Stars Beneath My Feet

by D L Frizzell

  “There must be a mistake,” Norio said shakily. “Xiv was involved?”

  “Yes. How’s that for one of your connecting facts, Norio?”

  Norio looked around uncertainly, thinking hard, trying to rationalize the frightening truth in his own mind.

  Because I grew up in the Biedrik household, I knew the walls were well-insulated, effectively making them soundproof. Still, my next question came out in a hoarse whisper. “Does Xiv know we’re in Sunlo?”

  Norio froze, and then looked at me with abject fear. “No. He is not supposed to. Marshal Redland was going to send him in the wrong direction.”

  “Then I’ll ask the same question again,” I said. “Do you trust Redland?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Redland waited for us in the cold shadows of the peach grove as Norio and I approached him. His holster’s flap was tucked neatly inside his belt to facilitate a quick draw. I had mine set the same way.

  “Where’s the major?” I asked.

  “Askin’ around for witnesses,” Redland said, eyeing us suspiciously. “Why?”

  “We want to make sure everybody’s accounted for,” I said coolly. “Something strange is going on.”

  “Jarnum’s got a load of tricks up his sleeve, sure,” Redland warned. “This murder is definitely his doin’, but he made it less public than usual.”

  “Hey, marshal,” I said. “Let us see your shackle for a minute.”

  “Now, kid,” Redland said, “Let’s not ruin our fledglin’ alliance with wild speculations.”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything,” I said. “It’s part of my job, you know, following up with parolees and such.”

  Redland glared at me, and then at Norio. Slowly, he flourished his left hand the same way a children’s magician would, and then delicately snugged back his right sleeve to reveal the shackle. “Please be quick. This thing gets cold if I don’t keep it covered up.”

  Norio angled around Redland, not getting between us as I drummed my fingers on the butt of my pistol.

  “Is this really necessary?” Redland complained.

  “Five eight two two,” Norio said, reading the stamped number on the shackle.

  “See?” Redland said indignantly as he yanked the sleeve back down. “It’s different!”

  “It’s not that different,” I said. “Donald Biedrik was in shock, he couldn’t remember the number. You suggested Jarnum’s number to him, and he accepted it.”

  Redland fumed, clearly taking umbrage with my accusation. “Okay, you two are both supposed to be smart, so put your heads together on this one. Tell me how the hell I snuck away from our party and sliced that constable to ribbons without you knowin’ it?”

  I shared a look with Norio. Redland had a point. That didn’t mean I trusted that he had nothing to do with the killing. “It’s funny how so many things have gone sideways of late, and it’s even funnier that you’re always around when they happen, marshal. Just like old times, right?”

  “Okay listen,” Redland said, raising his hands as if in surrender. “I’m gonna come clean on somethin’. Just don’t shoot me when I tell you.”

  Norio and I shared a glance. “No promises,” I said.

  “When I made you my deputy six years ago,” Redland sighed, “I told you I didn’t have much luck with my last deputy.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So?”

  “Jarnum was that deputy.”

  That wasn’t what I was expecting. “The hell you say.”

  “Sure enough,” Redland said. “He rode with me for a couple years. Smart kid, and devious, too.” He saw that I was about to say something and cut me off. “Yeah, I know – birds of a feather, pack of clefangs, blah blah. He hated the T’Neth more than anything. That made him unpredictable, but he knew to track ‘em. So, I gave him the job.”

  “How did he track the T’Neth?” Norio asked.

  “Haven’t got a damn clue,” Redland said. “He’s the one that tipped me off to the T’Neth tunnels, though. Said he found ‘em everywhere.”

  We all looked when the sound of crunching footsteps approached on the frosty ground. It was Major Hathan-Fen.

  “Why am I not surprised you two are at each other’s throats already?” She said cynically.

  “Marshal Redland is explaining how he found the tunnels,” Norio said.

  “Oh,” Hathan-Fen perked up. “I’d like to know that, too. Please enlighten us, Marshal.”

  “And how Jarnum became his deputy before he ended up in Ovalsheer Prison,” I added.

  Hathan-Fen’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “What?”

  “I put him in that prison,” Redland growled. “Listen, Jarnum was cagey, but too damned spiteful,” Redland said. “Had some notion the T’Neth wronged him but wouldn’t say how.”

  “I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t want to tell you,” I said, “with your sympathetic ear and soft shoulder to cry on.”

  “He wanted a war with the T’Neth,” Redland said.

  “We would lose,” Hathan-Fen interjected angrily.

  “No kidding,” Redland said, undeterred. “Even I know that. When Jarnum went too far and killed some ranchers, I arrested him, took his badge, and put him on trial for high crimes.”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of turning on people?” I said.

  “Making friends ain’t a part of my job,” Redland said angrily. He lowered his hands, took a piece of jerky out of his pocket, realized it was frozen solid, and put it back.

  “Making enemies is?” I asked.

  “When I need to,” he said, unfazed. “Jarnum’s goin’ after the T’Neth again, sure as hell.”

  “How do you know he’s not after you?” I said. “If he’s the vengeful type, you might have risen to the top of his list.”

  “Not likely,” Redland said.

  “How did you know Jarnum made it to Sunlo?” Norio asked. “There are other escapees, no doubt, since Ovalsheer’s walls seem to be compromised.”

  “It was a lucky guess,” Redland answered, not convincingly in my opinion.

  “I’m waiting for a better answer than that,” Hathan-Fen countered. She put her hands on her hips impatiently.

  Redland checked the shadows, the first time I’d ever seen him nervous. He waffled, but then finally said what he needed to. “Because I sent him here.”

  After a full second of shock and confusion, I grabbed Redland by the throat and shoved him against a tree. I expected him to draw his pistol – hoped he would – but he raised his hands higher over his head.

  “You’re working with him?” I hissed.

  “I’m not working with him,” Redland said defensively. “I’m using him. There’s a difference.”

  “Like you’re using us?” Hathan-Fen asked, the anger in her voice rising.

  “Yes, and you are using me the same way,” Redland shot back. “You all need to get this through your heads: The T’Neth will follow us, but we won’t see them coming ‘til it’s too late. Jarnum’s our lightning rod. He’s our edge. He’ll draw the T’Neth into the open and blow their goddamned heads off.”

  “Fred Rappa got a taste of Jarnum’s edge,” I growled, feeling the cold allure of killing Redland where he stood. “You brought him here. His death is your responsibility!”

  Redland kept his hands up as he tried to explain. “I put Jarnum in prison because I didn’t want him getting us into a war. I broke him out because – like it or not - the war has already started. He will help us end it.”

  However strongly Jarnum must have felt about the T’Neth, it couldn’t have compared to how much I hated Redland. The badge on his chest wasn’t a symbol of law, it was his license to run around the world to serve his own ends, which by all evidence was nothing short of utter chaos.

  Hathan-Fen walked a circle, swearing in frustration. “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” she said. “Alex, I know this won’t make you feel better, but Colonel Seneca told me to take Redland on this mission.”


  “What?!” I haven’t always had the best temper, and certainly didn’t feel like containing it at that moment. “You knew about this?”

  “Not this,” she said, “but other things. Things you are not yet privy to.”

  “Enlighten me,” I said.

  “Marshal, not now,” she said.

  Hathan-Fen’s emphasis on my title was a distinct reminder that I had agreed to her terms just a short while ago. “Okay, I get it,” I told her. “I get it – no questions, no explanations.” I backed away from Redland, not willing to give him a pass, and certainly not satisfied that the matter was settled “You’re a dog on a short leash,” I told the big man.

  “Just like you,” he replied.

  As I imagined Redland’s bullet-riddled body cocooned by frost, Norio grabbed me by the arm, looking more alarmed than ever. “If Jarnum is in town, and he can track T’Neth…”

  I instantly got Norio’s meaning. I forgot about Redland and ran toward the Biedriks’ house as fast as I could. Ignoring the sergeants when they called out to me, I rushed into the house and went straight to my old bedroom. Kate was curled up on the bed, unharmed, sleeping. Jarnum hadn’t found her yet. He wouldn’t, either, not if I had anything to do with it.

  Fortunately, Kate hadn’t undressed before climbing into the bed. She lay there in her dirty desert garb, which she’d probably been wearing since she left Celestial City. She had the hood raised over her head and tightened at her chin like a security blanket. I slapped her once and she opened her eyes. “Get up,” I told her. “We’re leaving.”

  Kate rolled over. “The birds left me,” she mumbled.

  “Sunlo doesn’t have birds,” I said. Kate made little sense when fully awake, so it was reasonable to conclude she would make even less when she was drugged.

  How? she asked with her mind, pulling a blanket over her eyes as I tried to get her left boot over her heel. I didn’t open the window.

  I conjured up the distinct image of two scavenger birds perched on the headboard above her while she was falling asleep. “I can hear your thoughts, Kate. The drugs are wearing off.”

  “Is everything okay?” Ofsalle asked. I turned to see him standing in the doorway behind me.

  “Not even close,” I said.

  I heard Hathan-Fen and the others enter the house. The Captain posted the two sergeants at the door while Redland’s heavy footsteps echoed down the hall.

  “Ofsalle!” Redland bellowed.

  Ofsalle cringed. He waved sheepishly at me then disappeared down the hallway.

  “We have to go,” I told Kate. All I could think was - we will protect you.

  I will be protected, she thought. “I will be protected.”

  “You heard me?” I asked, surprised.

  We will protect you.

  That wasn’t her reading my mind. The T’Neth had arrived. I was reading theirs.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I helped Kate get her other boot on, and then found her winter jacket rumpled in a corner. I shook it out and turned around to see her standing by the bedroom door.

  Escape.

  She marched toward the living room. I dropped the jacket and went after her. A far-off voice echoed in my head.

  A’lex. Do you know what your name means?

  “No, I don’t,” I said aloud, and realized I was probably talking to somebody who was completely out of earshot. It sure wasn’t the people staring at me in the Biedrik’s living room. At that moment, I didn’t care about the strange looks they gave me as I stormed toward the door after Kate.

  Kate sped up as she pushed passed the two sergeants, showing more strength than I would have expected from somebody so small.

  “Don’t let them leave!” Redland barked at the sergeants.

  Instead of listening to Redland, Brady and Traore stepped aside to let me pass.

  “It’s not safe out there!” Hathan-Fen shouted.

  I grabbed a jacket on the way through the entry room, slowing down only a moment to put it on. As soon as I cleared the doorway, I saw Kate in a dead run toward the sandstone cliffs beyond the grove. She disappeared into the trees, running faster than I thought possible for someone with drugs still coursing through her system.

  I followed her tracks through the grove to the base of the cliff where spongebushes grew, but she had already climbed up a ladder to the first crop tier where yellow rays of sunlight illuminated the red-tinted sandstone between the thick, hanging vines.

  “Wait!” I yelled.

  She paused for a moment, but not because I told her to. She glanced left and right until she saw another ladder at the other end of the tier. She vaulted towards it, jumping vines and ripened grapes in her way. She obeyed the thoughts emanating from the top of the cliff. I felt them, too. Powerful thoughts.

  Escape. Climb.

  No, I thought. She cannot go with them. I glanced once behind me toward the Biedriks’ house. A single figure – Redland – approached through the grove. If he wanted trouble, he’d have to catch me. At the moment I worried more about keeping Kate out of T’Neth hands than his. She had already climbed the second ladder and doubled back toward the third one.

  I called after her to slow down, but she seemed unaware of me, frantic in her efforts to obey the mental commands emanating from the clifftop. At this rate, I wouldn’t be able to catch her.

  Come to us.

  Their powerful thoughts boomed in my head. They were the minds of T’Neth warriors. The thoughts echoed from Kate as well. I looked up. Three large figures watched her. She was under their control and would remain so unless I intervened. Fortunately, the cobblegrape vines slowed her pace.

  “Kate!” I yelled. She still showed no sign of hearing me.

  I put my hand on one of the natural handholds in the rock face. The grip came as easily to me as it used to when I climbed the Upright Meadowlands as a teenager. Back then, I could almost scale the cliff with my eyes closed, but now I kept them wide open. I climbed the open rock, moving faster than she could navigate the tangled vines in her way. In moments, I passed the first tier, and then the second and third, making my ascent straight up the middle of the crop face where I hoped to intercept Kate.

  I caught up with her on the fifth tier, halfway to the top of the cliff. “Kate,” I said, pushing her up against the wire basket that served as a cobblegrape nest.

  She looked at me, surprise in her expression.

  “I need to get you down,” I said. Her eyes flickered between recognition and confusion.

  The T’Neth voices broadcast again, this time directly at me. See the world, A’lex.

  An awareness washed over me, a great dizzying rush. I saw Arion from above and below, outside and within, spinning and stationary. I saw all life on Arion, Earth creatures and indigenous species alike, from the equator to the forty-fifth parallel. But there was life that could not be detected. Why can’t we see them? Where are they? What are they? Humans. They are not T’Neth. They are A’Dam, the chaotic wind that blows invisible without course or reason. They are the storm.

  I squeezed Kate’s arm, thinking the T’Neth were trying to confuse me and weaken my grip on her. As I pulled her close, my eyes fixated downward. I have a pretty solid constitution, but at that moment I felt vertigo. The cobblegrape vines stretched downward to infinity. The orchard faded into complete shadow, with only the twinkling frost providing any light at all.

  Come with us.

  “Come with us.” Kate echoed their thoughts.

  I squeezed my eyes shut to regain my equilibrium, and then looked up. The T’Neth pair held immense swords. The third alien’s hands were empty, but I knew he kept a blade hidden beneath his cloak. He looked at me with the same hard eyes I’d seen when he saved me on the Rekeire Plains.

  You are an outsider among your own kind, Xiv thought to me.

  They spoke not as a group but as one, four separate voices joined together with Xiv as the leader.

  We would accept you among our own,
he thought, as K’teh has accepted you.

  I felt confused at this, but only for a second. Kate’s name is really K’teh, I realized. They had linked their minds to hers and saw everything she knew. They saw in her memories that we had been close once. They knew everything she knew - how I didn’t fit in, how I’d always been as much a loner as she’d been. They knew I could hear her thoughts, and now theirs as well. It was at that moment that I understood the foundation of their society. To function together, they conform. They accept and share their experiences. Maybe they’re wired that way – anything is possible for an alien species. They are completely unified, without disagreement.

  But could I join them? Probably not, I concluded quickly. In a world full of humans, whose defining characteristic is individuality, people don’t get along with each other, and I don’t get along with them. How much worse would it be for me in a place where everybody else lived in perfect harmony? It took me a long moment to realize it, but I’d actually been considering their offer. No, I would not go with these murderers who kill humans as if their lives had no value. As little as I had in common with other people, I had even less in common with the T’Neth.

  Yet, there was one T’Neth I had more in common with than any human. Kate, the crazy nomad girl who now had both arms around me, and whom I now embraced. Of all the stupid things I ever did, letting her go was the stupidest. Now that I had her back, I wouldn’t let her go again.

  “I won’t go with you,” I shouted at them. “Her name is Kate, and she will not go with you, either.”

  Their thoughts went silent. Xiv nodded to the other two, who jumped down to the first tier below the clifftop, landing easily on the narrow ledge where humans half their size would’ve lost their balance and fallen a hundred meters to the grove below. They readied themselves to jump down another level but stopped suddenly.

  Red’Land is here, the pair thought to Xiv.

  I followed their gaze. One tier below Kate and me, Redland stood, pistol in hand, pointed upward. He might have been aiming at me or the T’Neth, I couldn’t tell. Maybe he hadn’t yet decided who he was going to shoot. Maybe he wanted to shoot all of us.