehead and stared at my trembling hands. “I just lost round two,” I grated.