“First Commander Gzeter welcomes you and regrets that you had to endure today’s attack and evacuation. He understands that you are willing to step into the time-pacing duties that should have fallen to your father, a Klaqin he is sorry he did not know. He is also sorry that he must order you into protective custody.”
Wait, what? He didn’t know my dad? I misunderstood? Or was Coreg mis-translating on purpose? And what was that about custody? Were they going to lock me up or keep guarding me?
Coreg smirked. Dude, a Klaqin smirk was so infuriating.
Commander Gzeter dropped his hand and turned sharply, spinning on his heel and clucking a command at my guard.
Crap, there was nothing good about being escorted down several flights of angled stairs and ushered into a small room which was obviously a prison cell despite the couch-like seating.
Great, from paraded hero to confused prisoner in lightning speed. Coreg must have paced.
“What’s going on Coreg? Did you tell him that it must be the banished Klaqins who have Selina? Are you going after her?”
The jerk shoved me into the couch. I sank fast into feathery cushions.
“When you are needed for time-pacing you will be collected. You are valuable, Alex, but you are not trained as I am. First Commander Gzeter rejects your deduction. The time spent in the learning cab was wasted. We will attack all ships between here and Gleezhe.”
He turned and left so abruptly that even if I could have freed myself from the soft clutches of the sofa I would have had to go through the guard to catch up. The guard settled himself in front of the door which closed with a thump like a ghost note on a snare drum.
I pushed myself deeper into the cushions and glared at my avocado-skinned sentry who now held an arc-gun casually trained in my direction.
♫ ♫ ♫
COREG, GENETICALLY BRED to be brave and ruthless, felt no guilt for either lying to Alex or for planning to disobey an implied order. Had it been a direct order he may have had second thoughts, but as he’d been pardoned already by Gzeter’s equal, First Commander Cotay, for going well beyond the light-year limit in the Intimidator, he felt he could use that free pass to turn his hero status into something greater. After all, when he first reported to Cotay after they had landed and before the parade, Cotay believed him. Coreg placed all the blame on Marcum for their illegal contest to find a time-bender. If he hadn’t returned with not only the rare time-bender but also another pacer, Coreg would undoubtedly be serving a long prison sentence.
Now Coreg returned to the training center and searched out both Payat and Hagab. Hagab was an idiot who Coreg had effortlessly beaten in all physical trials, but he had skills and connections and he owed Coreg a favor. Payat, totally untrustworthy, was quite a bit like Coreg and despite his being shrewd and devious, he too had skills that Coreg, for his scheme to work, needed.
Green skinned and well-muscled, both warriors crowded into Coreg’s small room. Payat stood with his right foot against the wall, his shoulder braced against the shelving, and his head turned to stare down Coreg at an angle. Coreg remained standing and motioned Hagab to take a seat on the sleeping platform.
Coreg folded his arms and reminded them both of how he’d rescued Hagab from a fall off the battle bridge and how he’d held off reporting Payat for some petty thievery. Hagab’s red face grew crimson; Payat’s left cheek turned a darker shade of green.
“You both owe me. And you’ll owe me more when this excursion is over, because you’ll be recognized as heroes and promoted. Probably to Third Commanders.” Coreg had their interest. “It won’t be easy, but Hagab, if you can get your older brother to allow us entrance to the Pletori, and if you, Payat, can steal the codes for the banishments, then we can get to the Edge and do this.”
“Do what?” Payat asked. He watched Hagab rise from the bed to take a more equal stance with them.
“It is reported that the Gleezhians have swept in and abducted the time-bender.”
Hagab made a derisive chortle. “Couldn’t keep her, could you? I heard she fled. From you. Wouldn’t surprise me. You used to be a nice blend of pale green and yellow. Look at you now.”
Coreg ignored the comment. His coloring had changed on Earth, thanks to that scorching sun, but he wasn’t going to acknowledge Hagab’s taunt, besides, his natural color was returning. “It wasn’t the Gleezhians who took her. It was the traitors, those who were banished to the Edges.” He put a hand on Hagab’s shoulder and pressed him to sit back down. “You will get us into the Pletori. And you, Payat, will get those codes. I know your father works for the prison system and I know that they handled the banishments.”
“What? I’ve never heard that.”
“It’s all in the history archives that I just overheard, thanks to that Earth child, Alex. He figured it out in less than ten time units.”
“Figured what out?” Hagab asked.
“Pretty much everything. And now they have him under guard in the basement of the military capital building. We’ll probably have to break him out of there too if we want my plan to work—double up on the time-pacing—we’ll need him to come along with us.”
“How about Rander?” Payat asked. He shifted his weight to his other foot and watched Coreg’s expression as he answered.
“I don’t see any advantage to having Rander know what we’re going to do.”
Payat nodded slowly, without blinking.
♫ ♫ ♫
I DIDN’T TAKE my eyes off my guard, or his arc-gun, until the returning pains to my stomach forced me to bend over. The cramping stabbed my gut like nothing I’d ever felt before. I wondered if this was what Selina endured every month when she stayed home from school.
I did some super concentrated time-pacing and as quickly as they commenced the pains dissipated. When I straightened up I found my guard fast asleep, slumped forward, his gun still held tightly between his fingers. I knew that Klaqins had little need for sleep, but it sure looked like when they finally crashed they were as good as dead. I cleared my throat, coughed, then clapped my hands and clucked my tongue.
“Hey, you.” I took a step closer and raised my voice. “You okay there?” I tried a Klaqin greeting, but the guard didn’t move. Not a twitch.
I heard voices outside the door. I moved around the guard and pressed my ear to the wall. Selina always teased me about my hearing. My dog, Baxter, had nothing on me when it came to alerting my family to suspicious noises, so I had no trouble discerning that there were two speakers in the hall beyond my prison. And that they were discussing me. I caught the words for dead and guard. I had the funny feeling that glitl meant poison.
I bent down and shook the guard’s arm. A spaghetti noodle couldn’t have been limper. If he wasn’t dead he was close to it. Something must have happened. I sniffed the air and detected a faint odor like mildew. Holy crap. We’d been gassed. It affected me as cramps, but was potent enough to be fatal, or nearly fatal, to a full-blooded Klaqin.
I heard a noise at the door, dropped to the floor, and played dead.
♫ ♫ ♫
IF SELINA THOUGHT being held hostage would be the worst thing to ever happen to her, she changed her mind when the ship landed and she was forced out into a cold gray atmosphere that matched her concept of winter in Alaska—more extreme than the Michigan season she had so recently complained about.
Still wearing the Klaqin clothes Renzen had given her, minus the yellow lace shoulder covering, Selina expected to shiver her way from the ship to the single modest white building a daunting distance away. The icy coldness assaulted her face and hands, but the strange material of her one piece suit puffed up to shroud her in an extra inch of comfortable warmth. The five friendly abductors surrounding her were equally swollen. Three had stretched their sleeve and collar material out to cover hands and heads, but as both her wrists were held firmly by the other two she couldn’t do the same.
A swirl of frigid air swept her hair across her face as the ship lifte
d off behind them and streaked away. A shiver ran up her spine that had nothing to do with the cold. The two holding her picked up the pace. She was ready to run to the building if they pulled her, but she’d have rather been a hostage in space and not here losing the feeling in her fingers and fearing frostbite to her ears and nose.
Half way to the building the one who’d squirted the strange rosy stuff in her face jerked her wrist to stop her. The entire contingent paused and grouped up close around her.
“Oh, come on, we’re almost there. Sheesh—” Her words were cut off, understood or not, as the ground dropped like an elevator and they descended into a bright and much warmer cavern.
Four of the five split away and she was left with the one she decided was the doctor in the group, who now had both hands tightly clasped around her forearm. He pulled her in the other direction and led her down a hallway that appeared more like a tunnel. The farther they went the darker it got until they reached the end and the doctor led her into a small, copper lined room, which boasted a single chair in front of a tray of strange instruments. On the far wall was a stone table pierced with holes that held glass cups. A copper trough ringed the edge from which a sinister liquid ran down one side and dripped off into a pail. He released her arm and waved his right hand over his head. The ceiling glowed yellow and she could feel a bit more warmth. Her clothes must have sensed it too as they deflated back to normal.
“What now?” she asked. A couple of wise cracks, stupid nervous sayings she always used to cover her emotions, sat on the tip of her tongue. She muted the little voice in her head that prompted her to say such silly things and instead she asked again in Klaqin, what now?
The doctor responded, “Sit. Watch.” His face was stitched with seam-like wrinkles, but completely expressionless. His crinkled eyelids twitched at the corners. He had slightly bulbous, unfriendly black eyes. A sinister green tinge darkened the corners of his mouth. All he lacked were warts to convince her of his similarity to a toad.
She hesitated then realized she was bending time allowing herself a lengthy stare-down. His complexion lightened rapidly as she released her hold. At least he wasn’t as bad-looking as a Gleezhian, she thought as he stuttered out myriad instructions. She understood one. She climbed into the chair and looked from him to the copper screen and back again. He clucked and repeated his litany of commands.
“Cue the dentist,” Selina mumbled, leaning back. The chair reminded her of the last time she’d had her teeth checked. Something materialized on the screen and the chair tilted, a foot rest bumped her legs up, and arm rests produced controls much like the ones she’d used on the Galaxer the first time Marcum had taken her up and to the moon. Was that only last week?
The doctor pointed, repeated his list a third time, much more slowly and with gestures, and Selina figured out what he wanted.
“This isn’t a game, is it? I hope those are the bad guys.” She focused on the screen, tried to do her time-bending thing to steady her aim—it wasn’t working—and fired what she assumed were deadly rockets or maybe anti-flames or freezer charges. The six blips on the screen changed formation, but none disappeared.
“I missed. Sorry.”
The doctor shook his head and very slowly told her to use her special ability. At least, that was what she thought he meant. It occurred to her that maybe she was time-bending, but it was not reaching the far away ships. She wondered how far away they were. She’d have to play this like a video game on Earth.
She aimed again, let time elapse at normal speed and fired. The doctor took a step closer to the screen and frowned, making the lines in his face more like crevices. The rocket streaking toward the adversaries was on a trajectory to hit the first one, but that ship’s anti-flames struck first and the rocket disintegrated.
“Oops.” Selina felt a chill rise through her body. Then, when the doctor picked up two of the strange items on the tray, that chill turned to heat and prickly fear. The toad-like doctor gave a brief snort of amusement.
CHAPTER 9
♫ … focus on me … ♫
PLAYING DEAD WAS a trick I taught my dog and something I’d do myself when Selina’s brother, Buddy, pretended to shoot me. But I didn’t think it was going to work on this planet. I kept my eyes closed and my body limp, but I didn’t fool them. They slapped at my face, not particularly hard, but annoying enough to cause me to react.
“All right, already.” I opened my eyes and glowered at four super dark faces. Indians on Klaqin was my first thought, any second now my chess buddy Niket Patel would poke his head under somebody’s elbow and laugh. But then I detected an extremely dark green cast to their brown skin. Like burnt avocado. Nothing like Niket or his family.
They jerked me up to my feet and hurried me past the guard’s body and out into the hallway. My instinct was to resist, but I figured this hurried rescue beat being locked up. Instead of heading up the stairs they pushed me toward another door. We crowded into the smallest room ever and my stomach lurched as the floor swished away and we dropped downward in the worst excuse for an elevator I’d ever suffered an anxious ride in. But at least it was only a couple levels down. We exited into what was obviously more of a sewer than a subway.
The leader held out a light. The four of them kept me in their center, two holding my arms tightly, while we maneuvered our way over and around pipes and streams, cables and noisy engines, and debris of the most foul-smelling kind. It was slow going. A whole lot of rumblings and clangs and creaks worked their way into my subconscious symphony—which played continually in my head—and I managed to find the beat and match my steps to it though the din was the opposite of harmony.
My head promised to burst from the clamoring pulse of this planet’s heart—or maybe this was its throat and we were being swallowed up. I thought of Selina and imagined what her reaction to this place would be. She’d reference a movie or give a stage direction to these escorts. And if she were with me right now I’d pace us on through this episode as quickly as I could to get her away from the awful noise.
I seriously considered pacing. Whoever my escorts were they certainly didn’t seem hostile. They weren’t like guards or soldiers. They acted like getting us through this and on to wherever they wanted to take me as fast as possible bordered on urgent and reasonable. I didn’t get the sense that I should fear them.
I paced.
That is, I tried to pace. Time continued on its regular speed, or in this case, its lack of speed. I had the tiniest hope that maybe Selina was nearby bending time and that her bending counteracted my pacing.
Or maybe I couldn’t pace underground.
We came to a section of the dark passageway where it widened into a room that was piled with what could be described as alien junk or a subterranean trash heap. It was lit by tubes of skylights that ushered in streams of Klaqin’s continual sunshine. Those rays of light held a lot of appeal.
I hadn’t said a thing yet and my escorts had been sparse with their commands, mostly telling me when to step over something, though that was pretty obvious even in the low light. But I decided I needed to speak as we picked our way around the junk.
“What place this?” I asked in primitive Klaqin. My phrase was pretty good, but all I got was a grunt from the one on my left and a throat clearing from behind. Okay, so maybe they had instructions not to speak to me. Fine.
We made it through the trash and into another elevator shaft. I held my breath as we ascended—must have been ten stories—and then I exhaled as we emerged into the bright day.
My escorts’ darting eyes and crouching stances put some fear in my veins. We were targets. I tried to pace again and felt their arms tighten on mine. We literally raced like superhuman comic book characters across miles of open Klaqin range—I hoped they appreciated my pacing—until we came to some run-down houses. Think quaint English cottages made of wax and melted into not-so-quaint hovels. I stopped pacing and stood staring at the mounded shapes.
But one of t
he hovels wasn’t a cottage, it was a ship.
The camouflage receded and a door opened like on the Intimidator or the Galaxer or the ship I’d flown on earlier.
Holy crap. This ship looked like a Gleezhian ship. My stomach lurched and I took a step back into the guy behind me. I whipped around and checked out his hands and then the others’. They were gloved, but with five fingers, not six.
This didn’t make sense. The open door now framed the unmistakable shape of an incensed Gleezhian. Yeah, six fingers on each hand. Hard to miss.
I guess I was going to be traded into the grotesque hands of the Gleezhians. And if my dad’s bedtime stories were true, all Gleezhians were cannibals.
♫ ♫ ♫
THE KLAQIN MAN Selina thought of as a doctor picked up two items from the tray and unwrapped them. The sight of the three inch needle made her squirm. Selina’s fear of needles ranked next to her fear of heights. She had overcome the height fear after her first trip to the moon and now, in a moment of bravery she was sure would impress Alex, she swallowed hard and steeled herself against the inevitable injection. Her throat constricted around a scream, but she held it back.
The doctor did not poke her though. Instead he took the second item, a rock, and repeatedly jabbed the sharp tip of the needle across its surface. Selina’s curiosity got the better of her and she leaned forward. She could see tiny red spots pop up on the gray rock after every poke, though she couldn’t tell if the needle was injecting something into the rock or if it was drawing something out.
The doctor mumbled hotah which Selina assumed indicated that he was pleased with his rock-stabbing activity. He jabbed at it one more time and then spoke to her in slow Klaqin using exaggerated gestures. He pantomimed poking at the ring on his own thumb and then pointed to Selina’s hand.
“You want to put the needle on my thumb ring? What for?” She frowned and tried to come up with the right question word then realized that any further explanation he gave she probably wouldn’t understand anyway. She stuck her arm out, thumb up.
The Time Pacer: An Alien Teen Fantasy Adventure (The Time Bender Book 2) Page 8
