by Jean Kilczer
“Day. Tis that time o' the month.” She put a hand on my chest.
“What time is that?” I studied the hatch. “You'll have to fit it back in place when I'm on the surface.” I smiled. “Goodbye, lass. Give my love to your grandpa.” I hugged her. “And that old crudgemother Holly Eve.” I tried to break away but she held me and stared into my eyes.
“Do ye not remember what grandpa said about the clan needin' new blood?” She wrapped her arms around me.
“Now, Shannon.” I pried her hands off my back and held her wrists. “This is no time for a wedding proposal.”
“Did I ask ye fer a ring now?”
“Just what are you asking for?”
She smiled. “A bit o' yer time.” She reached up and pulled off my jacket. “A bit o' ye.”
“Oh. That time of the month.” I grabbed back my jacket. “You figure you're ovulating.”
“I'll bet me grandpa's beard I am.”
“Forget it, Shannon. I'm not leaving behind a kid I'll never see. I'm a little more responsible than that.”
I thought of Lisa. Sure.
She pressed herself against me and I backed to the damp wall. “Would it be so terrible a thing,” she said, “to father a child who would be loved by the whole clan?” She stood on tiptoe and kissed me. Her tongue probed past my lips. I didn't know my hands had relaxed until she embraced me and pressed her breasts against my chest. She must have been wearing perfume. Or was it pheromones? Dammit! My body was responding. I tried to back further but a branch in the wall poked me in the side. I held her away by her shoulders and she smiled and unbuttoned her blouse.
“Jesus and Vishnu!” I tried to pry my eyes away from the siren call of her firm breasts with their hard nipples.
She shook off her blouse as she backed away, and unzipped her pants.
“Don't do that!” I ordered and turned toward the ladder. “You'd better get dressed before you catch a cold. I'm leaving!”
She threw her arms around me under my loose sweater and pulled it off. “Are ye certain o' that, now?”
“Give me that!” We fought over the stretched sweater. “Now give it back!” I picked up my jacket.
She held the sweater behind her. “Come an' get it, lad.”
“Look, Shannon,” I said sternly, “you're a beautiful woman, and if things were different….” I thought of Willa and felt guilty.
“Aye, but things bein' what they are.” She stood naked before me, her red hair draped around her shoulders like a caress. “An' ye havin' to leave.” She dropped the sweater and kissed me again. I held her against me. Willa was somewhere in a new form. Live your life, she had sent. Well, if there was ever a time….
“Ye won't be needin' this.” She unstrapped my holster.
Maybe she wasn't ovulating, I thought as I kissed her. She helped me push off the rest of my clothes. How could she know that for sure?
I ran my hands through her hair, pulled her close to me and kissed her again.
She gasped in a breath. “Ye have kisses like wine, lad.” We slid to the cold floor. “Sweet an' intoxicating.” She pulled me down on top of her. “I'm yours.”
And I'm going to regret this in the morning, I thought. No. It's already morning and my friends might be worried about me, if they were still alive and not captured by Rowdinth's rat pack. And I had a mission to save Earth. But it all faded as we made love.
“You're beautiful, Willa,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Just a…a pet name.”
“A dog, I hope.”
We gave ourselves to passion. It spread through me like wildfire and I didn't know where I ended and she began. And then those waves of ecstasy that come only with fully loving a woman. She cried out and we clung to each other like two drowning people.
When it was over, we lay side by side, holding hands, panting. Dammit! If that didn't make a baby, I don't know what would! I rolled my head to look at her. “I don't know whether to kiss you or kick you.”
She lifted on her elbows and lightly kissed my lips. “If I have yer child, I hope tis a boy who looks just like ye.”
“A girl who looks like you would be the princess of your clan.”
She smiled and brushed hair back off my face. Her eyes were glossy with tears.
“I'll come back,” I said, and wasn't sure I meant it. “If I can.”
'Ye remember the song, lad?” She kissed my cheek. “Tis you must go away and I must bide.”
Chapter Ten
Joe Hatch sat at the conference table in planet Alpha's W-CIA private room. His shoulders hunched, his expression grim, he surveyed the four officials gathered there and chewed the stem of his cold pipe. “The last we heard from our field operatives on Fartherland,” he said, “agent Enigma could not be found. General Rowdinth might be tracking him with the implant.” He tapped the table with his fingertips.
“Assuming he's still alive,” Director Kerry, a compact man with black, thinning hair and a focused expression, said.
Joe stared out the window, where rain dripped from an overcast sky. He'd never liked the cold, wet climate of Alpha.
“What's your input as a psychiatrist?” Kerry asked Doctor Chang.
Chang's white hair brushed her shoulders as she turned to Kerry. “Let's consider the ramifications if agent Enigma is informed that General Rowdinth can kill him with the remote push of a button.”
Joe rubbed his eyes.
“It could cause him to attempt to dislodge it himself.” Doctor Chang rolled a pen between her fingers.
Will Kaiser, head of Engineering, shrugged his bulky shoulders. “Depending on the device, of course…I'm sorry, Joe, but if he did, it would very likely explode.”
Admiral Owusu sat back and folded his long, dark arms. “Do you think General Rowdinth can track him?” he asked Will.
“It's possible,” Will said. “It depends on the device.”
“And whether agent Enigma is still alive,” Joe said. He lit his pipe, puffed it to life, and went to stare out the window.
“I thought you gave up smoking,” Doctor Chang remarked.
“I did.”
“Joe,” Director Kerry said, “please sit down.” He shuffled through papers on his desk, then picked up one and stared at it as Joe returned to the table.
“This lunatic,” Kerry started, then looked around the table, “as in General Ki Rowdinth, has informed us that if we locate his citadel, and attempt to invade it, he will destroy Earth now and target the off-planet colonies.” He rubbed his lower lip. “He's threatened to destroy them, one by one, until Alpha hands over the gold bullion.”
Will Kaiser shook his head. “What weapon, in the name of all the perditions, are his scientists developing with dark energy? It's all around us. How can they use it to destroy a planet?” He looked around, but the others were silent.
“If we knew that, Will,” Kerry said, “we might have a handle on how to stop him.”
“I could send in a special operation's team,” Admiral Owusu said. “My people would take him and his citadel out so fast he'd never hit any button, including the one to destroy Earth.” He glanced around. “The fucker would never know what hit him. What do you say, Director?”
Kerry laid down the paper and folded his hands over it. “Not until our operatives locate the lab, Admiral. If just one of Rowdinth's people escapes, he could take up the cause with the two rogue scientists and line his own pockets. He shook his head. “Or so they think. If Rowdinth only knew that there is no bullion.”
Owusu leaned forward. “Why don't we just tell him?”
“It would cause worlds-wide financial chaos,” Kerry answered. “And the lunatic might still destroy Earth and extort the colonies.
Joe slammed a fist on the table. “This is a goddamn rock and a hard place. And Agent Enigma is between them.”
“Joe,” Director Kerry said, “has agent Enigma contacted you in the recent past from Fartherland?”
“No.
Our other field operatives on the planet have, though. Some Vegan who worked for Rowdinth hooked up with our team and told them about the implant.”
“The mission is not going well.” Director Kerry shook his head. “Agent Enigma has become a hindrance with Rowdinth's Elite Guards after him.”
“Is it his tel powers Rowdinth wants to tap into?” Doctor Chang asked.
“That's a fair assumption,” Kerry said. “I don't know why else Rowdinth would want him.” “I'd say,” Owusu offered and waved a graceful arm, “that if Rowdinth captured our agent, he would threaten him with death if he didn't return here and mindprobe the government, especially W-CIA, for information about our plans to counterattack.”
“Suppose,” Joe said, “we bring agent Enigma home and replace him?”
“Joe,” Will said, “if Enigma boards a ship for Alpha, the change in pressure on the implant from the shuttle to the starship would alert Rowdinth, even if he isn't tracking Enigma.” He glanced at Kerry. “If Rowdinth pushes the button, it would blow a hole in the ship.”
“I think we must assume,” Admiral Owusu said, “that whether or not Agent Enigma becomes Rowdinth's tool, in the end, Rowdinth will execute him.”
Joe put down his pipe. “And if Rowdinth manages to send Enigma here for mind probes?”
“Or possibly,” Will said, and combed back his light hair through fingers, “to activate the device when Enigma is inside the government halls.”
“Joe,” Director Kerry said, “we all know that this agent is the father of your grandchild. But considering the magnitude of the lunatic's threat….”
Joe nodded. “I want to go to Fartherland.”
“What could you accomplish on Fartherland, Joseph,” Doctor Chang asked, “except to endanger your own life? You're too close to this agent to remain objective.”
Joe tapped ashes from his pipe into his empty coffee cup. “I've found in my long career, Doctor, that even with the best laid plans, sometimes it's better to just play it by ear as events unfold. Director?”
“You're getting a little old for field work, Joe,” Kerry said.
“I intend to remain behind the scenes, and continue as Enigma's contact.”
“He hasn't contacted you,” Kerry said and lifted his brows.
“Which is good reason for me to go there and find out what the hell's happening? I have a few years of experience in field work!”
“No one is questioning your experience,” Kerry said softly. “There's just one hitch. And you're not going to like it.”
Joe felt his stomach clench.
“If Agent Enigma becomes Rowdinth's tool, with the stakes being what they are….”
Joe lowered his head. “I wasn't hired on as an assassin.”
“Then Admiral Owusu's people will have to step in.”
“Jesus and Brahma,” Joe muttered. “A rock and a hard place.”
Chapter Eleven
Night crept in to cover my tracks as I lay on cool grass under a canopy of trees and breathed in the smell of winter flowers. The stars above, sharp as spears, began to unroll in that great scroll of sky. “Huff, take care of yourself,” I whispered as the roar of waves told of a storm out at sea.
It had been a long day of hiding out in the woods while Rowdinth's government hovairs crisscrossed the sky and reminded me that there were those who would use my tel powers for some very unethical purposes.
I hadn't found Chancy or Carmen, and that worried me. Were they lying dead somewhere in these woods, brought down by Rowdinth's Elite Guards? I reached out with a tel probe for the hundredth time, but all I touched was a small predator stalking a prey creature. I withdrew. I don't argue with nature, but I don't get my kicks linking with animals who are chasing their supper. My stomach grumbled its disagreement. A good mock steak with some mashed potatoes and a salad would've been very welcome about now.
What did they serve for dinner aboard an Aristos-Class starship? I wondered as I stood up and brushed off my pants. If I couldn't contact Joe Hatch by SPS, then I'd take a chance on evading Rowdinth's police at the spaceport and hop a flight for planet Alpha.
As I limped toward the shore, I pictured Joe grumbling to his colleagues at W-CIA, Why the hell doesn't he call, the irresponsible crote! I smiled. “Wait till I tell you, Joe,” I grumbled back, “that I found the lab.”
At the high water mark, with waves crashing at my wet boots, I turned and counted steps back to the underground community's hatch. OK, 918 steps. I turned toward the lights of Gorestail, and committed landmarks to memory as I walked a straight line to the jetty. Now I could find the hatch to the tunnels again, and hopefully, a surface lab entrance for Joe and his W-CIA team to storm.
My ankle sent slivers of pain up my leg. I picked up a suitable branch to use as a cane as I skirted a shabby, one-road village. But a cheering crowd of Vermakts drew me closer to the lights of the central square.
“I'll be a rat's ass,” I muttered as General Rowdinth himself, dressed in a black and silver uniform, gestured and shouted from a platform surrounded by the crowd, who seemed mesmerized by his shrill speech, delivered with pounds of his fist on the dais.
I climbed the steps of a second-floor building and hid in shadows for a better look at this bizarre event.
The lunatic knew how to work a crowd. I had to give him that. But he spoke in Vermaktese, and it was Greek to me. With every calculated pause, the crowd roared and tried to move even closer to their deranged leader, but Vermakt police milled around the platform and held them back.
I leaned on the branch and listened as the people broke into what I took to be their National Anthem. Rowdinth led them with extended claws, like some macabre conductor.
Damn! If I'd had a long-range weapon, I'd have taken out the fucker here and now, but a stingler would just wound some Vermakt people between us.
I don't know what propaganda Rowdinth used to inflame his followers, but I'd a feeling that we Terrans, who'd been instrumental in keeping Fartherland out of the United Worlds, were not being praised for our attitude toward Fartherland's indigenous people. I sympathized. From what I'd gathered in conversations on Alpha, the Vermakts had not been treated fairly when gold was discovered on Fartherland. They were non-technological, and that has always put races, even on Earth, at a great disadvantage, if not in danger of genocide.
On cue from Rowdinth's raised hand, a color guard marched through the crowd bearing a huge silver and black Vermakt flag with Fartherland's star system emblazoned on it, and that enormous bronze bust of Rowdinth. I paused to watch as Vermakt children in white robes threw flowers to the crowd from a wagon drawn by an old ground hovar.
With broad theatrical gestures and a piercing tone, Rowdinth told his followers in stelspeak for any aliens and Gorestail reporters in the crowd, how the Vermakt race was descended directly from heaven and how the people were destined to rule the known worlds. He demanded vengeance in the name of God on the inferior alien races who stripped Fartherland of its gold riches, especially the Terran rat-eaters.
Rat eaters? I thought.
With each pause in his diatribe, the crowd cheered wildly. The general was a madman, but why did the Vermakt people fall for such obvious rhetoric? Had he touched upon something in the basement of their psyches that wanted recognition and power?
Could be.
I wondered if the general were on a campaign route of Vermakt villages, whipping up enthusiasm with grandstanding for the coming war, should he acquire the gold bullion he sought to build his war machine. If his rogue scientists perfected the dark-energy weapon he bragged about, even without Alpha's gold-bullion depository, he could conquer and strip the colonies of their reserves.
I shook my head as Rowdinth changed his stance and his tone to a religious sermon in the modulated intonations of the high priest of a new religion. Did his people know what a sick mind was leading them toward war, I wondered. If he weren't stopped, his own race would suffer too. It sent a shiver through me as I went dow
n the steps and stayed to the shadows of crumbling fibrin shacks. I left the village and headed for Gorestail, more determined than ever that this lunatic leader of his race had to be stopped.
It was past midnight when I reached Gorestail and the harbor. People still strolled the winding streets. Boats creaked, held in their berths by tie-downs. The water, with its translucent blues and greens in sunshine, was as dark now as the shadow of a prowler. Choppy waves told of the breakers assaulting the open coastlines.
I paused to study the distant lights of the spaceport. I'd never make it there on foot. The more I walked, the more my ankle objected with shooting pain. I hoped Darby couldn't sit on his arse, as he called it, for the next month!
A soft breeze with the promise of spring brushed my hair across my neck and I felt that itch again behind my ear. This time I dug at it with a nail and managed to scrape off the crusty skin. It stung and blood dripped down my neck, but maybe I was free of it. I wiped off the blood on my pants. Whatever had bitten me, probably while I slept, had left a calling card I couldn't ignore.
Uh oh. Two heavily armed Vermakt police, a male and a female, their pear-shaped bodies clothed in black and silver uniforms, strolled down the dark path. They were hermaphrodites, but I got the impression that they had a dominant gender.
I lifted my hood over my head, pulled down the jacket to cover the stingler, which was a no-no in town, and leaned on the rail, as though studying the waves that lapped stones below.
“Out late, no, Terran?” the female called as they walked past.
“I guess,” I called back. “Couldn't sleep.”
“Try dreaming about your homeland,” the male said in a deeper voice. “You might not have it much longer.”
“That's below the belt,” the female said as they continued on, but the male just chuckled. His ample backside, the “pear” in pear-shaped, made an easy target for my stingler. But only in my dreams.
I watched a shuttle blaze across the sky like a meteorite as it headed for the spaceport. Perhaps that one would be my ride out. “Shut up!” I told my ankle as I continued to walk and it complained again.
