Trapped On Talonque: (A Sectors SF romance)

by Veronica Scott

  Bithia slept, snoring slightly, head on the control console.

  Nate frowned, concerned at the depth of her slumber despite all the noise he and Thom had made right next to her. He stepped to the pilot’s chair and laid a hand on her shoulder, giving her a gentle shake. No response.

  “Bithia, time to rise and shine,” he said, shaking her harder. He flashed a quick glance at Thom, whose expression was concerned and grim. Nate carefully raised her head from the control console, bracing her neck and shoulders with his arm. She was breathing, he reassured himself, and she had a pulse, though slow and intermittent.

  The gilintrae showed no signs of activity.

  Closing his eyes for a moment, he searched for their link and found only glowing embers where usually the flame burned steady.

  Swearing, Nate plucked her from the chair. “Get the medkit on the double and meet me in the sleeping quarters. I think we need a strong stimulant. She’s way under. I shouldn’t have let her try her crazy idea, and I shouldn’t have gone to sleep myself.”

  “Try what?” Thom followed on Nate’s heels down the main corridor. “What was she doing at the controls?”

  “Trying to communicate directly with the AI. I know it sounds crazy, but she was determined to save the trip data for us so we could find our way home someday. I didn’t see any harm in it, but whatever she did had a hypnotizing effect on me. Get the medkit.”

  Her attempts at communication with the AI had lulled him to sleep, and he’d been on the periphery of whatever mental sweep she’d conducted. The effects on Bithia herself must have been tenfold what hit him.

  Alarmed, Nate moved faster, being careful not to bump Bithia’s head as he maneuvered through the tight spaces of the courier ship. As Nate laid her gently on the pilot’s bunk, Thom hastened into the tiny cabin, juggling an armful of medical supplies.

  He knelt beside the bunk and spread the contents of the medkit on the deck to decide what inject to try. “We don’t know if she can tolerate our medications,” Thom said. “This could be a real mistake. You sure you don’t want to wait awhile, see if she sleeps it off?”

  Nate took Bithia’s pulse again, holding her left wrist firmly. He shook his head. “Even slower than before. We can’t wait. What you got?”

  Thom narrowed his choice to two injects, laying them side by side on the bed. He tapped the first one with his right index finger. “Adrenephix. Strongest thing in the medkit.” Frowning, he touched the other. “And this is the finest quality, genetically derived neurocrysmeth that credits can buy on the black market—found this in Jurgens’ kit yesterday.”

  “The idiot was mainlining starspeed? He was asking for a fucking heart attack.” Nate whistled. “All his flight pay must have been going into keeping the illegal cylinder filled.”

  “And then some,” Thom agreed. “But it’s a thousand times more potent than adrenephix.”

  “We don’t need her addicted to that shit.” Nate studied Bithia’s beautiful face, and his heart thumped painfully.

  “But we do need her to wake up, and this is the stuff to do it. One dose isn’t necessarily addictive, and I have the right injects to administer a narco blocker as soon as she regains consciousness, before the high kicks in completely. No high, no addiction.”

  “Some other time I’ll ask how you know all this,” Nate said, remembering Thom originally hailed from a rough Inner Sector planet. “For now I’m nothing but grateful. Do it.”

  “You sure?” Thom held the chosen inject, ready to apply it to Bithia’s arm. Nate took Bithia’s hand and nodded. Muttering a prayer to the Lords of Space under his breath, Thom administered the full dose of the highly illegal upper. He rubbed the site of the inject and sat on his heels. “The reaction may be violent.”

  “If it works.”

  “Unless her physiology is totally different from ours, which I doubt, the drug will work. See her fingers twitching? The starspeed’s hitting her central nervous system about now.”

  Drawing a huge, gasping breath, Bithia sat bolt upright, shaking uncontrollably, staring at them with wide-open eyes, apparently not recognizing either man. She tried to scramble off the bunk. Nate grabbed her and didn’t let go, no matter how she struggled and fought, not even when she clamped her teeth into his shoulder.

  “Hurry with the blocker, will you? I don’t want to hurt her, and I can’t risk knocking her out again.”

  “Superhuman strength in short bursts is one of the side effects.” Thom worked frantically to mix the contents of three injects into one, hardly an authorized procedure. He improvised, without spilling too much of the medications, which would have rendered his antidote too weak to do the job. Finally, he came up with the inject, dodging a flying kick from Bithia’s left foot, and slammed the inject into her shoulder. “Sorry, lady, this’ll hurt like hell and leave a bruise on your pretty arm, but I gotta do it.”

  Bithia stiffened from head to toe, sighed deeply and collapsed into Nate’s arms, eyes shut. He took a deep breath. “Tell me we’re not back to where we started.”

  “She’s fine,” Thom said. “Steady breathing. Take her pulse, see for yourself.”

  “Faster than normal, but definitely better than before. What next?”

  “She’ll regain consciousness in a moment or two, and she won’t remember anything, but she’s going to ache all over, with a hell of a headache in particular. She can’t have headclear or any other drug for twenty-four hours. Her muscles may spasm off and on for a few hours. She’ll definitely have the shakes. Fresh air would be good. We’re going to have to stay here another day because she won’t be capable of riding.”

  “I don’t care as long as she’s going to be all right. It’s not as if we have any deadlines now. Not expected to be anywhere at all, in fact, much less at a certain time.” Nate leaned close to Bithia, who opened her eyes as predicted, but with great difficulty. “Are you all right, sweetheart? Head hurt?”

  “Yes.” Wide-eyed, hands going to her stomach, she moaned. “What happened? Why are we in here? I’m going to be sick—”

  Thom shoved a small basin under her chin, taking it away again when the episode had passed. “Be a good idea to carry her outside. The fresh air will do her good.”

  “Am I sick?” she asked as Nate lifted her from the bunk and headed into the corridor. “Why do I feel so wretched?”

  “You wanted to communicate with the AI, remember?” Nate said as he awkwardly hit the controls to open the ship’s door and lower the gangplank. “You put yourself into some kind of a trance in the process.” He carried her down the ramp with great care and set her on the velvet-soft grass in the shade of the ship. “Sent me to sleep too, but Thom was able to wake me. I nearly took his head off before I regained full consciousness. You were under too deep. We had to give you a drug to shock your system into reviving. Scared me to death.”

  “Any better, ma’am?” Thom asked as he came out of the ship carrying a couple of blankets from their saddlebags, including her favorite white one from the beach house. He was also balancing a steaming mug.

  “The air out here is settling my stomach, but my head hurts so much.”

  “Drink this.” Thom handed her the mug, which she immediately tried to thrust back at him, her face screwed up in a grimace of total repulsion. “I know you think your stomach won’t handle it, but trust me, this is the best thing. Hold your breath and get the stuff into your gut somehow.”

  She gave him a piteous look for a moment, but Thom was unrelenting, pushing the mug toward her lips. She did as ordered and dropped the mug into the grass before reclining with a moan. “The liquid helps, thank you.”

  Working rapidly, Nate and Thom constructed a small shelter for her out of the blankets and alternated sitting with her throughout the day. Thom plied her with fluids of various types and seemed satisfied by her progress as the day wore on. She had a few attacks of violent shaking, as he’d predicted she might, but Nate wrapped her tightly in the soft blanket and held
her until the episodes passed. The one thing he wouldn’t allow her was a nap. She complained less and less of the headache and declared she felt quite well as the sun set.

  “No solid food until morning. I’ll give you headclear then, if the headache returns,” Thom said. “It shouldn’t, but these things can surprise you.”

  “I never expected to miss the damn healing chamber.” Nate gathered blankets, preparing to move inside the ship for the night. “Sure would have helped today, though.”

  Bithia drained the latest mug of recommended fluids and handed it to Thom with a flourish. She shook her head. “I wouldn’t trade my father’s impersonal machine for the devoted care Thom gave me. And you.”

  “You’re right, you—and I—owe your recovery to Thom. One more in a long string of things I owe him. This one is the most important, old friend.” Nate clapped his embarrassed sergeant on the shoulder. “I’ll always be in your debt.”

  “It evens out pretty fairly over the years,” Thom said. “I’m glad I had the right drugs to work with. Adrenephix wouldn’t have done it for her. She was too far under by the time I got to you guys this morning. Wouldn’t have been a pretty story without a starspeed inject. Guess we owe Jurgens.”

  “I bet he got transferred out to the Far Sectors this late in his career because somebody wanted him and his addiction away from the high-rankers he ferried from base to base.”

  Nate took the folded blanket from Bithia and gave her a hand as she rose from the ground. “As for you, you’re not setting foot in the Murphy’s control chamber again, nor getting anywhere close to an AI interface port. I don’t care if you got the flight data or not, coming so close to losing you wasn’t worth the risk. We can stay on Talonque forever before I’ll let you take such a chance again.”

  “I’ve no desire to repeat this experience, I assure you. I think I did get the information we were after. I have a dim recall of success. But, as you say, we’re not likely to have the chance to use whatever I saved.”

  “Talonqueni immigrants.” Thom assumed an air of good cheer. “I’m getting real used to the idea.”

  “Sure you are,” Nate said as he bounded up the gangplank into the Murphy. “Reveling in it like the rest of us, I bet.”

  The ship’s portal closed on the sound of their laughter.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  After setting the controls for self-destruct and complying with every last word of Sectors ship-abandonment regulations, Nate and Thom stood and watched the ship melt in upon itself. They remained, stoically observing, until the Murphy was nothing but a pool of molten metal, seeping into the ground below. Bithia said she found it too depressing to watch the entire sad process. She’d taken herself off to sit in the shade of a small tree and wait until her companions felt free to leave. When the last of the ship’s material disappeared below the surface, Nate gave the order to saddle the kemat and ride away.

  Nate was relieved to leave the area of the ship, abandoning his hope to get home as well. They rode all day without seeing anyone or anything, not even wildlife. The first night on the trail he’d selected a peaceful spot beside the upper tributary of the river for a camp, fished for dinner and slept soundly. The next morning they’d boldly taken to the great road, galloping past the few other travelers with impunity. The only people they met were Githholz stragglers or small-time trading caravans, all going southward. No one else appeared to be interested in heading to the mountains.

  “It’s partly the season,” Bithia said. “The trading time is over, and winter will soon be upon us. The winters in the foothills and mountains are particularly fierce. Only the hardy people who actually live in these parts will stay over winter.”

  “Great, and we’re heading straight into this bad weather?” Nate asked, remembering too late her penchant for leaving out little details, as she called them, here and there. “What if we can’t winter over in your father’s base? Or decide we don’t want to?”

  “It’ll only take a few days to get there and find out,” Bithia said confidently. “If we find living there is impossible, we can be safely on our way to the plateau or even all the way to the south before the winter gales develop.”

  “I don’t know, maybe a trip to that southern island Atletl and Celixia claimed to be from, back at Poqueteele, might not be such a bad idea if we’re going to be marooned on this planet.” Thom’s voice held genuine longing. “At least it’d be warm and we could fish.”

  So he and his two companions had ridden and debated their range of future choices, companionably, not too worried about anything but beating the first storms of winter. It was good to have a new purpose to replace all the planning and hopes he’d centered on the Murphy, although Nate was concerned about what to plan for after the excursion to the mountain facility was concluded. He worried about Bithia’s reaction once she’d explored the last possible link to her father and her home. Her reassurances about not pinning too much hope on finding the main base operational sounded convincing, but he had his doubts.

  As they traveled, the road rose imperceptibly until the track suddenly veered east to parallel the foothills. Bithia directed their small party to a narrow one-lane trail branching away from the main road and winding into the foothills, serving as the main passage through the mountains to the lands beyond. There’d been a town, which had taken them a day to cautiously detour around. Nate had no desire to set foot in such a large place, or attract attention, which would have been inevitable.

  After two more days of slow going into the foothills and then the mountains themselves, leaving the road and detouring onto an even narrower, more winding trail, he’d made the decision to abandon the kemat, which were showing signs of respiratory distress. Nate traded them to a delighted subsistence farmer, whose family grew a few vegetables and tended a herd of sheeplike creatures at high elevation. The farmer gave them food and a single beast of burden, which was sufficient to carry their combined, pared-down possessions.

  “He thinks we’re fools, lowland idiots, trading four kemat for this homely old creature and some food,” Bithia told Nate as they trudged away from the farm the next morning, working their way along the narrow, steep mountain road.

  “I don’t care what he thinks,” Nate said. “And I don’t like this damn, what do you call it? Yallurt? Acts like the classic description of a stubborn terran mule I once read about. Now I understand the concept vividly.”

  “Yes, but the beast is so strong.” Bithia laughed, watching him and Thom trying to inspire the sturdy creature to proceed up the trail. “And basically sweet-natured.”

  “Sweet to you maybe, ma’am,” Thom said in disgust as the yallurt finally condescended to trot a few yards. “It don’t like me, and the feeling is definitely mutual. This animal ain’t gonna replace the kemat in my affections.”

  “You don’t appear to have any instinctive link with yallurt, the way you did with the noble kemat.”

  They made pretty good time in the mountains once Thom figured out the trick of encouraging the yallurt with handfuls of sweet grass. Nate thought it was a good thing they were hiking, since the trek gave them time to acclimatize to the ever-increasing altitude and resulting decrease in oxygen.

  Nate heard music long before they came upon the village tucked into a bend in the mountain trail. The remote pocket of civilization was a small hamlet consisting of perhaps two dozen houses and outbuildings. The mountain trail became an unpaved street, leading to the heart of the village. The men pulled the hoods of their capes more firmly over their heads to shadow their faces.

  Perhaps this high in the mountains, the people won’t have heard anything about us. Nate needed a good night’s rest and decent food before attempting the final ascent to Fr’taray’s main facility. Bithia and Thom weren’t in any better shape.

  He got the impression the entire population of the town was gathered for a feast or a party or whatever the festive occasion was. The three weary travelers and their single pack animal stood on the edge
of the small square and watched the dancers, unnoticed at first. Then people began to stare, nudging each other and whispering. Finally, the musicians fell silent in a discordant ending to what had been a rollicking dance tune. Everyone in the square stood and gaped at the trio of new arrivals.

  “Please, we don’t mean to disturb you.” Bithia’s voice carried effortlessly across the plaza. “We’ve come a long, hard way from the lowlands on a pilgrimage to T’naritza’s mountain. We only wish to buy some food.”

  “And perhaps a room, shelter for the night,” Nate said. “We can pay.”

  People glanced uneasily at each other for a moment. Finally, an elderly man in a wildly colorful overshirt and loose pants woven from black, orange and bright turquoise threads stepped forward. The villagers parted silently to make way for him. He made a welcoming gesture with his hands and bowed. “I am Hatur, First Elder of Shalonn. We’re celebrating the wedding of my granddaughter tonight.” He waved a hand at a young woman standing arm in arm with her new husband in the center of the now motionless dancers. “While it is much past the customary season for pilgrims, guests are always welcome at a wedding feast, as you surely must know, even in the lowlands. Please, come and join me. Speak no more of money—you’ll be my personal guests.”

  “I appreciate your welcome and your kindness.” Bithia stepped gracefully through the plaza beside Hatur, Nate and Thom silently following. She made quick work of introductions, adding, “Our good wishes to the newlywed couple.”

  Hatur summoned one of his grandsons to take charge of the pack animal, and it was led away, complaining but docile.

  Not sure he liked the crowd’s reserved demeanor, Nate decided to follow Bithia’s lead. He made sure she was comfortably seated at the long table, in the place of honor next to Hatur, and had a glass of the local wine and a plate of steaming meat, vegetables and bread. He and Thom took positions behind her chair, alert but not overly so. The Mark 27 riding at his hip was a constant reassurance these days. Despite not encountering any trouble since leaving the ship hundreds of miles away, Nate was wary.