by Wells, Jack
Bullets and energy flashes filled the air as Martle and Svetlana lay on each side of the doorway and carefully peeked into the office.
“You groutin! If you kill the chancellor, I will rip off all four of your arms. I don’t even want to tell you what the commandant will do to you!” Sodrew screamed in disbelief that they would shoot so close to their Human quarry.
The red flashes abruptly stopped as the aliens considered a new approach. The lull gave the two Rangers a welcome opportunity and they took advantage of it. Both popped up at the same time and fired rockets into the aliens. One of the rockets blew three aliens off the gangway, ultimately splattering the sidewalk two hundred floors below. The second rocket landed in a fiery splash against the shuttle’s cockpit. The force of the blow caused the shuttle to drop a meter but it quickly regained altitude and didn’t appear damaged. The Rangers immediately dropped down again and reloaded.
“Get the chancellor!” Sodrew screamed through the smoke and gunfire.
“I take it the ugly ones are the aliens,” Svetlana observed dryly.
Martle raised his eyebrows and looked at her in silence. Is she trying to be funny?
Bullets were ineffective against the aliens’ armor, but the Rangers were able to inflict serious damage with their rockets. The aliens hadn’t started firing yet, and the Rangers sprang to their feet again with another round of rockets. Four aliens were cut in half, but the rest released thirteen lines of red fire into the outnumbered defenders.
“Joe, grab the launcher.” One of the agents whispered to the other, pointing at a dead Ranger’s weapon.
He reached out and red praser energy sliced off his arm just above the elbow.
“Aaauugghh, my arm!” Joe screamed in agony.
Joe’s partner leaped from behind his chair and onto the other rocket launcher. He stood and turned to fire, but four bolts of red fire burned holes through his torso.
“So much for security. I think it’s time for a woman’s touch,” Svetlana said confidently, jumping to her feet.
“What the hell do you think you are going to do?!” Martle was astonished that she would attack them after what just happened.
“I’m going to beat the crap out of some purple men from Mars,” She said evenly.
“First, they aren’t men, and secondly, they aren’t from Mars. They are a lot tougher than any man you’ve ever fought.”
“Why, General, you almost sound worried about me. You’re going to make me tear up,” Svetlana said sarcastically.
Martle explained angrily, “I’m not interested in watching anybody commit suicide, even you.”
Four aliens had reached Jonathan and were leaning across the top of his desk to grab him. Svetlana kept an eye on the aliens’ progress as she debated with Martle. They had picked him up screaming and were clearing the top of the desk. His arms waved wildly. It was time to get serious. The edge returned to her voice.
“Listen to me, old man. The aliens aren’t going to kill that bastard, I am!”
Martle realized he couldn’t reason with a lifetime of hatred and held up his hands in resignation. “Fine, do what you have to, but throwing him in maximum security confinement for the rest of his days would hurt him much more than a quick death. Think about it.”
“I am thinking about it,” Svetlana snarled. “Either way, I have to stop them from taking him. If I can’t, I will kill him,” she promised as she rose to her feet. She didn’t have time to focus her thoughts in order to hear the melody or call on her master. She would have to fight the aliens and the chaos in her mind at the same time.
In one easy motion, she reached back, swiped the dart off her back, and flipped forward through the door. As her feet touched the floor, she sent the dart through a narrow gap in the back of an alien’s armor between the helmet and its upper back plating. The dart ripped through the exposed neck of one of the aliens carrying Jonathan toward the shuttle. The creature went rigid, dropped the chancellor, and toppled sideways. Prior to the alien hitting the floor, Svetlana twisted her body with hard rotation and jerked the dart back into action.
The other three aliens realized they were under attack again and let go of the Human. Before they could turn to look, the dart was spinning again and Svetlana swung it into an alien that had been carrying Jonathan. Its helmet cracked with a loud crunching sound and the alien tumbled sideways into the two that stood beside it.
Half of the aliens were already back on the shuttle but had come back out to see what was going on. The rest had waited for the chancellor on the gangway with Colonel Sodrew. All were targeting Svetlana now as she cartwheeled and spun toward them. Ten red lines of praser energy flashed at her bobbing, weaving form. Only one ripped across her bare thigh and lit it on fire.
She tumbled to the floor in agony with her burned flesh smoking.
A dark cloud began to gather between the aliens and Svetlana.
“It’s the Searcher,” Sodrew warned his Warriors. “We’ll take her right here.”
Dean and Wystl appeared at the cloud’s misty center. Wystl saw the praser bolts coming at them and immediately punched up a force wall with her Dimensional Shifter pad for protection.
Jonathan was cowering behind his desk again after being dropped by the aliens. “Dean, help me!” he begged pitifully.
The chancellor never called Dean by his first name. He must really be terrified. Dean shook his head in disgust and glanced at Svetlana.
Even hurt and in pain, she still had fire in her almond-shaped brown eyes. Holding her smoking thigh, she rocked anxiously and looked back at Dean.
“Forge, you’ve got to stop them from taking him. I may never get another chance to kill him,” she pleaded.
She knows! Jonathan realized in fear.
“You want to kill your boss?” Dean asked, trying to determine if she was sincere.
Martle stepped up beside Dean and answered his question. “That’s right,” he said softly. “When I showed her the proof, I was a little too convincing. Now she wants revenge. I should have expected her reaction.”
Dean gave a weak, crooked smile. “Well, I know how she feels about wanting to kill him, but you talked me into the nobler response.”
Wystl was only half-listening to their conversation as she watched for the Warriors’ response to her intrusion. She knew they would not quit until they got the chancellor or died trying. The former wasn’t an option, so that left the latter. Warriors would only respond to force, but maybe she wouldn’t have to kill all of them. Wystl raised her voice for all to hear.
“Warriors, which one of you chooses to die first?!”
They glanced fearfully at the control pad in Wystl’s hand, then at each other, and finally at Colonel Sodrew. She pointed at the dead Warriors and Humans. “If you leave the chancellor and take me,” she emphasized, “no one else needs to die.”
Sodrew spoke up. “Who are you trying to fool, impersonating a Human? You know we can’t leave him. We have orders to follow.”
Before he finished speaking, a Warrior standing on each side of the colonel disappeared.
“What have you done with them, Searcher?” he demanded.
“Oh, I think you know that their lifeless bodies are now floating in the Travel Dimension, as promised.” She looked around with interest. “Who’s next?”
“Attack them! Go around the force wall.” Sodrew pointed at four Warriors and ordered, “You, shoot at the ceiling. Make it fall on them.”
The Warriors were trying to kill everyone but the chancellor and her. Wystl realized it was useless to try and reason with them. On second thought, they might even be part of the Warriors for Change that Captain Aydr’n had raved about. Maybe they were trying to kill her.
It was time for them to go. She adjusted the force wall to include the chancellor and to extend over their heads as the roof began to collapse from the praser assault. A few more taps on the control pad and all the Warriors, including the dead, vanished. The shuttle still hovere
d where it was, unaffected, a few meters outside the broken window.
She sighed at her inability to keep the Warriors alive and looked at Svetlana sympathetically. “I am sorry the Consortians injured you.”
Svetlana didn’t want anyone’s pity. She had been too cocky and removed the body glove armor. She realized that her injury was her own fault. “It’s not so bad now that I don’t smell my own flesh burning anymore.” She tried to sound reassuring and project strength that she didn’t feel. “It’s gone numb.”
“That’s good…” It wasn’t really, but Wystl’s mind was elsewhere, and her voice trailed off as she considered her next move.
It was time to go back to Consortia but there was a dilemma: If the Warriors were acting lawfully and weren’t terrorists, then she must take the chancellor with her and complete their mission. On the other hand, if he wasn’t supposed to go to Consortia, she could always bring him back. Either way, she would keep him safe from the Warriors for Change and take him directly to the University.
“On your feet, Chancellor,” said Wystl unequivocally. “It’s time to go.”
“But you just saved me from going to your wretched planet!” Jonathan screamed in fear and disbelief.
Dean wrinkled his face in anticipation, uncertain what Wystl’s reaction would be to Visen’s unkind reference to her home world. She didn’t seemed vindictive, but the chancellor had a negative way with people and now possibly with aliens. One of her hands still held the control pad up in position and her fingers hesitated just millimeters above the buttons. Are they tensing to move?
“You are wrong about so many things that it is hard to believe you were part of what just happened,” Wystl said incredulously, and lowered the pad. “Consortia is a beautiful, vibrant planet that you know nothing about,” she stressed defensively. Her anger grew as she continued, her sparkling blue eyes glaring at him.
“I wasn’t trying to save you. I was saving everyone from the Warrior’s zeal. In case you didn’t notice, they killed your guards and Svetlana was next! Your ego kept you from understanding what was happening, and that will be your demise.”
Hanging onto her painful leg, Svetlana pulled herself to her feet and leaned heavily against the damaged bookshelves. A few books fell on the floor as she cleared a place to hold onto.
“Hey, lady, he’s not going anywhere without me – especially not to another planet!” She grimaced through her clenched teeth and glanced down at the burned slash on her leg. “I have unfinished business with him.”
She looked at the way Svetlana feebly held herself up and her voice went calm and gentle. “My name is Wystl, and I think it will be a while before you can collect on old debts.”
“Fine, then I am going with you. I’ll collect when I’m ready,” Svetlana said resolutely. “And when he least expects it.” She added threateningly.
“She’s right, Wystl,” Dean agreed. “We both have a score to settle with him. I want to go, too.”
Wystl knew what to expect from Dean and she liked having him around anyway, but Svetlana was as unpredictable as angry groutin: the slimy, smelly creatchers were not normally dangerous, but when aroused, they could react violently with ten-centimeter-long fangs and razor-sharp talons. Even if he couldn’t guarantee it, she needed to hear reassurance from Dean that Svetlana wouldn’t be a problem.
“Dean, should we take her?” Wystl inquired with uncertainty.
Dean felt Svetlana’s resentment toward Jonathan radiating like the lethal desert sun, and with good reason. I lost friends and colleagues, but she lost her parents.
“I may regret this, but she has a right to go. I think we should take her.”
Martle leaned over and whispered earnestly, “Dean, I don’t know what they plan to do with him, but if you can, bring him back alive to stand trial. You can’t let her kill him. It would mean utter chaos here on Earth.
The quandary was evident in Dean’s tone as he whispered back, “I know, I know.” He wanted to kill Jonathan as much as Svetlana did.
“So,” Wystl looked questioningly at Martle, “just the four of us are going?”
Martle sounded slightly unsure. “If I were a younger man, I’d jump at the chance, but now I need to leave interplanetary travel to folks like you. Thanks, anyway.” Plus, I have too much to do here, now that Visen is out of the way.
Ellen yelled from her office next door, “Chancellor, more security is on the way!”
Wystl watched the Human smile hopefully. “Do you really think that will stop me?” Before he could respond she ordered, “Get on the shuttle!”
Jonathan didn’t move. Instead, he looked around desperately for some way to stall.
“If you value the use of your arms, you’d better do what she tells you and do it now,” Dean warned.
Svetlana and Jonathan wondered what he meant but decided not to ask. Martle remembered Dean’s debriefing and knew exactly what he was talking about.
“You get going,” Martle encouraged. “I’ll handle the security when it arrives.”
Dean shoved the chancellor out the broken office window onto the shuttle’s gangway and into a stiff breeze. He offered Svetlana an arm for support. She couldn’t remember the last time she smiled, but Svetlana couldn’t help herself as she looked deep into Dean’s eyes and felt…trust.
Her face lit up and her eyes sparkled as she accepted his offer. This time, Svetlana radiated warmth and friendliness. Emotionally, Dean saw her for the very first time, and she was beautiful. Intellectually, however, he knew he might still have to counter-punch with her.
From below the gangway, Jonathan heard the unmistakable whop-whop sound of multiple helicopters rising rapidly toward him. He paused to look down. Four black attack choppers bobbed threateningly into view. They came level with the shuttle and aimed their rockets at the office.
With two choppers on each side, the chancellor turned and faced them triumphantly. Svetlana and Martle took a few apprehensive steps back but stopped when they noticed that Dean and Wystl hadn’t moved. Ellen peered anxiously through the doorway into what was left of Jonathan’s office to see what would happen next.
“I think you should reconsider taking me to your wretched planet,” Jonathan said victoriously. He pointed at the attack choppers. “Obviously, I’m not going anywhere.”
“I think you are,” Wystl corrected cheerfully. “And, the better I know you, the less I care about your opinion of my planet, or anything else, for that matter.”
The choppers made a lot of noise, but one of their loudspeakers cut easily through the din. “You there, in the office – do not move. You are under arrest for attempted kidnapping and murder. If you resist, you will be fired upon. You are required to wait for the police to arrive.”
Wystl began to get the feeling that she had been playing a little too nicely and would never get off the planet. She punched at her pad a few times and tossed the chancellor through the shuttle door with an invisible hand that continued to immobilize him against the rear wall.
“Humans can be very frustrating to achieving progress,” Wystl observed. “No offense.” She looked sheepishly at Dean and Svetlana.
With a few more stabs at the pad, individual tornados began to gather and swirl around each chopper. At first, the menacing machines only wavered in the howling wind and held their positions, but the whirling wind quickly overpowered them. Soon, they were caught up in the dark vortexes with other debris and were suddenly jerked thousands of feet away from Jonathan’s penthouse office.
“Well, all right then,” Dean said with approval. “I guess this party is over.”
Wystl recognized his idiom and that he was ready to go. “Yes, before it got started,” she agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”
As the three moved across the gangway to the shuttle, Dean asked, “I suppose you know how to fly this thing.”
Wystl tried to smile. “That’s the easy part. The hard part is surviving the transition into and out of the Travel Dimen
sion.”
Concerned, he asked, “What do you mean…survive?”
“It’s always very painful going in and coming out.”
Svetlana felt Dean’s powerful muscles under his shirt as he held her up once again. She felt like they could handle anything.
“How bad can the pain be?” she asked Wystl as everyone entered the shuttle.
“It’s like you’re being torn apart. You have to tell yourself that it won’t last, and then it finally stops.”
Dean shrugged with resignation. “We have to do it.”
He sat down in what he deduced must be the copilot chair and looked around for a seat belt. Dean noticed that the chancellor was still pinned spread-eagle against the bulkhead and smiled broadly at Wystl. “Besides, I’m looking forward to seeing your beautiful, wretched planet.”
Wystl started to chastise Dean for his disparaging remark, but then saw his big smile and realized he was only teasing. She shook her head at him and smiled knowingly back.
Svetlana observed the exchange with amusement. “I think you two have been working together a little too long. Next thing you know, you’ll be finishing each other’s sentences.” Who would have believed that an alien and a straight-laced Colonel could make me feel so good?
The End
JACK WELLS lives with his wife and dog in south central Texas. He is the author of three books, from the fast-paced Alien Test and violent Civil War to the time-bending Battle of Trinity, which completes the Consortium of Planets trilogy. After being visited in a dream by
an alien from across the galaxy, he decided to record its amazing story.
The being claimed that its tale is true, but you be the judge.
Jack hopes you like their adventure as much as he does.
