by Jean Kilczer
I swung my rifle as his great body blocked stars, and cried out when a powerful forepaw slammed it from my hands.
“I would destroy you, Terran.” He pulled me close by my jacket. His voice was flint on stone. I almost expected fire to shoot from between his plated lips. “But my guarantor wants you alive.”
“That's OK with me,” I gasped. “I'm not going anywhere.” I felt him relax. I grabbed my stingler, but he grasped my hand and pulled it from my clutch. “OK, I give up,” I said as he got to his knees, I reached for my leg knife, pulled it from its sheath, and plunged it into his thigh.
He howled like a banshee and fell on top of me.
I yanked the knife, slitting through tough thigh muscle, and squeezed out from under him as his body spasmed and his voice lowered to anguished grunts.
I reached for my rifle, but he grabbed it first and swung toward me.
I lay frozen with terror, my spread fingers digging into dirt. A flash above my head heated my cheek like a sudden branding iron. I clutched it and thought he'd missed, but he convulsed and lay still. Smoke rose from his shattered skull.
Sophia and Huff were sprawled in shadows, their weapons aimed.
“Good job!” I said when I managed to draw in a breath.
Then I remembered the Shayl behind the jeep. But he was gone.
I rolled to my back and watched a flock of Shayls block stars and race across the moon toward the mercs' home base.
I laid my head back and gingerly touched the burn on my cheek. The skin was hot but unbroken.
I picked up my rifle, got to my feet and stood panting, my rifle hanging in one hand, staring at the dead Shayl. I lifted my mental shields against his agonized Kwaii as it plunged into geth, and doubted that Great Mind would make it an easy passage. The creature had sins to atone for before he could go on to his next lifebind. The residual guilt would follow him and, with luck, he would bind as a better entity on some distant planet.
Sophia and Huff ran to me. She threw her arms around my neck and stared anxiously into my eyes.
“I'm OK,” I said and reached out to Huff. He took my hand in both paws and squeezed, perhaps a bit too hard. “You will tear my liver in two pieces someday, my cub!”
I pulled him closer and hugged him.
Sophia stared at the dead Shayl and shook her head. “I think Chancey was wrong.”
“What?” I asked.
“It's not an ogre. It's a gargoyle.”
* * *
We counted eight among our dead, including a child. In the tradition of these people, their bodies were taken into the water by dugouts and given a sea burial. Huff paddled out with them and accompanied each weighted body as it sank to its resting place.
The people returned silently to the beach, except for Huff, who sat in the sand, lifted his snout and howled. I stood beside Sophia, Joe, and Chancey. Bat was tending the wounded with the help of Orghe women. I knew better than to go to Huff. This was part of the Vegan Ritual of Death. My friend and teammate was calling upon the Ten Gods of Kresthaven, his home world, to gently carry the kwaiis of his companions, and especially the child, to a better lifebind on a blue world.
I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer to Great Mind to please heed Huff's request.
Gentle waves lapped the shore, undisturbed by our burial.
“Go gently,” I whispered and stared at the sea, the sea that covers the dead even quicker than grass. Sophia put her arm around my waist and I hugged her close.
I looked back at the village where silent people were gathered. “We can't stay here, Joe.”
He nodded. “I think we all know that.”
“Somebody had to give the mercs our location!” I said between teeth.
“You got any thoughts on that?” Chancey asked me. “Any productive tel-probes, my man?”
I shook my head.
Oldore came up with Anbria by his side. “My wife wishes to know if you'd like her to sew your jacket. The back is badly torn.”
“My jacket?” At a time like this? I thought. “I don't know.” I shrugged. “I guess so, if she wants to.”
“You are strangers to our ways,” Oldore told my group. “We do not mention the names of the dead for fear that…what you Terrans call devils, will find them.”
“OK. They're gone.” I took off my jacket and handed it to Anbria with a smile. “Thank you. De ordo elmis,” I said. Thank you in the Orghe native tongue. I think.
She smiled discreetly, refraining from a grin, I thought, took the jacket and wiped a hand across her eyes.
I nodded, having given up on that particular gesture.
“Where to now, Oldore?” Joe gazed out to sea. “Another island?”
“There are no other islands for us,” Oldore explained. He stared at the black water. “When there is no place left for us to go, we will give our spirits to the sea.”
I felt a chill run up my spine that had nothing to do with the night air and my thin shirt.
* * *
We were on the road again, traveling for the rest of that night in the three jeeps and by draks, who towed dugouts and other belongings on poles.
Oldore led his people to a high plain, protected from overhead view by thick pines, and difficult to reach by vehicles, which had to slow to a crawl over a road so rocky and strewn with patches of snow and ice that little dirt showed through.
We settled in an area between tall trees. The people quietly unloaded their belongings, though I heard sad hoots and cries among them.
We were far from the ocean, but a lake caught moonbeams perhaps a quarter of a mile away. This was not good land for farming, except in tended gardens, and even those, in this cold clime, would have short growing seasons. The fishing and hunting might be good, though, and there should be berries and nuts for the picking. But I was thinking too far ahead. I'm sure the community's survival into the next day was priority one in everybody's mind.
We were all bone-tired. Oldore posted guards with an order to watch for any lone person leaving the community, and to let him know if one did.
It was early morning when we all finally settled down to sleep. My team had gathered under a broad deciduous tree, with leaves for bedding.
“Going to be a cold day.” Joe sighed.
“Cuddle with somebody, Joe.” I drew Sophia close to me.
Goldrin approached, carrying rolled blankets. I sat up.
“Oldore said I should bring these to you.” He laid them down, looked around, and hesitated.
“OK, you brought them.” I threw them to my group while Sophia untied one for us and rolled it out.
“He, uh,,” Galrin pulled at his long lower lip, “he also said that I should be your sim until the next turning of the moon.”
“Sim?” I asked.
“Oh. Servant in stelspeak.” He drew down lips tightly.
“Can I trust you?” I asked him.
“You cut me like a knife.” He lowered his head.
“That's only the first cut,” I said.
“Jules.” Sophia put a hand on my arm. “He's trying to make amends.”
I heard Chancey chuckle.
“Go to sleep, scud,” I said. “There's a lot more cuts where that came from,” I told Galrin.
He wiped a hand across his eyes. “I am to bear all your cuts, B'wen, for one turning.”
“B'wen?” I asked.
“B'wen. Master,” he whispered.
“And don't forget it!” I laid back on the spread blanket and Sophia covered me and herself.
“I will remember.” Galrin hooted sadly and laid beside Huff, who reached over in his sleep and threw a forearm across the kid's shoulder. “The dires are running,” he mumbled.
I gazed at broken patches of stars between trees and listened for the whine of engines. That's not the only thing that's running, I thought.
I slept fitfully, with images of the Orghe lifted aloft and dropped by the Shayl. I must have moaned in my sleep because Sophia shook me
and called my name.
“What?” I sat up.
“You were having a nightmare.”
“Oh.” I stroked her cheek. Moonlight rimmed her hair and figure. “But I woke up to a dream. Is it night already? Man, I'm hungry.” I drew her close and kissed her.
“For what?” She smiled.
“I hate that you're here, Soph, in danger.” I stroked her curly mop of raven hair and breathed in her aroma. “But God, I love having you here. You smell like pine.”
She chuckled. “You like it? It's my new perfume.”
I laid down and drew her close. “Soph, in five days the WCIA ship will return.”
“I know.”
I took a breath. “I want you on it,” I said firmly.
“I know.”
“I'm afraid these Orghe people are doomed.”
“So am I.” She lifted onto elbows. “But you'll stay and fight to the death to save them.”
I looked over to where women chatted as they cooked on open fires. Children laughed and ran and swung from trees as though nothing had happened. “I have no choice, Soph.”
“No. Heroes never do,” she said evenly.
I stroked her shoulder. “If anything happens to me, will you go back to your home on New Lithnia? You had a good life there.” I laughed. “Chasing crusties all over the ocean bottom.”
She brushed hair off my forehead. “If anything happens to you, Hell is a good place for me, and it will be my home.”
“Don't talk that way.”
She rolled to her back. “You want lies? OK. I'll go home to New Lithnia and find a nice accountant and settle down to a nice secure life and have pretty babies with him.”
I took her hand. “It wouldn't be a bad idea.”
She pulled it away. “And every night, I'll walk to your lonely grav… Oh, I'd bring back your body, and I'll stand over it and curse you for leaving me alone in this world and all the others. And I'd pray that you found no peace, until I joined you.”
I rolled my head to look at her. She stared at the lightening sky. “I'm between a rock and a hard place, Soph.”
“That's where you live!” She threw off the blanket, got up and strode to a cook fire.
I sat up and watched her. Bat got to his feet and picked up his medkit. “Jules, suppose we put some new skin over that burn now.”
“OK.” I unzipped my jacket, unbuttoned my shirt, laid back down and sighed. “Got something in that black bag to mend a broken relationship?”
“I do, bubba, but you wouldn't like it any more than you like needles.”
I winced as he applied salve to the burn.
He smiled and took out a container from his bag marked New Skin. “You just don't like to be touched, do you?”
“It depends on who's doing the touching.”
He pulled on plastic gloves from a small dispenser and unrolled a square of new skin. I drew in a breath as he pressed it gently over the burn and smoothed the edges.
“I didn't want her to come here, Bat.”
“Y'all ever consider what she wanted?” He ripped open the paper covering on a gauze pad and pressed it over the new skin, then taped it on. “That'll do it.” He glanced at Sophia, who was helping a woman stir pots over a fire. “Wish I could mend the inner wounds this easy.”
“What am I going to do, Bat?” I sat up. “I can't leave these people to die.”
He closed his medkit. “You think they won't die if you stay?”
“I can use my tel powers to pinpoint advancing mercs.”
“Then what?” He stood up. “How many times can the Orghes run and hide on this island?”
I watched Sophia spoon food into two dishes. We'd lost our reserves of digestall with the destruction of the hovair, along with the sous chef and all our other equipment. But mostly we lost our ability to take to the sky to fight the merc ships and their hired Shayls.
“The people won't leave this island,” I said.
“No, they won't.”
“Bat, Joe has influence in Alpha's government. He has friends in high places.”
“He does.”
“When you get back there, urge him to contact those friends and get Alliance ships to fight the mercs. Not just here. On all the islands of New Terra.”
He shook his head. “It's out of their jurisdiction.”
I got to my feet. “Since when did that stop the WCIA?”
“We tried it, remember? They left us three jeeps and a hovair and took off.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Come with us, Jules. If anybody can convince Joe to cut through red tape and get these people help, it's y'all.”
“I figure I can do more good here, while I'm waiting.”
“And fight them with three jeeps, some draks, and people who just now learned which end of a rifle has the trigger, and which end has the fire?”
I shrugged.
“What're you going to do if Sophia refuses to leave?”
“Well, between you and Joe and Chancey, I figure you can get one woman aboard the WCIA ship without hurting her.”
Bat kicked a rock. “I figure we can do the same with you.” He turned and strolled toward the people.
I looked at Joe. He was awake and listening. So was Chancey. Huff and Galrin still slept.
“You wouldn't do that, would you, Joe?” I asked.
He threw off his blanket and sat up. “Try me.”
Chancey grinned.
“You'd have to find me first!” I strode toward Sophia as she turned and walked toward me with the two dishes. I stopped. So did she, and stared at me.
Suddenly I knew what I had to do. Big Mack was the paymaster. If I could catch him alone, I would spin a death probe and slice his brainstem. Instant death. I didn't like being the assassin, but with Mack gone, the flow of money to mercs and Shayls alike would dry up. These ravagers didn't ply their gruesome trade for ideals. With the creds cut off, they'd board their Starship faster than a horde of rats scrambling out of hot water. I bit my lip. One death could save a village of Orghes.
“What is it, Jules?” Sophia asked.
My gaze slid to a jeep. I'd wait for night before leaving the village. The guards would spot me, but by the time word got back to Joe and the team, I'd be gone. One thing…
“Jules?” Sophia said. “Dammit! I know something's wrong.”
“No. Nothing,” I said casually. Nothing except that with my lousy sense of direction, could I find the merc base again?
* * *
Joe turned and stared at me as I checked out a jeep with a fully charged battery. My rifle and stingler both showed green buttons. Our extra battery packs had been aboard the hovair.
I glanced at Joe and smiled ingenuously. He studied me, then turned back to supervise the placement of guerrilla traps and pits again. It seemed a futile endeavor, and I think we all knew it, but it gave the men work and a sense of accomplishment. Others dug out large square pits to be used as shelters until stone huts could be erected.
Women were solemn as they built outdoor ovens. Chancey worked with a group of boys that scraped out logs for dugouts. The girls repaired bedding and clothing torn or burned in the battle. Children gathered firewood. Sophia, Huff, and Bat had gone to the lake to help a group of men in the unfamiliar fishing grounds. It was almost reflex to build again, even in the face of stacked odds.
Joe walked over to Chancey, said something to him, and gestured toward me. Chancey gave me a twisted grin and nodded. Joe returned to his crew. Damn him! He was reading me like an open book. He knew that whatever plan I'd devised involved this jeep. I glanced at the draks, tied on long braided twines to trees while men built a corral. Well, maybe not!
Chapter Sixteen
Night.
Cold mountain air cut to my bones. Stars blinked their crystal eyes through branches. I shivered, rubbed my arms, and pulled the blanket tighter around me and Sophia as we sat by a fire. “Be nice to have gloves and scarves.” They had also been in the hovair.
She l
eaned against me and I felt her shiver. “We need a lot more amenities,” she said, “than gloves and scarves.” Her dark eyes caught flints of light from the fire, and blushed her cheeks warmly.
Huff, on my other side, moved closer to lend his fur for added warmth. “It was not a good thing to lose your fur, my Terran cub.”
“Happened a long time ago, Huff.” I chuckled. “I don't think we'll grow it back anytime soon.” I rubbed Sophia's hands and blew on them. “I wouldn't turn down a mock steak, mashed potatoes, a nice crisp salad, maybe a couple of cannoli.”
“Whatever happened to mudpie?” Bat asked from across the fire and jammed his cap lower to cover his ears.
I laughed. “OK, Bat, mudpie too.”
“When we run out of our digestall pills,” Chancey said, “we might be eating mudpie.”
“As long as we're not eating crow,” I said and laughed.
Joe flicked me a look.
I was purposely keeping the conversation light to disarm Joe and Chancey. Who, me? I'm not going anyplace. I'm just sitting here making dumb remarks.
But Joe just doesn't fool. His jaw was set as he stoked the fire, sending sparks to swirl in heated air.
I watched Oldore place his wooden statue of the Sunspire Village's protective god Orin on a fresh tree stump. One man had been meticulously carving a pedestal for it all day.
Night hunters were rousing, there in the dark arena surrounding us, snuffling, and yipping to each other. A vagabond wind whispered its song through tall pines and was gone. I drew in a smoky breath as its tail swept by.
I no more wanted to leave my circle of friends and these warm fires for dark, deep woods, than I wanted to jump naked into the lake.
“Something's bothering you,” Sophia whispered. “You want to talk about it?”
“No.” I kissed her cheek. “I just have to go pee.” I stared at her, perhaps too long.
She smiled. “Will you miss me? I'll come with you.”
I tried to smile and couldn't. “Some things you have to do alone.” I kissed her gently on the lips and hoped this wasn't goodbye. I stroked Huff's shoulder and he laid his head against mine.
