by Jean Kilczer
Just friends come to visit. Keep sending, Jules.
Older Brother!
I threw back the flap of the tent and ran outside. ”Joe!”
He jumped and spilled his plate.
“They're here!” I said.
From the light of the small campfire I saw the stunned look in Joe's eyes as he stood up. For a moment there was only the sizzling drone of the waterfalls.
“They found us!” I said.
“Where?” Joe demanded.
“I don't…” I tried to probe for a direction. The tel link dissolved. “I don't know. They withdrew the link. They were using it to locate us.”
“Those mother fuckers!!” Chancey threw his dish on the ground and stood up. “They got us running like scared fucking rabbits!” He unholstered his stingler and spun the ring.
Reika threw me a worried look and picked up her backpack. Wolfie and Bat went for theirs. I knew the packs held the warrior equipment.
“Here we go again,” Bat said wearily. He slung his pack over his shoulders and put on the display helmet. “Only problem, boys and girls. Where in perdition do we run to this time?”
Huff took his ankle mouse beamers from his pack and strapped them on. “Someplace with no BEMs?” he offered.
I tried to probe for a direction. Their tel link dissolved, but my probe touched many minds, all connected within a network. “They're coming.” I felt their approach as a growing pressure against my upraised shields. I scanned the sky and took a breath. “They're getting close,” I said numbly.
Joe strode up to me and grabbed the front of my jacket. “Are you sure?”
I nodded.
Chancey trotted to a ledge, leaped onto it, and studied the sky. It would be hard to pick out moving lights in that desert blaze of stars.
“Hide the gear under ledges,” Joe ordered. “The tents too.”
I went to the edge of the camp, with the sound of tents being quickly broken down and stuff being thrown under ledges, and tried to concentrate.
“Huff!” I heard Joe shout. “Stay away from him!”
Huff whined, but he didn't approach me.
Where are you, older brother? I sent out on a hunch and probed for a direction.
Closing in on you and your team. We know what you seek, Jules. The star positioning system. You will all be food for Bountiful before we allow that to happen.
A chill like ice slid down my spine. I turned to look at Joe and reached out to steady myself with a hand on a ledge.
Joe strode over to me. “You're in touch with them, aren't you?”
I nodded. “They know we want the SPS. They intend to—“I took a breath. “They're going to—“
I was wearing my stingler. He pulled me toward him and silently unstrapped it. His face was grim.
I closed my eyes. Is Bountiful with you? I sent.
She is with us. To draw you in. You are a formidable telepath, my alien friend, but Bountiful is stronger.
I gasped and broke the link. Only Brother benefitted from it. I realized I was squeezing Joe's arm and let go.
He gripped my jacket to steady me.
We require no further links, Terran, Brother sent. We have you.
Chancey trotted up. “I don't see any land vehicles. If the slimes are coming, it's by air.”
“Doesn't matter,” I said. “They know where I am. It doesn't matter.” I brushed off Joe's hand and backed away from them.
“What are you doing?” Joe asked.
“They can only read me. Take the team and go.”
Joe glanced at Chancey.
“Can't do that, Jules.” Chancey stepped closer. “No man left behind. It's our mantra.”
Joe held out my stingler. “Then take this with you, kid.”
I backed away, my hand on the ledge. “They might make me use it on you, Joe.” I smiled wanly. “You should've given me that cyanide pill.” I looked at Huff. He sat on his haunches and watched us. “Stay with them, Huff,” I called. “You hear me? Stay with them!”
He raised his snout and howled.
I glanced at Joe and Chancey one last time, then turned and ran behind the ledge and into the black night before either of them could spin their stinglers to stun setting and hit me with them.
“Jules!” Chancey shouted.
“Come on,” I heard Joe tell him. “We've got four others to think about.”
I ran east, back toward the narrow box canyon, using the light of Denebria's orange moon, hanging low in the sky, to see my path. Perhaps the sheer canyon walls would impede the BEMs' tel probes. I tripped over a log and sprawled in the shallow stream. My palms were scraped and bleeding as I got to my feet. The moon that had guided me was behind the cliff and I stumbled through darkness.
You're running into our arms, Older Brother sent. How nice of you to make this easy for us. Keep coming, Jules. You're doing fine.
I stopped and slid down to my knees, gasping for breath. Even if I escaped the BEMs, there was no place left to go.
I put my head in my hands as I heard the whine of a hovair, and wished I had a knife. At least if I had a knife, I could make a quick end. “Please! Great Mind. Don't let them feed me to that monster alive.” I began to sob and couldn't stop. A passage from a poem played in my head. I am weary of days and hours, blown buds of barren flowers, and everything but sleep.
The whine of the hovair grew into a deafening roar as it hovered overhead. I drew in a shaky breath, got up and ran, terrified, not knowing where I was going, splashing blindly through the dark stream.
And smacked into something big and white. I fell to my knees, dazed.
“Friend Jules,” Huff panted, “climb onto my back.” He got down on all fours.
“Damn you! Why did you follow me? They'll get you too.” But I lifted myself onto his back and he sprang forward and galloped on all fours.
The hovair paced us. A light from its underside flicked on and swung in our direction. It pinned us in its glare as Huff raced along the floor of the canyon. I clung to his fur and wrapped my legs around his flanks.
The hovair cruised above our heads and lowered. I heard a door slide open. “Stop!” came the command through a mic. “We mean you no harm, Jules. You must get onboard now!”
Huff panicked. He ran sideways to evade the craft and tripped. I was thrown and landed hard in a bed of wet pebbles with my right ankle twisted beneath me. Pain blazed through it. Huff scraped the ground with his claws as he tried to get up. He howled, more a cry of pain, and fell back again.
“Huff!” I picked up a heavy branch and limped toward him, gritting my teeth against the pain that shot up my leg, and stood between my loyal friend and the tall shadows that emerged from the grounded craft.
“Come and get us, you bastards!” I screamed and swung the branch. The light was leveled full in my face as they approached. I stood in front of Huff, who tried again to rise but fell back. “You want us? Come and get us, damn you!”
A tall shadow approached. I swung at him with the branch, but missed with the glare of the light in my eyes. I saw him lift his arm. Pain crashed through my head. My knees went out from under me and I was suddenly on my back, staring at a blur of stars. I couldn't move my body.
“I'm sorry,” the shadowy figure said. “You left me no choice.”
The stars swam in a sky that became fluid. I felt my head roll back as gentle hands lifted me from the ground.
“Watch his ankle,” someone said in stelspeak.
“Hurry,” another voice said. “They're coming!”
I tried to raise my head, but couldn't. Huff howled in terror.
“Don't hurt him. Please!” I mumbled. The stars swam away and left me only a void.
My left cheek throbbed. The murmur of voices separated into words, then shreds of a conversation in a foreign tongue. The smell of antiseptics. A dull ache in my right ankle. There was a taste in my mouth I couldn't place. Something like sweet pickles. The conversation became knitted into coherent words and sentences
in stelspeak. I moaned and opened my eyes.
“He's waking up,” someone said and touched my left cheek. I tried to brush the hand away but my arm wouldn't lift.
“Leave it alone,” I rasped.
“How do you feel?”
“Like shit.”
“Are you thirsty?”
The blur resolved itself into a tall, lanky Denebrian male.
I nodded, carefully.
“Good. This will dull the pain and help you to heal faster.” His round mouth, furrowed with brown creases, stretched into a smile. He lifted my head and held a cup to my lips.
The liquid was cloyingly sweet but I drank it and hoped the digestall pill I'd taken was still active.
“We added a sweetener,” he said. “We know that humans like their food sweet.”
“Thoughtful of you,” I said. “Thanks.”
He wore a uniform of sorts, with splotches of green and tan and brown. An insignia on the chest showed a sheaf of wheat crossed with a beam rifle. His skin, drab olive green with brown reedy furrows in the folds, blended with the camouflage colors.
“Who are you?” I asked. I watched wisps of hair on his plated head move as he said something to a female Denebrian at the foot of my bed in their native tongue.
She nodded.
“We call ourselves Defenders United for Homeworld,” he told me.
“Oh,” I said, but couldn't help smiling at the acronym, even though it hurt my cheek. DUH. “Wait a minute!” I got up on an elbow. “Wait a minute. My friend Huff. Where is he? Is he OK?”
He helped me to a sitting position. “Your friend is fine, though a bit of a handful.” His nose slits flared with a sigh.
Uh oh, I thought. “What'd he do?”
“Oh. We tried to keep him sedated while we set his hind leg.”
“Is it broken?”
“Oh, yes. Compound fracture.”
“Damn.”
“He, uh, he woke up in the middle of the procedure. What a metabolism! And proceeded to tear the OR apart. Then, instead of opening the door, he ripped it off the hinges and threw it into the recovery room. We have people recuperating in there. He said he was going to find you and that the Ten Gods…” His shaggy brown brows furrowed. “I think it was ten, had better keep us safe if we had harmed you.”
“Huff…” I rubbed a hand across my eyes.
“We finally cornered him in the basement with the cadavers and called in a veterinarian who shot him with a tranquilizer gun.”
I closed my eyes and rested my head in my hand. “How is he?”
“Oh, he's fine. We managed to set his leg and put it in a cast. He's not happy. But he's fine.”
“Where is he?”
“Well.” He pursed his lips into a pigeon hole.
I waited.
“We, uh, put him into a kennel where our veterinarian keeps wild animals for rehabilitation before releasing them back into the desert.”
“Huff is not a wild animal,” I said.
“Oh, of course not.”
I stood up, feeling shaky, and tested my ankle with some weight. It was sore, but I could walk. He took my arm.
“He's a Vegan!” I said.
“Yes. I know.”
“He's a member of a…a gentle, peace-loving race of beings with a culture and laws and a religion, for God's sake!”
“Of course. I understand.” He steadied me as I limped to a wall hook and took my jacket.” I looked around the small room. The female Denebrian smiled at me. I nodded back. “Where are we?”
“A medical center we turned into a safehouse for our rebel forces. It's a farming village in the southern desert.
I paused. “How'd they know where to find me?”
“Our guerrillas have watched your team ever since you attacked the BEMs' headquarters.”
I put on my jacket. “We could've used some help, Doc.”
He accompanied me into the hall. Four Denebrian women sat behind a long desk dressed in the same uniforms. “Our people lack your Earth technology, Jules,” he said. “Our guerrilla units make forays into enemy-held territories. They do what damage they can, with weapons they make from wood and vines, and gather what intelligence they can. Then they disappear back into the desert.”
The women stared at me as we walked by.
“They could not have backed you on your attack of the BEM compound,” he said. “Oh, nurse, I'm discharging patient Jules Rammis.”
An older woman, by the gray patches on her cheeks and arms, nodded and wrote something on a scrap of parchment.
“They followed your team to Sparsegro Canyon,” Doc said, “and were about to contact you when the BEMs discovered your hideout and…” He lifted hands, palms up, in what I assume was a shrug.
I stopped. “My friends…”
“They got away.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
I sighed with relief and leaned against the wall. “Did your guerrillas steal that BEM ship that landed in the canyon?”
He lifted his shoulders and let them drop. “We, uh, we don't like to use the term steal. We prefer to think of it as a gift they brought to our world.”
I nodded. Whatever.
He reached into his pocket and took out a wrapped purple plant leaf tied with a small vine. “Take one of these pills every four hours and call me tomorrow morning. It will relieve the pain and help your ankle to heal faster.” He patted the leaf in my hand. “I already gave you one pill ground into your drink.”
Considering how primitive were the surroundings, I wondered about such hi-tech drugs. “Where'd you get these pills,” I asked, “and the anesthetic for Huff? Do you trade with other worlds?”
“Oh, no.” His narrow shoulders shook as he looked at the women and chuckled. “We are devout isolationists.”
“Then how did you and your people learn stelspeak?”
“A merchant ship landed on our world during my grandfather's time. We traded for many things, including the first-contact Rosetta from your planet Alpha.”
“You incorporated it into the children's learning process?”
“Yes. We wanted the nations to be bilingual, just in case of second contact.”
Should've also developed a military and war machines, I thought but didn't say, just in case of second contact!
But nature provides, cousin,” he went on and put a long-fingered hand on my shoulder. “In the desert, and the high plains beyond, and the lush forests. Nature does not advertise his wares. He is sublime, and it is for us to unveil his gifts.”
“Yes.” Being an astrobiologist, I totally agreed. Except for the “he” part. “Funny.” I smiled. “We Terrans think of nature as a 'she'.”
“Ah,” he said. “The nurturing 'she'.”
A nurse helped a wounded Denebrian soldier who limped down the hall. He paused. “You're the human telepath,” he said to me, “from planet Earth.”
I nodded, but I wondered how these people really felt about me, considering the reception we'd received in Korschaff.
He reached out a bandaged hand. “Can we tap fingers, my cousin?”
“Sure.” I touched his fingers with mine. He tapped them three times and smiled. I smiled back. A Denebrian handshake, I assumed. I was glad he hadn't touched my scraped palms.
“We have the greatest hopes,” he said, “that you will contact your government on Alpha and send help before the BEMs' main assault.”
I met his weary eyes. “We're trying, my cousin. God knows, we're trying.”
“Yes, my cousin.” He tapped his chest. “God would know.”
I paused at the main door. “Can I pay you? I have a credcount.”
He smiled. “That would not work here. You are a guest in our village, cousin. Please. Do not offer anyone payment.”
Probably against their hospitality customs. “Won't somebody turn me in to the BEMs when I go out there?”
“Oh, no, no! Have no fears of that. The entire village
is a stronghold for DUH.”
“The BEMs don't come here?”
He shook his head. “As far as they are concerned, we are only a very minor farming village. There are much fatter pickings in the large towns and Capital Korschaff. Still, we have lookouts stationed. You know—“ He pressed a hand to his forehead. “They have already infiltrated the towns. They take our people and they…” He fluttered a hand. “I cannot speak of it.”
“I know,” I said softly and tapped the fingers he extended to me. “I thank you for your help, cousin.”
He nodded, wiped a tear and turned back to the hall.
“Fucking BEMs!” I muttered as I zippered my jacket and walked into the dusty desert street in the predawn chill with directions to the veterinarian's office. The drab angular buildings, made of black wood and stone, were scattered, without apparent rhyme or reason. A few Denebrians were already out, dressed in the inevitable green coveralls and yellow straw hats.
One tag dragged a travois with bundles of twisted dried black wood down the dusty street. He smiled at me and nodded as I walked by. “Going to be a cold day, cousin. Like some wood?”
“Uh. I don't have a fireplace…cousin.”
“Too bad.” He continued on. “A place needs a fire.”
An old male sat in front of a shop weaving a basket of straw and vines. Behind him, rows of beautiful baskets in different colors and shapes lined the storefront. I smiled as I walked by. He smiled back.
A young female stopped sweeping sand from the steps of an open restaurant and nodded as I approached. “Cousin,” she said.
I nodded back. “Cousin.”
Never had so many relatives, I thought.
The aroma of frying vegetables drifted out and I realized I hadn't eaten since yesterday. A cacophony of music emanated from inside, more like the clang of nuts and bolts being shaken inside a metal drum. I hurried by and wondered if they did “take out.” I'd come back with Huff for a meal after I bailed him out.
I paused at a water fountain for a drink, still trying to get the taste of sweet pickles out of my mouth. There, angled across the sandy street, was the vet's office.
“Huff,” I said, when the veterinarian, a tall, bulky female dressed in coveralls, led me to his cage. He slept on the floor, with his head on a blanket. His left hind leg bore a cast that kept it straight out. His soft white fur was caked with mud from the canyon floor. “Oh, Huff.” I turned to the vet. “Where's his water bowl?”
