I glanced around at all the pale faces, soft greens and pale yellows, and even a pinkish hued woman. She caught my eye, clasped her hands to the sides of her head and looked away. I changed my focus, forgot about wanting to itch myself. I counted the people then. Twenty-three on board including me. But only three were women. Come to think of it, I hadn’t noticed many females at the funeral thing, and hadn’t met Rander’s mother, who would technically be my aunt. Odd.
The door diminished to a tight seal after the First Commander leaped on. He spoke fast, harsh commands of which I understood the words for one and now. He grabbed two handles in the ceiling and wedged himself in for a stand-up ride. Luckily the take-off was smooth. I knew we were moving by the picture on the screen: blue changed to green and the ground receded. I got a quick bird’s eye view of the area where the feast had taken place. The animals were gorging themselves on the leftovers. The ship tilted then, enough for me to feel it. The cameras scanned below for another second and then arced around to show two ships above us. The pilot, I mean my uncle, nodded at the First Commander. For some reason I didn’t think that was a positive gesture; it reminded me more of the head bob my dad would give me before handing out a punishment.
Uncle Lexal said a few words to Rander and he answered back. I recognized my name peppering the exchange as we hovered above the jungle. Rander’s face grew a darker shade of green as he looked at me and struggled for the right combination of Klaqin and English.
“Alex, you tlotl for us now.”
“Tlotl?” I clucked both the beginning and end of the word as he had. “Do you mean time-pace?”
Rander’s face puckered into a frown. “Tlotl like Coreg.”
“Hotah,” I agreed. “Yell when you want me to stop.” I fixed my gaze on the screen and eased into the pacing, realizing at the same time that I’d done this before on Earth, on the school bus.
♫ ♫ ♫
WITH A WHOOSH of its tail the animal leaped onto Selina’s back and she lost her concentration. Time advanced. The xanx jumped off and ran away in lurching strides. The movements of the injured people matched the cat’s. Selina hiccupped and groaned.
“Weapon!” she shouted in Klaqin at her guard. The poor man, his face marked with streaks of blood, fumbled to reach the gear strapped to his sides. A millisecond later half his face and one very large ear disintegrated and he collapsed in on himself. Selina screamed and looked away. But what was in her line of vision then was a group of strong-looking men, dressed like her guard and aiming box-like things her way. They may have been dressed as Klaqins, and they certainly fooled the Klaqins who cried out for their help, but Selina feared they were actually Gleezhian troops. They had killed her guard and there was no doubt that they intended to capture her.
Bend, bend. She froze everything. This time the animals were caught in the time-bending she forced around them. Tears pressed out from the corners of her eyes, but stayed suspended at her lower lids. Time was nearly stopped by the force she exuded. Her thinking wasn’t affected though; her mind raced. She’d been in a close up fight with Gleezhians before, on that other planet, that cold one called Azoss. She’d shared an amazing kiss with Alex there. Alex. Where was Alex? He’d always been around to see her through every awful seizure she’d ever had. Her ears deafened with the slowest rush of blood ever. She feared her heart would burst. And she was, quite definitely, on the edge of blacking out.
Bend, bend. She commanded herself, fully aware of what was at stake. Bending was her lone defense and eventually it wouldn’t be enough. Unless … unless she could reach that weapon, the one on her guard’s lifeless body. She took her time—she owned it—and measured out what she’d need to do. She’d have to be fast, faster than they were and they were undoubtedly well-trained, deadly, and more accurate than she could hope to be. But she was the only one who could know the exact instant she’d release her hold.
What was she thinking? It had been Alex and Marcum who had fought the Gleezhians on her first encounter with them. They’d aimed and shot faster than lightning, thanks to Alex’s time-pacing. On that occasion, right in the cabin of the Galaxer, they had battled against five hairy, colorfully dressed Gleezhians who had chased them down to Azoss.
She was losing it. That perfumed xanx was moving. Moving slowly, its face stretched in the widest grin an animal could make. She’d lost some of the peripheral bending. And then those tears raced down her cheeks, she hiccupped, grabbed wildly toward the dead guard’s weapon, and blacked out.
♫ ♫ ♫
I STOPPED PACING when Rander shouted. The screen showed an array of Gleezhian ships, but also a force of Klaqin responders. A stand-off. I wondered if both sides had used their freezer charges to incapacitate one another. Two very different songs about freezing time played in my head, just as they had the one time that I flew the Galaxer into battle. My dad was with me and he had fired off two freezer charges and a high voltage rocket. We had rescued … hold on. What was this? I’d stopped pacing, time should have resumed its regular beat—not gotten slower.
Selina. She must be nearby. Maybe there were no freezers fired at all. Maybe we’d come along right as she started time-bending.
“Hey, Rander. Are we near the girls’ dorm or something?” My words oozed out of my mouth like molasses, as if I had no control of their speed. I doubted they sounded like words to anyone but me.
Rander didn’t have a clue what I was asking.
“Selina?” I formed the syllables faster, but still they reverberated like bass notes stretched to their deepest tones. “Is she nearby?” I had no idea how to express time-bending in Klaqin, but when I said her name there was a collective gasp, or more like a very slow intake of breath, from most of the men on the ship.
Then time resumed its normal rhythm, no longer slow. Uncle Lexal spoke to the First Commander in Klaqin words too low and fast for me to understand. They backed the ship away. The cameras scanned the ground and we could see that most of the buildings were intact, except for one whose roof was demolished. Debris was limited to the closest edges. Apparently the structure had taken a surgical hit.
A team of Klaqin troopers exited the ruined building. All carried those box-like weapons I was now too familiar with, and one also carried a small body over his shoulder. Not dressed like Selina. Whew. But a rescue team with weapons? Only one person to save?
Rander growled a word: “Gleezhians.”
What? All of a sudden a blast of lights turned the area into a galactic seizure, but there wasn’t the explosion or disintegration that had occurred in deep space.
“Shoot them!” I couldn’t help blurting out. I should have been in the firing seat. Rander was doing nothing and there were obviously several Gleezhian ships that needed to be pulverized. I guess it wasn’t my place to interfere because I collected the strangest looks from everyone on board, including the pink-hued lady.
The lowest of the Gleezhian ships swooped down—to obliterate the soldiers?—but the ship landed, opened its doors, and accepted the Klaqin men and the victim in an incredibly fast move. Then they were airborne and gone in a flash. I was totally confused. What was going on?
It didn’t look like anyone was going to explain it to me. The First Commander and my uncle spoke again, this time more slowly, though there were too many technical terms for me to follow. I stopped trying and let the last set of lyrics I’d been thinking repeat themselves in my head. I hummed three notes over and over. I used to soothe Selina with those same three—oh, crap, that must have been Selina, dressed as a Klaqin same as I was.
♫ ♫ ♫
SELINA WOKE TO loud music and muddled words. She sat up quickly and pressed her hands to her ears. Several sets of gloved hands pushed her down onto the hard bench that felt more like a church pew than a hospital bed. Her hands were pulled—gently—to her sides.
Her eyes flicked from her captors’ faces to their hands. Five fingers per glove. These weren’t the men who had taken her, and they sure weren�
�t Gleezhians. Confusion engulfed her. Their hairier appearances and their loose and colorful clothing matched what she’d seen in her very close encounter with English-speaking Gleezhians on that faraway cold planet. Yet her fear dissipated as one of them stroked her arm in a calming manner.
“Who—? What—?” She struggled to remember a single word of Klaqin. Nothing made sense. She’d either been rescued or abducted. And by soldiers dressed as Klaqins, who had killed her guard. Now here she was encircled by Klaqins disguised as Gleezhians.
“I am … where?” she managed to ask in a beginner’s halting language. She looked beyond the hairy faces. The walls sparkled with a coppery sheen; the ceiling glowed; there were no windows or doors that she could see. But the smell … that gave it away. Whether these beings were friendlies or not they definitely had her confined on a space craft of some kind. She recognized that galactic lard stink. She’d first smelled it on Marcum—was that a week ago? Oily, eau de car mechanic cologne. If only Marcum had really been an Australian exchange student … If only Coreg hadn’t wanted to kidnap her …
I’m bending, she thought. She promptly released her hold, hiccupped a couple of times, and waited for an answer, but though she repeated her question with more confidence the four beings that attended her kept their silence.
♫ ♫ ♫
WE LANDED OUTSIDE the gray hangar that sheltered the Intimidator. The people closest to the front scurried out as soon as the wall yawned and an exit appeared. The pinkish woman gave a sweeping arm gesture to Rander and he leaped up and embraced her before she left. Okay, so she must be my Aunt Somebody. Still no introduction.
I stayed on board until all the passengers were out and only my uncle, my cousin Rander, and the First Commander remained. Rander tried to explain in a mix of mostly Klaqin and a little English, what they now knew had happened. Pretty much there’d been a raid, no duh, and the target was the much sought after time-bender. I tried to ask how the Gleezhians could have known that she was on the planet, let alone exactly where she would be, but three blank faces lowered my expectation that they understood less than half of what I asked. And I was enormously uncomfortable in front of the First Commander. His soft voice was like the throat rumblings of a junk yard dog preparing to attack.
Coreg slinked through the entrance then and stood—submissive and meek—until the First Commander addressed him. Interesting. It would seem that regardless of the fact that I was dressed in an identical Fifth Commander’s uniform, like Coreg, I was allowed a bit less formality and maybe, possibly, I outranked him. Cool.
The First Commander gave him permission to board and spoke in a louder and quicker fashion. Coreg kept his eyes down for most of it, but raised them when my name was mentioned. Uncle Lexal, Rander, and the First Commander left, without a nod or word to me, pushing past Coreg who was a bit too slow in stepping back. I noticed that Rander stomped on his foot.
“So, what’s up?” I had an inkling, but I wasn’t positive that I understood it all.
Coreg glared at me.
“Still babysitting me?”
“There is no need to sit,” he growled. “The time-bender is a light year away by now. We must act.”
I grabbed his throat—didn’t mean to—then dropped my hand as the cymbals crashing in my head faded away. I was out the door before I knew which direction to turn. Didn’t matter, though. Four thuggish soldiers seized me and I was practically carried to the Intimidator. Coreg jogged ahead.
They shoved me on board behind him and the younger, greener soldiers stepped away and let the other two board. They took positions on the ship, both on the wall that flanked the command chair. The door sucked itself closed when Coreg touched something on the ceiling.
“You are flying,” he said. He clucked his tongue and repeated the command in Klaqin, I supposed for the benefit of the soldiers. He lowered himself into the chair.
Well, at least I’d had a little experience in the pilot’s spot. I moved my feet to where I’d stood when my dad and I had stolen the Intimidator—seemed like forever ago—and wrapped my hands around the levers above my head. My blue boots snuggled themselves into the indentations and I felt the same prickly vibrations I had when I first put them on, like the bio-materials where adjusting to the bio-metals of the ship. I registered that awful smell, but rather than disgust me, it made me feel energized.
“Do not pace until I command you.” Coreg again repeated this for the soldiers. I looked at them. They were strapped into the small wall seats and had snapped their weapons into plugs on the wall. So, maybe they weren’t along to guard me.
“Are we the only ones going to rescue Selina?”
Coreg snorted. “We are the lead ship. Four more will fly at our sides. We will pace.” He gave me what I deciphered as a challenging look. “We must get the other ships close enough to engage. The Intimidator will participate. I have been ordered to use you as a pacer and not a weapon launcher, but I know your skill, and we will change positions if there is combat.”
Whoa, that had to be the most humiliating speech he ever made. No wonder he didn’t translate for the soldiers that time. I was impressed and considered holding my hand out to shake his, but I didn’t. Instead I initiated the three easy pre-flight functions my dad taught me: I switched on the cameras, pressed my feet deeper into the grooves, and pulled the rounded lever. I maneuvered the ship out of the hangar and into the air.
“Well, which way do we go? Is there a contrail to follow?”
Coreg raised an eyebrow and fingered the small console in front of him. The screen glowed with symbols and colors. He pointed out the red ship. He simply said, “Go,” and I did. I flew the alien vessel with far more ease than I drove my mom’s car—which, I just remembered, I was scheduled to drive to the DMV next week and finally apply for my driver’s license. At that moment I understood irony.
We broke through the planet’s gravity and this time, wearing these Klaqin threads, my skin buzzed as if I were sharing the adrenaline with the tight uniform. I was so ready to fight. And I was furious. With nowhere to aim that predominantly vicious emotion, it was simply crashing around inside me. I drew on my martial arts training to focus and calm down. It was a violent calm though.
“Pace now.”
Coreg had us on course and was already pacing. I added my time-pacing skill, which quadrupled our speed, watched the screen to see if our companion ships were keeping up—they were—and relaxed into flying steadily.
The blips on the screen changed color, size, and symbol. I left that interpretation up to Coreg. He’d tell me when to stop pacing. My goal was to get us to Selina. I couldn’t imagine how scared she must be. If she had an episode, a seizure, I wouldn’t be there to help her through it. I could only hope the abductors’ alien medical treatment would be adequate. If they had any at all.
CHAPTER 7
♫ … alone again, naturally … ♫
WE WERE WEIGHTLESS, but I didn’t need to muscle myself between the floor and the ceiling like I had before, probably thanks to the boots Coreg had given me. I let my right arm float down to my side and glanced at the two soldiers who had nothing to do but wait. I didn’t see the point of their being with us unless it was to replace Coreg if he got zapped. I knew that a Gleezhian energy force could hit a Klaqin ship and not disable it. The bio-metals could conduct the force through their systems to protect the ship. The bad part was that whoever was in that seat might get the full effect of the force and get fried into a pile of ashes. We all believed that had happened to Coreg when we were avoiding a Gleezhian air force by hiding out on a primitive planet—scary place though I did have one particularly good experience on Azoss—but it turned out that he had faked his death by burning something and leaving the ashes on the seat. It was a pretty effective stunt and allowed him to sneak back and take out an entire Gleezhian crew. I remember Marcum explaining then that a ship could still fly after absorbing an energy force. Of course, you’d need a spare weapons operator. Or two
.
I stared at Coreg. He looked paler than usual. His white-blond hair moved in the air current that lowering my arm had made. I didn’t like him, but I wanted him to stick around.
He pointed to the screen. “There,” he said. “Move us above the third ship and we will use our freezers to disable them.” He changed to Klaqin and told the soldiers to get their weapons ready. I think he added something about boarding the ships, I wasn’t sure, but that would make sense. Maybe that was why we had soldiers aboard, though if our sister ships didn’t have a lot more troops we took the chance of being outnumbered.
“What if they shoot first?”
“We are too far out. We will pace to that spot. They will have no time to react. The advantage is ours with two time-pacers. Ready? Pace.”
I was nothing if not obedient. Selina often reminds me of the one time I wasn’t—it’s become a joke between us.
I paced. I flew. Coreg rapidly spoke to the pilots of the other ships and kept his hands on the controls. The buttons and levers were so much like video game controls that it was incredible to think they had the power to annihilate living, breathing beings. And to incapacitate ships. I knew about freezer charges, how they would stall out all of the controls until the bio-metals rebooted. That would give us time to board the ship, but there’d be a fight for sure.
The Time Pacer: An Alien Teen Fantasy Adventure (The Time Bender Book 2) Page 6
