by Jaleta Clegg
“Then who will?” the man asked Clark.
“You should,” Clark answered.
The man stared at his hands, as if the concept were beyond his understanding. The golden haired ones milled around aimlessly behind him, their faces blank.
“But that isn’t the Way,” the older man objected.
“We don’t really care,” Vince said. “You want the food, you grow it and process it yourself. We’re leaving.” He turned and marched away, back across the valley. The rest of the mob followed.
“What about Dace?” Jasyn asked Clark as he watched the others walk into the dark forest.
“I don’t know. Hope Darus Venn and his friends find her. What else can we do?”
“Hold the ship until she gets there,” Jasyn said firmly. “I’m not leaving without her.”
“Neither am I.” He took her hand.
They turned their backs on the forlorn golden men, still staring uncertainly at the broken black box and the departing mob.
Chapter 28
The yellow dot on the floor moved at a steady walking pace. We followed it down the hall and around several corners. It stopped next to a section of blank wall and blinked, somehow conveying impatience when we stared at the wall, wondering why it had stopped.
“Stairs,” Wex said, slapping himself in the head.
We all dove for the wall at the same time, running our hands over it looking for the warm spot that should open the hidden door. Wade found it. He gave me an insufferably smug smile as he followed the yellow spot onto the stairs. We crowded in after him. The door slid shut on Hovart’s heels.
The dot led us down two complete turns and halfway around another one before it waited, blinking, in front of another blank wall. Wade ran his hand over the wall. Nothing happened.
“It’s over there,” Lovar said, waving his scanner at the wall next to Wex.
Wex opened the door. Wade lost his smug grin.
We exited into a corridor of widely spaced doors. Patterns of green lights blinked beneath the surface of the walls. The yellow dot turned left to move sedately down the hallway. It didn’t pause at an intersection with one of the long hallways that ran the length of the ship. We did, for a moment, to look both ways. We saw no sign of life.
I was beginning to wonder if the golden men were going to find our skeletons in the ship when the hall changed. I stumbled over an uneven spot in the floor, catching myself against the wall. The yellow dot skipped a step ahead. The lights along the ceiling flickered, their green light dimmer. The yellow dot turned a corner, made a jog, then kept going.
We passed a burned out light and another ripple in the floor. The yellow dot skipped more. It flickered off and on in an uneven rhythm.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” Hovart demanded of Wex.
Wex shrugged. He’d been doing the unbelievable just to get us as far as he had.
Wade tripped over a wrinkled section of the floor, where the corridor made another jog. He swore as he straightened, then stopped, halfway back to his feet, staring ahead. We crowded behind him.
The hall was a complete ruin. Jagged tears ripped the skin of the ship. Rocks intruded inside. What had been an airlock was now a crumpled mass of metal.
“I don’t think we’re going to get out of that,” Hovart said. “Talk to it, Wex.”
“And say what?” Wex rubbed his hands nervously down his legs. “Is there another entrance? I feel like an idiot, talking to nothing.”
The nothing apparently heard him. The yellow dot wavered in front of us for a moment, flashing and fading irregularly. Then it started back the way we’d come, moving at its sedate pace. Hovart patted Wex on the shoulder and started after the light. The rest of us stood for a moment, still surprised it had worked.
“Are you coming?” Hovart asked from beyond the jog in the corridor.
We hurried away from the wrecked and twisted door that was never going to open again.
The light led us back through the maze of locked doors and endless halls. It stopped in front of another blank wall, flashing impatiently while we opened the door. This time we went down at least three full sets of stairs. The light stopped in front of a wall and waited again.
Hovart was in the lead. He barely paused to find the warm spot. The door slid open. We were on another lined with locked doors. Lights flashed beneath their surfaces.
“More storage, I bet,” Wade said.
The light moved forward. We followed.
The empty ship scraped on my nerves. The endless green light made us all look like walking death. My stomach complained again. I did my best to ignore it. We had no food, no water, and we wouldn't stand a chance of getting free and finding either until we had the force fields down. We weren't any closer to finding them, either.
Hovart stopped at an intersection. He held up his hand, signaling us to stop and be quiet. He listened, head cocked to one side. I strained my ears but didn’t hear anything.
“Is there any way to make that thing go faster?” he asked Wex.
“Beats me,” Wex said, shrugging. He turned away from us and addressed the floor where the light traveled at a slow pace away from us. “Can you go faster?”
The light sped up. We hurried to catch it. Hovart shooed the rest of us in front of him. We went down that hall and turned into another one. The light traveled at a fast walk now.
We came to an intersection with one of the long corridors that ran the length of the ship. The light turned the corner. Wex watched the light, Lovar watched his scanner. Wade was right behind them. He glanced the other way down the corridor. His face went pale. He turned to push Lovar into a faster pace. Shouts rang out from far down the corridor. We’d found the golden men.
“Run!” Hovart pushed me after the others.
“Go faster,” Wex shouted. He was trying to run without getting ahead of our guide light. His hopping steps would have been funny if it weren’t for the pursuit behind us. The light sped up.
We ran down the corridor. I risked a glance behind. Hovart ran right behind me. I saw white tunics in the distance behind him. They were followed by flapping dark robes as the others chased us.
The light turned a corner, we skidded after it. The shouting got louder.
The light ran up to a circular hatch in the side of the ship. Green and blue lights blinked on and off around it. A complicated panel of lights glowed in constantly changing patterns. The guide light blinked off as we slid to a halt next to the hatch. Lovar shook his head over the scanner.
Commander Hovart grabbed Wade, pulling him back the way we’d come. “Open it, Dace,” he ordered over his shoulder.
I flexed my fingers. Hovart had a lot of confidence in my skills. I wished I had some, too. I knelt in front of the panel and pulled out my lockpicks. I'd never seen anything like it. But if I didn’t get it open, and fast, we were going to be in deep trouble. I pulled out my sturdiest sonic probe and jammed it in what I hoped was the right opening. The probe whined. The lights on the panel went crazy. Half the lights cracked with a loud bang. A cloud of acrid smoke rose from the lock. The lights went dead. The door stayed shut.
“Open the hatch,” Wex said, talking to the ceiling.
“Maybe you should have thought of that before Dace blew up the door,” Lovar said. “It isn’t going to work now.”
I swore as I put my lockpicks away. They weren’t any good now.
“Got any more tricks?” Lovar asked me.
“Shut up.” I slammed my hand against the dead lock.
The lights around the outside of the door flickered pure blue. The door groaned and started to open, the center spiraling out to the edges. The soft light of dawn came in accompanied by the ever-present breeze.
“That was a very good one,” Lovar said. “Hovart! We got the door open.”
Hovart and Wade retreated towards us.
“Good work, Dace,” Hovart said.
Wex pulled a face at me behind Hovart's back.
&n
bsp; We scrambled through the dilating hatch and onto a gritty ledge of rock. Then stopped dead.
A solid wall of golden men in white tunics stood on the ground a few feet below us. Their mouths hung open in surprise.
“Fifty of them,” Wade said. “No problem.”
“Don’t forget the dozen or so angry ones behind us,” Lovar added. “And the fact that we have no way of neutralizing their wands.”
“Think they’ll be nicer if we just surrender?” Wade asked.
“I doubt it matters,” Hovart said. "It was a good try."
The golden men in the front row outside raised their wands. I could hear the ones behind us closing in. Commander Hovart, Wex, and Lovar crumpled to the ground, clutching at their collars.
The golden men moved forward to grab Wade. They stopped, staring at me, hands still reaching for Wade. I cursed my stupidity at not faking.
“Take them to the pit,” a new voice ordered. The crowd of golden men shifted uncertainly then parted. The newcomer was old, his hair white in the early morning light. He wore a long white robe with patterns woven into it. He looked intelligent. “That one,” he added, pointing at Wade, “and the others. Bring her to the Chamber.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. While the golden men were grabbing Wade, who was struggling, and picking up the others on the ground, I darted to my right along the path.
I didn’t make it far. Five of the men jumped up from the lower ground and tackled me. I went down hard, scraping my face along the ground. I could barely breathe as their weight landed on my back. Two of them grabbed my arms and hauled me to my feet. They were so much bigger than I was that my toes were lifted clear of the ground.
They hustled us along a narrow path that wound along the ledge next to the bulk of the ship that showed under fallen rocks.
We were behind the barricade of thorns that separated them from the fields and the thorny pens. Crude huts, built from mud and branches from the leafy bushes, lined the stream. I caught glimpses of women and children peeking out of the huts with frightened eyes and dirty faces. The men carried me across the floor of the valley, through the middle of the haphazard cluster of huts, to a cave on the far side. They dragged Hovart and the others behind a row of bushes out of my sight.
They pushed me into the cave, preceded by the old man. His robe dragged through the dust.
Inside, it was a bizarre mix of high tech and primitive. Chairs that looked as if they were ripped from somewhere in the ship sat next to rough cut logs. A whole bank of blinking controls sat isolated at one side of the cave on a relatively level spot. The generators? No, they were too small, and I saw no evidence of any connection to projectors or antennas, and no sign of a power source large enough to produce the kinds of fields that surrounded the planet.
My guards dropped me in the middle of the cave, on a crudely woven mat of fibers. They didn’t leave, they stayed on either side. The old man stood in front of me. I stared at his dirty, ragged toenails and wished I were somewhere else. Somewhere with food and clean water, somewhere very far away from this miserable planet.
The old man took a wand from one of the others and pointed it at me. My collar did nothing but the rest of me tingled. The old man frowned at the wand, studying the handle. The tingling stopped. He slapped the wand to my forehead. Pain exploded through me. I think I screamed, I couldn’t hear through the rushing in my ears.
The pain was gone as soon as it had come. I lay panting on the filthy mat while the old man studied the wand again.
“Why does your collar not function?”
I used my favorite insult.
“Why does it not work?” The old man waved the wand over my head.
My body tingled. I told the old man where he could shove his wand.
One of my guards kicked me in the ribs. He hit the one that was still only half healed. It broke again. More pain spread across my side, this a dull red ache. The guard kicked me again, cracking another rib. I groaned and tried to pass out.
The older man grabbed my face, pulling my head up from the mat at a painful angle. He studied me with mad gray eyes. I tried to work up enough saliva to spit. He shoved my head away, dropping me like a diseased animal. The other guard kicked me on my other side. I rolled up on my knees, trying to protect my cracked ribs from further abuse. It hurt to breathe.
“What were you doing in the ship?” the older man asked.
I didn’t bother to answer, too busy trying to breathe.
They kicked me a few more times. The old man shouted questions. The guards kicked me back and forth on the mat. They finally hauled me to my feet and hauled me outside, into the bright light of full day. The pain of being lifted and dragged was almost enough to make me pass out. I wanted to, I tried, but my body wasn’t going to let me out that easily.
They took me along a winding path around a bend in the canyon to a wide opening in the cliff. They dragged me into the shade under the lip of rock up to a round hole in the ground. They didn’t even pause at the edge. They let go of my arms and shoved me in.
My scream cut off abruptly as I hit the sandy bottom. The drop wasn’t that far, maybe ten feet, but I landed hard enough to crack another rib. I curled up, holding my side and trying to breathe through the stabbing pain.
“I was wondering when they’d drop you in,” Wade said. “Are you all right?”
“No,” I managed through gritted teeth. I wanted to be unconscious, where I couldn’t feel the pain anymore. Perversely, the pain made that impossible.
“What’s wrong?” He pulled my arm. He stopped when I gasped. “I did have medic training.”
“Just leave me alone.”
“You want to stay here and rot? I don't. I need your help getting to the others.”
I wrapped my arms as tight as I could around the throbbing pain. “Unless you’ve got pain meds, leave me alone for a minute. I cracked some ribs a month ago and they just broke them again for me.”
He squatted on his heels. “You lead an interesting life, for a trader. Busted ribs, illegal lockpicks. Ex-Patrol as your pilot. A ship that can slip in here and land without getting caught.”
“I never claimed that.” I loosened my grip enough to shift to a sitting position. I kept my breathing shallow around the ache in my side.
“Commander Hovart is convinced you’re some kind of Patrol super agent,” Wade continued. “I bet you have all sorts of illegal skills.”
“So report me when we get out of here. Where is the way out?” The pain faded enough I could look around. We were in a small cave, floored with a thick layer of loose sand. The only way out I could see was the hole overhead. Light filtered down but it didn’t do much to illuminate the cave.
Wade sifted sand through his fingers. “Are you?”
“What? Some kind of agent for the Patrol? Only over my dead body. I’m exactly what I said I was. Where’s the way out, Wade?”
“You can’t just be an independent, it doesn’t fit.”
“Too bad. It’s true. You wanted my help. You want me to kick you?”
“I doubt you could,” he said and gave me his smug grin.
“I’m really tempted to try.”
He stood, staring down at me with his hands on his hips. “I don’t know if you’re going to be any help. The way in is the only way out.”
I looked up at the lopsided circle of light overhead.
“I could lift you up,” he said. “You grab the edge and get out and find a log or something for me to climb. But I don’t know if you’re in any shape to do it.”
I gritted my teeth and got to my feet. I felt my ribs grating past each other. I closed my eyes and wait for my stomach to quit trying to empty itself. Wade held my elbow as I swayed.
“We’ll think of something else,” Wade said. “Just sit down and rest for a bit.”
I sat, gingerly easing myself to the sand. I tucked my arm against my side and rested my head on my knees. The pressure against my ribs felt good. Well, be
tter than before. It still hurt.
Wade crawled around the edge of the cave, where the roof lowered and met the sand floor. He explored every cranny and shadow with methodical slowness. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the throbbing from my ribs.
And somehow fell asleep.
Chapter 29
Wade woke me up. He wasn’t trying to hurt me, but even his gentle shaking rattled my cracked ribs. I groaned. I sprawled on my side in the sand. My ribs ached with every breath.
“Can you crawl?” he asked. “I think I’ve found some kind of tunnel.”
“How about you check it out and come back and tell me?”
“I already did, at least part of the way. There’s a whole network of tunnels and caves.”
My stomach chose that moment to let me know I hadn’t fed it in much too long. Wade suppressed a snicker that would have earned him a black eye if I had been able to move.
“It isn’t far,” he said. "We might even find a few bugs or roots for you to eat."
“Far to what?” I sighed and wished I hadn’t when it hurt. I rolled onto my side and managed to make it to my knees. If I kept one arm clamped around my side, I could move. If I went slow and careful.
“Down this way.” Wade headed for the lowest part of the cave.
I followed him at a shuffle. When I had to bend my head to fit under the ceiling, I stopped. He was down on his belly, squirming under the knobby shelf of rock that rose to become the roof.
“It’s only bad the first ten yards or so,” he called over his shoulder.
I watched his feet disappear into the dark shadows around the edge of the cave. I leaned my head on the sloping ceiling and wished for a pain patch. None magically appeared. I got down to my knees, stifling a groan or three. I wasn’t sure I could make it on my belly. Wade was gone. I could barely see a patch of lighter darkness in under the rock shelf. I squirmed as close as I could before I had to lay down to fit through the opening.
I belly crawled in, hands in front of me feeling for any sudden turns or large rocks. It hurt, more than I want to remember. Somehow I kept going through a haze of pain. It felt like hours that I wormed my way into the rock. I heard myself whimpering but I couldn’t stop it.
