by Roscoe James
His clothes had been cut off by the Medic, and he was stuck with a leather loincloth and a royal robe. He hated the sandals and finally kicked them off.
When Peenzan had insisted on coming along, he hadn’t had the strength to argue with her. He had no idea where the energy came from that made his cock swell against her ass as she sat in front of him on their strange ride, guiding the animal along the rocky trail.
Her father rode beside them and said something which she translated, “He wants to thank you for helping in the battle.”
He really didn’t feel like speaking, but managed, “I was glad I could help.”
The Queen moon was high overhead and he watched the queen’s daughter race by. He didn’t know what it was or what it would do, but he wished they’d get there. Leaning close, he felt her purr and whispered, “We have to hurry.”
“But you’re not strong enough. It might hurt you.”
He let his nose wander through her platinum locks and felt at peace, “We may not have time. Make it go faster.”
And she did.
* * * *
From the crest above the battle, he looked down the other side. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but was fairly certain he’d recognize it when he saw it.
“Help me down.”
She seemed resigned to his demands, but still managed to protest while she complied. “You are a fool. You should be in our bed getting better.”
“I need more light.”
After an exchange with the fighters, they gathered around and held their silver sticks out. A bright glow fell off the end making the immediate area as bright as daylight.
Then he saw it. About three meters below the crest a large metal tube was sticking out of the ground. He didn’t think he could walk down the side without falling and sat instead. Pointing, he said, “Tell them to be very careful and dig that thing out.”
He watched the men work while Peenzan sat beside him holding his hand and the King stood by his side, a hand resting on his shoulder.
He tried to remember where he’d seen a tube like that before, but it just wouldn’t come to him.
When one of the men looked up and said something, he said, “Tell him to wait and tell me exactly what he sees.”
“He says it has Zandill markings and that there’s a small screen with figures moving on it.”
“Does anyone here read Zandill?”
“I do.”
Whatever it was, he was sure it wasn’t good and he had an illogical aversion to her getting any closer, as if three meters might save her. It did no good. She was on her knees squinting before he could say anything.
“It has numbers and they’re counting down.”
“A timer. How much time is left?”
“In Zandill time there’s…”
When she didn’t answer he insisted, “How much time?”
“I’m not sure. They have a thirteen-hour day and only forty-seven seconds in a minute. Something like thirty-five minutes Meline time.”
“What’s that in earth time?”
“Twenty-eight I think.”
He just wanted to go to sleep. He wanted to close his eyes and curl up on the hard ground. He wanted to forget everything, but he couldn’t. Was he being a traitor? Or was he fighting the Zandill?
“Where’s the closest transporter?”
“At the palace.”
“How long?”
“I told you,” Peenzan sounded desperate.
“No! To get there!”
When no one answered he explained quickly, “You have to get it to a transporter and blind transport it to someplace uninhabited. An asteroid, a moon, the vacuum of space. Any place. And you have to do it before the time reaches zero.”
Peenzan gave orders and two of the fighters rode off in a cloud of dust balancing the bomb between them.
With a grunt he rolled to the ground and closed his eyes.
* * * *
He’d soundly rejected the liquid in the vials Crenshaw had sent, and instead sent them to the doctor to be checked as well. In spite of that, she’d seen his wounds continue to heal and his strength return.
The doctor finally reported. It was an Andrine plant poison that would have taken a week to very slowly and very painfully kill him.
She’d watched him sleep for a day and a night, and then eat as much as any three Meline fighters would, and now he was telling her he had to get to Zandill.
“Why on earth would you want to go to Zandill?”
“Because you need their help.”
“The Zandill! Never!”
Then he‘d walked off to the bathing pool and refused to tell her more.
Shoving her robe off her shoulders, she stepped into the water with him and announced, “Then I’m going with you.”
“You can’t,” he said and disappeared beneath the water.
She floated around and waited. When he came up and grabbed her, finding her lips with his, she knew she’d already won. “You can’t go without me.”
“Why not?” he asked and let his hands wander down to her back-fall.
She purred, watched his eyes go dreamy, and said smugly, “That’s why.”
* * * *
This is nuts. What the hell am I doing here? Peenzan stood beside him in full royal regalia, defiant to the end, and Peenzan’s handmaiden, of all people, stood behind them both.
Hill hadn’t understood the conversation, but he had captured the king’s anger when Peenzan had explained what he wanted to do. If looks could kill, he’d be dead. Oddly enough it had been the queen that had stepped close, looked him directly in the eye, and given the command.
There was no direct communication between the two worlds, and other than a blind jump, something he considered entirely too dangerous, there was no way to transport directly to a Zandill transporter station. They had to transport to another world, one with relations with Zandill, then transport in. A small complication, but doable.
Peenzan said something and they were suddenly standing in a Rangdon transporter station, and a creature half the size of Peenzan was standing, hand outstretched, waiting for them.
He didn’t know the language, but he did understand the custom and stepped up to touch the Rangdon’s fingertips. Peenzan and Pran did likewise, and when Pran engaged the creature in conversation, he understood why she’d accompanied them.
He looked around the brightly lit transporter bay and noticed no one seemed to pay any particular attention to them. As the spice of choice in the known galaxy, he was sure Rangdon received a lot of off-world visitors.
When Peenzan pulled his arm, he stepped back into the transporter and saw that Pran had stayed behind.
He steeled himself for what would happen next while he watched the diminutive creature step up to the flat screen that controlled the transporter and move his fingertips across its surface quickly.
In spite of the UC’s presence on their moon and good solid diplomatic relations, the Zandill were an odd lot and he was bringing something along they might not be too happy about. A Meline princess.
Pran and the well-lit transporter bay disappeared, to be replaced by a dark dank cave and two very surprised Zandill Warriors.
They stared long enough for him to step forward and give the traditional Zandill warrior greeting by fisting his left hand over his heart and looking at the floor.
He couldn’t tell what they were saying, but understood what was bothering them when they ignored him completely and walked several times around Peenzan.
Now for the hard part. He doubted seriously he would easily find a Zandill that spoke English, but he was sure they’d recognize him and his language as human, and hoped whoever discovered them would take them to someone else that did.
“We come in peace and I would like to speak with your commander.”
The two Zandill only grunted and pointed their weapons at Peenzan, and looked at him.
He tried again. “I would like to speak with
your commander.”
When Peenzan started speaking the guttural language, her left hand stabbing the air with the accompanying Zandill hand gestures, he was amazed. When one of the Zandill warriors engaged her and the conversation went on much longer than was needed to convey his message, he became concerned.
He watched as the second guard stepped away and raised a small communications device to his mouth to speak. Then, as quickly as it started, it was over and the two guards stepped back and watched them both in silence.
Before he could ask Peenzan what she’d said, a Zandill, small of stature and dressed in something Hill could only describe as less casual than body armor, appeared.
His mouth contorted in the crooked wink of a Zandill smile and he extended his hand to Hill in the traditional earth greeting of a handshake. “You must be Sergeant Hillsborough. I’m very pleased to meet you. My name is Zad.”
While the cutthroat tactics of their warriors were famous most everywhere in the galaxy, little was known about the people as a whole, and Hill felt completely out of his depth at reading the man’s sincerity, or more importantly, lack of it.
“Stanley Hillsborough and,” he said, stepping aside and raising a hand, “Princess Peenzan Fanston of the planet Meline.”
Zad dropped Hill’s hand and extended it to the princess, “Yes, Princess. How good to see you’re alive and well. We were all very concerned after the incident on UC-1. How lucky you were to avoid such a deadly fate.”
At first he thought Peenzan might not return the greeting, and breathed a small sigh of relief when her hand came up and she responded in Zandill.
Zad smiled and looked at him before complimenting the princess in English, “Your Zandill is excellent, Princess.”
“As is your English,” she replied.
Hill was getting antsy and wanted to move things along. Clearing his throat he ventured, “We’d like to apologize for showing up unannounced, but I believe I have some information that might be of importance to your people.”
Zad smiled and said, “But of course.”
“And how the hell do you know who I am?”
Zad laughed, which came out as a dry bark, and said something to the two guards before addressing Hill, “Why, you’re the Zandill spy, of course. And…” he turned to the two guards and gave a hand signal, “…instead of killing her, you’ve brought her to us.”
As the two guards stepped up and grabbed the princess, four more flooded into the transporter room and surrounded him.
* * * *
Blake was furious. He couldn’t believe the Meline news channels hadn’t reported anything yet. It had already been more than three days and there should be a pandemic ravaging the Meline population by now.
First the Omega unit gets wiped out, and then there’s no mention of a mysterious illness or similar catastrophe on that god-forsaken planet.
He’d already checked with RandD, and they swore their mix was tested and proven. It just made no sense. It had to be Hillsborough.
When his wall D chimed he barked an order and fell in the chair where he could see and be seen. When Lighton, the chairman’s assistant appeared walking around her bedroom wearing nothing but a smile, he stiffened and waited.
“So, Blake, what news do you have for the chairman?”
Reporting failure to the chairman was one thing, but reporting it to Lucy Lighten, the devil incarnate, was quite another.
He knew she already knew the answer to the question. She just wanted him to say it.
“Look, Lucy, why do you even ask? You already know the answer,” he replied flatly while he watched her lifelike image walk across her quarters to her closet and hang something up.
“Well, you know, Blake. I just like to stay on top of things,” she replied with a smirk.
Yeah, he thought, things like the chairman. He took in the bounce of her breasts as she crossed the room and picked something up from the floor, giving him a well-choreographed view of her ass, and wondered why the old man hadn’t died of a cardiac yet.
He knew she was well into midlife, somewhere north of a hundred, and she still looked thirty, which given the current state of healthcare, wasn’t all that unusual. It was just that she carried it so well. It pissed him off that even while she was ridiculing him, his cock seemed to have a mind of its own.
“Well, you’ve had your laugh, Lucy. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
When she sauntered toward her D unit, her image stepping out of the wall to tower over him, a short black riding whip snapping on her thigh, he knew he’d asked the wrong question. Her perfect white teeth shined behind her sneer, and snapping the whip across her open palm, she leaned in and said, “I think you know the drill. You’ve been a very bad boy, Blake.”
* * * *
He’d managed to stun one guard with a blow between the shoulder blades and now they had him shackled in an ornately adorned room standing in front of a table before Zad. When he pulled, his arms bulging, the two guards stepped close and nudged him with their weapons.
Blind with rage he yelled, “Where the hell have you taken her?”
“Now, now, Sergeant Hillsborough, you really shouldn’t be worried about the princess. You’ve completed your mission! And, might I add, you’ve done a wonderful job! Why, I’m sure our Premier will want to pin the Medal of Honor on your chest himself!”
“You know I don’t work for the Zandill!”
“But I saw it with my own eyes. Your chairman said it himself at a news conference,” came out in a sarcastic slur.
He was getting tired of the slimy bastard, “That’s bullshit! Besides…” Hill turned brusquely, managing to knock one of the guards off balance and stuck his shackled hands out, “…is this any way to treat a hero of Zandill?”
“But the bomb you placed at the Corporation dinner. Why, they’re still running the footage on the news. I saw you there sitting in the very chair that blew up! I really must say again how wonderful it is to meet the most famous Zandill spy in history.”
He saw red. This time when his big arms bulged, he was rewarded with a satisfying snap and the chain that ran from his ankles to his wrists broke. The guards scrambled away and brought their weapons up, a muzzle resting against each side of his head. He didn’t care. Struggling to take a step, he leaned across the table until it groaned under his weight, looked Zad in the eye, and said in a low menacing voice, “If the princess is harmed in any way, I will kill you myself. Very slowly.”
The only sound in the room was his own breathing and he watched in amazement as Zad smiled broadly, jumped up from his seat, and gave an order to the two guards.
When the shackles fell away, he grabbed one guard around the neck and managed to kick the other in the groin. Pulling his arm tight, he watched Zad stand passively, still smiling, and realized the guards weren’t putting up much of a fight.
“Where is she?” he bellowed.
He looked suspiciously at the other guard, who was standing out of reach with a pained expression on his face.
He caught movement from the corner of his eye and turned in time to catch Zad stepping toward him with a very ornate Zandill Warrior knife in his outstretched hand. Tightening his arm around his captive’s neck he dragged the struggling warrior back a step to put more space between him and Zad.
“Stop! I’ll kill him! Then I’ll kill you!”
“And I believe you would,” Zad stated in a matter-of-fact tone just before laying the knife on the corner of the table nearest Hill.
He brought his hand up in a quick chopping motion and hit his captive under the chin with his forearm, provoking a coughing fit. In one swift move, he flung the guard toward the other and jumped, sweeping the knife up in his right hand.
Before he could take another step, Zad raised his hand and waved the two guards out of the room. It must be a trap. Knife at the ready, Hill looked quickly around the chamber for more Warriors.
“I must apologize, Sergeant Hillsborough. I
had to know.”
When he fixed Zad again, he took in the man’s passive stance, his hands at his side, feet planted flat on the hard stone floor, his expression neutral, and looked around the big room one more time.
“You see, Sergeant Hillsborough, things aren’t always what they seem. You could well have been a spy sent to us by the Corporation.”
Then he heard her lilting laugh and spun on his heel to find Peenzan walking into the room in the company of the first Zandill female he’d ever seen. A stunning woman who carried herself with pride, almost stately, who was laughing at something Peenzan must have said.
Turning back to Zad, he found the man standing at the table once again smiling benevolently.
“What is this? What’s going on here?”
“I really must apologize once more, Sergeant. It took either a fool, or a very brave and desperate man to do what you did. I had to know which it was. Or, of course, a spy.”
Peenzan was at his side grasping his arm, and the moment she purred softly he felt his muscles relax, “It’s alright, my love, I’m fine.”
“But…”
Zad stepped up and offered his hand a second time. “Again let me apologize.” He bowed deeply. “It is my honor, as Premier of Zandill, to welcome you to our planet, Sergeant Hillsborough.”
“But…”
The Zandill woman had stepped to the premier’s side and announced something in her native tongue. Peenzan translated, “And now we must eat. It is the Zandill custom.”
* * * *
In another chamber at a much larger table surrounded by Zandill and music from another world, she looked across the broad expanse of fine china, sparkling crystal, and gleaming silver, and watched Hill perched awkwardly on his chair running his spoon through his soup.
He seems so certain and self-confident, yet completely uncomfortable with the situation. She didn’t read fear, an emotion she doubted he knew. Impatience?
She smiled at the premier’s sister sitting beside Hill, tasted her soup, and went over what she could recall of Meline history and their relationship with Zandill.
She knew that the Meline people were the first to discover light-beam riding, and in turn, the first to venture out of their own solar system and wander the galaxy. Earth and Rangdon had been visited, off and on, over the last 10,000 years, but Zandill had remained hidden until Earth, more precisely the Corporation, had discovered how to bend space and perfected the instant transport system that dominated galactic travel today.
