Trapped On Talonque: (A Sectors SF romance)

by Veronica Scott

  Nate closed his eyes for a moment in pain and frustration. There was so much he wanted to say, on so many topics, that he had no idea where to begin. Sarbordon would bull his way in any moment. The ruler’s presence would end any chance to exchange plans or information. Torn between his personal craving to communicate with Bithia versus the immediate challenges facing them all if they were to survive, he had to prioritize this fleeting opportunity for the latter. The future would have to be dealt with another time. “We just won the sapiche game, and the king tells me you two have a side agreement about a task we’re to do for him. Why should we do anything for him? What’s going on?”

  My father left a cache of supplies outside what was the city limit in my time. It’s evidently well known as a shrine to this day. Sarbordon craves the contents, which he imagines to be weapons. He believes the treasures will give him victory over the enemies crowding his borders.

  “Is he right? Are there weapons?” His fingers itched to hold an offensive weapon with real firepower.

  Not as you are thinking. We didn’t deal in such things.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said with cautious understatement. “Do you think anything will be left intact?”

  Our storehouses are equipped with a special form of stasis device to maintain the viability of everything within. Let me show you how to open the storehouse doors. Bithia appeared to understand how rushed they were.

  He stood with his eyes closed, trying to quiet his own racing thoughts. A rapid series of symbols to be triggered, gemmed switches to be thrown in exacting sequence, flickered through his mind, leaving him dizzy. “How do I find this place?”

  The king will take you. This is your chance to escape. My father never let his most trusted local aides inside the storehouse, not even Hialar.

  Nate caught a backlash of bitterness in her memory of the assistant her father had trusted in all other ways and who had so betrayed her.

  But Father knew someone might figure out the sequence for opening the cache by watching him. So he rigged a safeguard to render unconscious any locals who enter.

  Clever. But he detected the flaw immediately. “How does his precaution help if it knocks Thom and me out?”

  The sensor detects one particular set of subgenetic tertiary markers found only in residents of this planet. A side effect of being born under the radiation of the particular star. Do you want an astrophysics-based genetics lecture right now, or can I perhaps recite from the protective-devices manual at a later time?

  Nate heard her amusement at his doubting caution.

  You should be fine. The enemy will be completely at your mercy once you reach the warehouse level. They will sleep as long as they remain in my father’s facility.Then you can escape the city, make your way to your own ship and depart from this planet to freedom in the stars. I leave the details to you, my fine warrior friend, but I know you’ll manage. I’ll miss you. Even in my sleep, I dream of you now.

  Voices sounded in the small corridor beyond the chamber. Celixia’s soprano tones rose above the general hum, protesting Sarbordon’s move to join them, warning Nate to conclude his private chat. He kept his attention focused on Bithia. “I’m not leaving you.”

  You must, you have to. Panic suffused her tone. You’ll have only this one chance. Don’t waste it.

  “I don’t hear any words of the gods,” the king called from what he’d evidently decided was a safe distance behind them. “I’m coming in, and you’ll do my bidding, warrior. You’ve had long enough to talk to your goddess.”

  “Fortunately for you, we’re finished,” Nate said calmly. Stepping away from the barrier, he watched the ruler rush into the chamber. Catching a sideways glance from Thom, Nate made a subtle hand signal to show things were proceeding all right.

  Sarbordon strode to the control panel on the far wall. Nate wasted no time in joining him there, clamping his hand over the ruler’s fist. “Gently, we’re going to do this gently. There’s no need to be forceful with her today. She’s eager to grant your wish, but neither she nor I want to endure the pain you inflicted on us both the last time. Got it?”

  His enemy glared at him, but whatever he did to trigger the device this time was less physically stressful for Nate, so he hoped it was also easier for Bithia.

  She opened her eyes and searched for Nate as soon as the device released part of its absolute control over her. Her gaze remained fixed on his face even as she spoke with the king.

  “I’ve instructed my warrior to take you to my father’s storehouse,” Bithia told her enemy in the eerily amplified voice. “He’s to make available all of its contents to you today before the sun sets.”

  Her voice in my head is lighter, more musical. Nate bit his lip. Now was emphatically not the time to let himself be distracted by thoughts of what he and Bithia shared.

  “After you gain entry to the treasures of my father, Fr’taray, you must release my warriors to take passage in their sky chariot to his realm. This must also be done before dawn, or you’ll suffer the consequences of my father’s wrath.”

  “You’ll stay?” Sarbordon fingered his belt knife.

  “Now that she’s proven her powers he wants to keep her,” Nate whispered in disgust to Thom. The sergeant nodded, a grim set to his face.

  “I shall stay,” Bithia agreed, docile and submissive. “My warriors don’t have orders to remove me from this place. I protect and serve you and your people. My duty remains unchanged.”

  Not if I have anything to say about it. Nate marveled at her ability to deal so calmly with her tormentor, but supposed after all the millennia of inadvertent captivity, Bithia had relinquished any hope of release from servitude as a prophetess. She should trust me not to leave her behind.

  Nate picked up Bithia’s cue about the timing. “You’ve heard T’naritza’s decree. We’re to go now, before nightfall. Are you ready?”

  “We’ll go at once.” The ruler was excited, rubbing his hands together while he visualized the marvels soon to be within his grasp. Abruptly, he flicked the citrine- and amethyst-encrusted gold switch, plunging Bithia into sleep.

  Nate lingered behind the others, gazing through the barrier. Gently, he set one hand on the invisible boundary between them, sending an emphatic message: All I’m asking is for you to hang on. I’ll return for you.

  Nate heard the faint whisper of her voice ordering him not to take chances, and then there was only silence in his mind.

  Sarbordon couldn’t stop talking as he led the way upward through the various corridors, away from the healing chamber. He alternated between speculating with the two priestesses as to the exact nature of the marvels he’d soon be cataloging, repeating snatches of old myths, and telling Nate his impressions of the strategy at various points during the sapiche game.

  “Man would make a good play-by-play announcer for the All Sectors Games,” Thom said as the ruler embarked on a long dissertation about how he’d handled the low five shot when he played sapiche as a boy. “He sure can talk.”

  Nate stayed focused on what lay ahead, even though he had as yet only the vague outline of a plan based on Bithia’s quick briefing on the warehouse’s self-defense setup. He relied on Thom to unquestioningly follow whatever lead he set. After all their years of working missions together, he and his partner didn’t require much, if any, advance discussion. Atletl might be a help, might not. He certainly wouldn’t work against them.

  Sarbordon must have been confident of the outcome of his conversation with Bithia. As Nate followed the ruler out of the palace through yet another exit he’d never seen before, a fleet of chariots were waiting with impatient, high-spirited quadrupeds stamping and snorting in the traces.

  “This pile of rock has more doors than a Deebian thousand-valve clam,” Thom said, gazing behind him at the hulking palace. “I remember an old myth on Earth about the guy who invented the first blaster being afraid of the ghosts of all the people who were killed by it, so he kept building more and m
ore additions onto his house.”

  “Why?”

  “So the ghosts couldn’t find him. Maybe the ruling family has the same kind of guilty conscience about all the people they’ve killed, so they keep adding doors and more doors to escape from the ghosts?”

  “When we get home, you can apply for a job doing psych evals of new contact planets, okay? But right now—”

  “You want to concentrate on the task at hand.” Thom laughed. “Same old Nate, never change.”

  Sarbordon cut off the banter. “Warrior, you and the red-haired one will ride with me. Quickly now. The teams of kemat are fresh and pulling at the reins!”

  The king opted to drive a chariot personally through the gathering gloom of sunset. Throngs of people, who were probably heading for the public square to attend the ritual of feeding the losing teams to the predators in the deep well and subsequent drunken orgy, scattered in the streets as the cavalcade thundered past. Nate peered through the choking dust clouds at the four chariots following theirs, carrying a complement of the black-robed priestesses, as well as soldiers. Atletl waved from the second chariot, squeezed in with Celixia and a guard.

  Closing his eyes, Nate retraced the motions Bithia had implanted in his mind for opening the doors of this mysterious storage chamber. He wished this side trip wasn’t necessary, but saw no other way to accomplish his twin mission objectives of freeing Bithia and escaping.

  “Not too many Special Forces guys can say they found an AO-like treasure cache and then tamely handed it over to the locals to plunder,” Thom said in wry Basic, leaning his head close to Nate’s left ear. “You don’t genuinely believe he’ll keep his word and let us ride away into the night?”

  Nate shook his head. “No chance. Not the way his mind works.”

  “So what’s our play? I’d like to get back to the ship and lift out of here. Bithia’s advice is right on target.”

  “Will the ship fly? It wasn’t disabled in the crash?” Nate asked the crucial question he hadn’t dared to explore since the moment he had regained full consciousness as a captive in chains. At the time he’d been focused on moment-to-moment survival. The condition of the spaceship was a moot point.

  Thom fiddled with the leather straps on the chariot rail. “Not sure. Before we were captured, Haranda thought it would be fine. Needed time planetside for the AI to carry out adjusting and compensating, he said.”

  “This would be the late cadet pilot Haranda”—Nate laid extra emphasis on the title—“who was on his first real mission outside the home Sectors? He was sure, huh? What did you see?”

  “I’m no flyboy,” Thom said, raising one hand in protest. “There were a few singe marks on the hull, no obvious penetration of anything vital.”

  “Except we crashed. A crash usually indicates something about the condition of the ship.”

  “The AI was working after the crash, which is a good sign. Those courier ships are built tough. My guess is we’re good to go.”

  “Not until we rescue the lady.” Nate shook his head emphatically as Sarbordon whipped the kemat “horses” to greater effort. “We’re not leaving her here.” He didn’t dare utter Bithia’s name while standing elbow to elbow with his enemy in the chariot, even though the ruler was paying no attention to their whispered conversation. I’m not taking any chances from here on out.

  “Your personal mission objective may not be possible,” Thom said. “I’ll back any play you make, but don’t get your hopes too high is all I’m asking. So many things could go wrong. This ain’t exactly been a smooth-running mission from day one. Even winning the sapiche game was damn ugly, what with Faric playing against us on our own team.”

  “I’m concentrating on this next task we’ve been set to accomplish and not thinking any further.” Nate clenched his hand on the chariot’s top rail as Sarbordon took a curve so fast the offside wheel left the ground for a moment. “None of this was in the orders of the day. Our original set of orders got rewritten when Jurgens panicked, decided to go into hyperspeed next to a blue giant and took us off all the known charts.”

  Thom cleared his throat. “Been meaning to talk to you about that.”

  “You saying it didn’t happen that way? This planet sure doesn’t match the description of the world where we were assigned to go Mawreg hunting.”

  “I think Haranda was at the helm when it happened.”

  Nate briefly considered the implications of who’d been piloting during the disastrous set of maneuvers. “Then Jurgens was an even bigger fool than I believed to let a fresh-out cadet fly us into the goddamn corridor,” he said.

  “Figured you’d want the report to be accurate,” Thom answered.

  “Seven hells, you know damn well if we ever get back to file a report, I’ll make sure both Jurgens and Haranda come out heroes. Whatever happened and whichever one of them got us into this mess, both paid the dues.”

  Nate surveyed the rapidly darkening sky, scanning for the welcome stars. Inhaling a deep breath of the fresh air, he said, “Sure is good to be outside and not playing everlasting sapiche.”

  “Here I dreamed we’d make our fortunes by introducing sapiche in the Sectors when we get back. Create a league, the whole deal.”

  “Have to change the rules for the losers,” Nate said. “I think we’re almost there.” He got a better grip on the chariot’s rail as the team slowed to navigate a steep, winding paved grade. Sarbordon wielded his whip with abandon, apparently not willing to accept delays in reaching his long-sought treasure now that he had a proven messenger from the gods to unlock it for him. The health of his prized racing kemat was a secondary consideration tonight.

  The road came to an end on the plateau. A miniature step pyramid stood at the far end, its contours softened by unimaginable passage of time since Bithia’s father had constructed it. Vines, trees and other forms of nature’s green demolition experts had done their best for uncounted centuries to insert roots between the tightly fitted blocks and pull the place apart.

  The tired kemat brought the chariots to within a few yards of the structure before halting. After handing the reins to a spare driver, who came running from the tail of their caravan, the king strode eagerly to the pyramid. Nate and Thom matched him stride for stride on the well-worn path to the front of the structure. Nate noticed Celixia stayed close to Atletl. Murrax and the guards kept a wary eye on Nate and Thom, confirming his estimation of their basically unchanged status as prisoners.

  The pyramid was constructed from massive blocks of local stone, in a style similar to what he’d seen in older portions of the palace and the sapiche stadium.

  Thom whistled. “Look at the heaps of stuff on the stairs.”

  As Nate walked closer, he saw offerings ranging from simple candles to food, flowers, strings of cheap beads, toys, feathers and other small items piled along the steps of the structure.

  “People still believe in the power of Fr’taray, I guess.” Bending over, Thom picked up a small wooden carving of a tolokon sitting next to a lush but wilted bouquet. He examined the figurine and gently set it down. “Wonder what the person hoped for?”

  “No telling.” Nate shook his head, dismissing the subject as he surveyed what lay ahead of them.

  At the top of five wide steps was a small, houselike structure that lacked windows. A single, elaborately carved and polished bronzelike metal door was set flush into the face of the building. Twice as tall as Nate, the panel was surprisingly narrow. Bright enamel in riotous colors outlined the symbols, undimmed by thousands of years of exposure to the planet’s weather and the reverent touch of countless pilgrims and supplicants. The collection of symbols resembled those in Bithia’s chamber and on the outer, whitewashed portal to her part of the labyrinth beneath the palace. Nate recognized quite a few, especially those painted at the edges of the portal.

  Sarbordon coughed.

  Nate found the ruler staring expectantly at him. He pointed at the door with his coiled whip. “It’ll be da
rk soon, and the three moons don’t rise early this night. I’ve no desire to conduct this entire operation by torchlight.”

  Nate nodded. Before he could go forward, Celixia worked her way through the small crowd to stand beside him. She pulled on his left arm. “I have to speak to you first.”

  “What’s the delay now, priestess?” Sarbordon frowned. “Why couldn’t you speak to him before this moment? And what must you tell him, eh?”

  “We were in separate chariots by your order, my lord,” Celixia answered mildly, her tone gentle and placating. Knowing how much the woman must hate him, Nate gave her high marks for self-control, as well as acting skills.

  “What is it?” he asked, leading her away and wrapping her more closely in her elaborately beaded, lined cloak against the early night air as they strolled. Watched by the suspicious king and the hostile, nervous guards, Nate drew them to a standstill, using the pretext of gallantly fastening her cloak to turn his back to them all. Subtly, Thom shifted his stance, further blocking a clear view of Nate and Celixia.

  “I know you plan to try to free her.” Celixia’s whisper was urgent. “There are things inside that I’ll require to bring her safely out of her sleep.”

  “You can’t go in there, not possible.”

  Taking him by surprise, she said dismissively, “I know. My family’s hard-guarded knowledge makes the stuff of ordinary people’s legends. I know the truths in the myths.”

  “We waste the light,” Sarbordon called from behind them. “No more conversation.”

  Nate ignored the increasingly impatient ruler. “Tell me.”

  “All I know is the need for a red box. You must find it if you wish her to live.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me this herself?”

  “Perhaps she no longer believes anyone can rescue her. Maybe her father didn’t bother to tell her the contents of the red box were necessary, since it was the task of the first Hialar to provide them.”

  “I’ll add this box to my shopping list, I promise.” Squeezing her arm gently, he escorted her to where Thom and the king lingered.