Unless …
Coreg sneaked down the passageway back toward the room where he’d been injured. His leg throbbed, but he ignored it. He was bred to be courageous and merciless; he’d use the small weapons he’d confiscated from the men in the cell to wipe out the rest of them. An unexpected thought gave him pause: he hadn’t killed the two Gleezhians. In space he’d been coldblooded and uncompromising, but here he’d shown a glimmer of compassion. Compassion was Marcum’s downfall. Had it rubbed off on him? He grit his teeth and marched back. His muscles rippled and his ears twitched in growing expectation. He’d have to kill them. Both.
♫ ♫ ♫
MY CONVERSATION WITH Marcum’s parents was awkward, stilted, and more than a little confusing. They did something with their hands—phantom piano playing in the air at their sides—that reminded me of my dad and how he’d react when he was embarrassed.
I summarized for Selina. “They seem ashamed that they left you there. The mother said they will hide you better, but they think the hiding place should be right here or within sight of this house so Marcum can find us.”
Selina whispered back, “Her name is Krimar. He’s Pauro.”
“Got it. Pauro is more nervous than Krimar. He says, and I’m not exactly sure this is right, but he says they’ve been pretending to side with the selco and the nansa. I’ve no clue what those words mean.”
“I do. The selco is an alternate ruling group that opposes the current government here. I guess it’s like the resistance. And the nansa are all the Gleezhians who emigrated here, became slaves, and then escaped.”
Our exchange in English seemed to agitate Pauro and Krimar. Maybe it was the whispering. I switched to Klaqin and asked them if they knew when Marcum would return. Pauro fiddled with his thumb ring then shook his head. I knew that was the same negative response it meant on Earth.
Selina tried a few words of Klaqin, a short question to Krimar: “Lead us away?”
I was pretty proud of her; she was pushing down her natural inclination to be shy and she was making eye contact and trying to communicate. Krimar shook her head no, but Pauro, the nervous one, gestured for us to follow him. We stepped through the doorway and I glanced in every direction, including up. Seemed safe enough, but who knew how fast an enemy could pop up out of the ground. Or a lake or a pond. I grabbed Selina’s hand and when Pauro started running toward another structure a good ways away we kept pace. We jumped over a couple of round portholes in the ground, like the ones we’d seen on the streets when we were paraded through town. I wondered if some underground transportation system ran below us in conjunction with the caverns and rooms we’d been in. We reached the building slightly out of breath, like there wasn’t enough oxygen here. We stepped over another glass-covered hole. I couldn’t see anything down there except dirt maybe ten feet down. We walked around to the other side of the building.
Every farm on Earth has noisy animals making all those barnyard sounds we learned as babies. Not so here. There were no familiar or unfamiliar creature calls to greet us, so I assumed it was an empty barn. But the sour smells—whew! Selina mumbled a comeback about finding a gas mask. I wanted to gag. Pauro opened a door that started three feet up. We had to step up and over, but I saw why. The barn wasn’t empty; it was filled with an assortment of animals whose faces were like the ones I’d seen on the bottles in Marcum’s room. It was, in essence, a corral and if the door had been normal these short animals would have rushed out. Some were as small as mice and none were bigger than dogs. Pauro closed the door behind us, no doubt to keep the jumpers in. I heard some sounds now. Not vocal though. Noises. Breathing, snorting, and bumping.
“No animal talk,” I said in Klaqin. I figured he’d know what I meant.
Pauro nodded, but didn’t explain. He pointed to the ground, giving obvious instructions to walk on a clear glass path through the sniffing, scratching, virtually silent herd. I saw no signs of what could possibly be giving off the smells—worse than manure—since the areas not covered by the glass element had no piles of droppings and no wet spots. The ceiling was open to the sky in the middle. The walls were sheer, unclimbable. There were bins filled with what looked like hay alongside troughs of water.
Then I saw it: a pit filled with bubbling excrement. Absolutely no songs came to mind. I pinched my nose closed, same as Selina. If Pauro thought he was going to hide us near that, well, that wasn’t going to happen.
Luckily we circled around the pit and came to another high door. We stepped over and into a second enclosure that was empty. As soon as Pauro closed the door I breathed more easily. I hadn’t realized that the smell had given me a headache, but the scent here was tolerable, like fresh hay. Mounds of it filled the room.
“Have you heard the expression ‘a roll in the hay’?” I grinned at Selina. She punched my arm. I guess she’d heard of it.
Pauro struggled with a black crate of something and I helped him lift it up. “Thotti,” he said and repeated it a couple more times. “Thotti, thotti, thotti.” He revealed stairs that led down into a storage room. Great. Another underground dwelling to hole up in. I wasn’t feeling it. Neither was Selina, but she didn’t complain.
We took the dozen steps down and Pauro tossed a bundle of hay to me and spoke the Klaqin word for ‘sit.’ He closed the trap door and we heard the scrape of the crate being pulled back into position. It wasn’t as dark as I expected. The room stretched out with light seeping in from the ceiling at the other end through one of those glass holes we’d stepped over. A shadow darkened it and I imagined Pauro stepping over it and returning to his house.
“So,” I said, “this is cozy.” I plopped myself down on the hay which wasn’t soft and not particularly comfortable.
“Mm-hmm.” Selina hesitated. The next second stretched out then snapped back. I guess we weren’t deep enough to prohibit either of us from manipulating the passage of time.
“Want me to pace so we get through this faster?”
Selina smiled, lowered herself onto the hay, and shook her head. “No. Everything’s been going fast enough, thank you. I’d rather talk.” We locked eyes. I could read her pretty well and she was about to freak out. In fact, it was incredibly amazing that she hadn’t totally shut down yet. “Alex …”
“Yeah?”
“Did we make a mistake coming here? It seemed like the right thing to do at the time and our dads approved. I thought, what the heck, we take out a space fleet or two of Gleezhians, end the war, hitch a ride back to Earth. Easy peasy.”
I put one arm around her and drew her close. This was a great new habit, but I could feel how tense she was. “Easy peasy? Since when did you start using that expression?”
“Since I decided to give up stage cues and hashtags.”
“But I like that about you. It’s cute. It’s you. And you haven’t given it up. I heard you a minute ago say—”
“Oh, Alex.” And the tears started.
I had no idea what I said, but I did know what to do. I squeezed her tightly and kissed her forehead. I time-paced, too. That got us past the awkwardness.
“Listen, Selina, everything is going to work out. It always does.” She pulled her head back to give me ‘the look’ and I raised my eyebrows at her in three quick successive movements. I expected her to either roll her eyes or chuckle, something to relieve the tension, but she did neither. She closed her eyes and I dropped the time-pacing. I didn’t want to spoil the moment like I did with our first kiss. I was not going to make that mistake again. I liked this new way to ease tension.
I put my other arm around her and moved in for the best lip-locking experience of my life. Truly galactic. In the midst of the most stressful situation conceivable we’d hit upon the perfect stress diffuser. Her fingers ran through my hair and stroked down my neck and back. She made every place she touched tingle beneath the fabric of my uniform.
And then she stopped, pulled her cute little face into a frown and asked, “Alex, are you all right down
here underground? It’s kind of claustrophobic. It’s not upsetting you, is it? You did all right crawling up the chute.”
I thought fast. “I’m okay if I keep my eyes closed.” My lips quivered between puckering up and loosening into a smile as I pressed my eyelids together and pulled her closer.
♫ ♫ ♫
COREG WAS AN executioner. Despite the aching leg wound, nearly healed now, and some residual dizziness from the poison in his bloodstream, he killed the two Gleezhians coldly, found a weapon—a four-sided knife—that he’d missed before and ran all the way back through the passageways to the room in which he’d been shot.
“Against the wall!” he shouted at the remaining Gleezhians. He pointed two weapons at them. “And toss me my ring.”
They moved back instinctively, but the leader answered in halting Klaqin, “Ring gone.” He continued with a string of Gleezhian sentences, hands outstretched toward the rock walls, eyes blinking madly, and facial hair swaying in sync with his pleas.
Coreg had no charity. He had no negotiating skills either. He knew what Gleezhian words to say if he were to surrender, a phrase all new Commanders learned, but whatever this Gleezhian was saying so passionately had Coreg baffled. He didn’t like feeling baffled and he didn’t like the second wave of side effects from his injury that were now overwhelming him. He couldn’t think straight. He aimed. Shot. Laughed. Shot.
One by one he eliminated everyone in the room and destroyed most of the equipment as well.
In the silence that followed he shook his head at what he had done. He kicked the boots of the nearest corpse and circled the room. He hadn’t paced and yet the event transpired in an instant. He wiped his arm across his forehead and soaked up the perspiration there. He stared at his sleeve as his uniform absorbed every drop.
Coughing preceded the sudden arrival of another Gleezhian who quickly took in the devastation in the room and turned tail. Coreg leaped after him, using the word for stop in Klaqin and then, impulsively, in English. He stumbled over a body and felt his leg give out. “Wait!” He plummeted to the floor, but kept his weapon aimed at the passageway. The Gleezhian waved six fingers from around the corner, a gesture of surrender that Coreg should have acknowledged, but couldn’t. The Gleezhian peered back into the room and watched as Coreg once again lost consciousness and slumped over.
CHAPTER 17
♫ … say something … ♫
MARCUM’S PLAN HAD its first obstacle when he found more guards than he expected around each of the girls’ buildings. He and Rander began their small revolution with a bit of time-stopping and old fashioned binding and gagging of the guards. But convincing females to become warriors meant coaxing them out of hiding first.
“Attention,” Marcum hollered, once past the threshold of the first building, “I am Fourth Commander Marcum ordering you to come forward. I am with Rander, son of Second Commander Lexal. We have a special mission for you. Klaqin is in dire need of your help.”
Upon speaking the last sentence a blue-skinned beauty and a wide-eyed blond limped out. Both had bruises on their faces, dark gray patches that suggested there were deeper injuries.
“Good,” Marcum stated, “you two will be the leaders of the first unit. What are your names and how many are in your group?”
“I’m Renzen and she’s Makril. There are nine of us here. All from the banishments. The other two buildings hold older and younger girls, forty-eight in all.” Renzen took a hitched step forward and added, “We had another here. The girl from Earth. The granddaughter of a space explorer. But she disappeared in the attack on the art ritual. Killed, I suppose.”
“Selina? No, she’s fine. Hidden away. Is that where you got your injuries?”
Renzen’s hand went to her ocean-blue face. “Yes. It was a Gleezhian ambush.”
Marcum neither denied nor confirmed her statement. “Would you fight against the Gleezhians if it meant going against our government?”
Renzen looked to Makril and then at Marcum. “Of course, but we have no skills. Teach us. We can learn as fast as any male and we’ll be ready in a few double-moons.”
Marcum smiled. “You’ll be ready faster than that. Bring all the girls here.”
Renzen and Makril brought together fifty-seven willing recruits from the three housing units, more than Marcum hoped for. Some were dressed in blue or white robes, others in form fitting clothes in mottled shades of red or green. He had to subdue a couple more guards who came running after the last girls, but with Rander’s help they accomplished it quickly.
The crowd was noisy as he led them to an open space in front of Renzen’s building. They didn’t quiet much as Marcum began to explain the concept of stopping time.
Standing next to Marcum Makril exclaimed in gravely tones and slippery vowels, “Is it the opposite of Fifth Commander Coreg’s ability? We used to watch him in the bridge battles.” She pointed across the field where the military training buildings glowed in the ever present sunshine. A flock of flying creatures, Klaqin birds, launched themselves from the highest bridge.
“No,” Marcum said, not needing to shout now, “Coreg is a time-pacer. The girl from Earth, Selina, has the opposite ability. She’s a time-bender. What I do I fully learned on Earth. Gather closer, hold hands or touch shoulders. Everyone. To get us started we need to be as one organism, like the bio-metals.” He leaned in as the females pressed together. He put one hand on Makril’s back and the other on Renzen’s shoulder. It took less than a second, but he left his hands on the girls and spoke again. “There. We are outside of time.” He nodded toward the sky. Every head turned up and each girl gasped as they saw the flock suspended in the air. No fluttering wings. No movement at all.
“All right,” Marcum announced, dropping his hands and stepping back, “we’ll start with weapons training. Follow me.”
At first it was eerie for them to learn and practice as they moved among the statue-like bodies of Fifth and Fourth Commanders still in the training center. The bridges were empty, but the weapons site and the flight school were populated with males in various positions, frozen it seemed. Marcum worked around them as if they were minor impediments. He warned the girls not to bump any of them and to replace all weapons exactly as they were found.
The amazing thing about training them outside of time was that no one got tired, no one needed additional nourishment, and no one got hurt. Makril and Renzen stopped limping and the bruises on their faces faded.
No female had ever had a Commander title, but when all fifty-seven of them became proficient on five different weapons, Marcum announced that he would refer to them all as Special Commander. The girls were pleased. They finished their training with a complete analysis of several space ships, how to fly them, how to work in tandem in battle, and how to evade pursuers.
Finally Marcum jumped up onto a service platform and addressed them all. “All right, Special Commanders, I need to finish your training with a summary of a horrible truth: we’ve been lied to all of our lives. Our planet’s population has dwindled to a nearly unsustainable number. Two generations ago we built up an army, produced an excess of weapons, amassed ships, retrofitted buildings to become escape pods, and more. Our parents and grandparents sent emissaries to Gleezhe, enslaved the volunteers they sent to us, and made treaties they never intended to abide by. Our nation divided, dissenters were banished to settlements at the edges of the cold and dark. We continued a war with the Gleezhians which has decimated both of our civilizations.
“Fifth Commander Coreg, a time-pacer, was given secret intelligence about the next invasion. He enticed me to go with him to Earth to find a time-bender. As you know, we found her and he brought her back. She is, as the late Commander Dace accurately theorized, our best chance at repelling the invasion.”
Marcum surveyed the spell-bound faces. These females were far more intelligent than he’d believed. And certainly capable of absorbing the truth. But he did not tell them one fact he’d discovered: that scientis
ts on both planets wanted an egg from the time-bender, all the better if it were fertilized, to integrate it into a bio-machine they could program. They hoped to control time with the pull of a lever.
He continued the lecture instead with a complete briefing on how they would accomplish a planet-wide takeover, then he released his hold on time while they were still in the hangar. The oily drainage gutters in the hangar’s grooved floor bled away a mini-torrent of fleshy thorns. No one except Renzen noticed.
♫ ♫ ♫
I ALWAYS KNEW that if I ever got to make my favorite dream come true—making out with Selina—it would be an out-of-this-world experience. I didn’t expect that to be literal.
She broke the spell to ask about my claustrophobia. “It’s not upsetting you, is it?”
“I’m okay if I keep my eyes closed,” I answered. It was the farthest thing from my mind. I pulled her back to me and we resumed our awesome, non-verbal communication. But not for as long as I would have liked. She interrupted us a second time.
“Alex …”
“Mmm?”
“You’re my best friend.”
“Always will be.” I opened my eyes. There were tears in hers again.
“Alex, I’m sorry it took me so long to realize how … how, you know … hashtag soulmates.”
“Fate.”
“Yeah, let’s not get separated ever again. Promise?”
“Promise.” I did that movie close-up thing and wiped her tears away with my thumb, the one that no longer had that alien ring on it. “Seal that with a kiss?”
“Yes, please.” She tilted her chin up and I memorized everything I saw, from the new freckle on her nose to the quick pulse at her throat, and everything I felt, like the quivering in my chest, the ache in my belly, and the trembling of my feet.
The Time Pacer: An Alien Teen Fantasy Adventure (The Time Bender Book 2) Page 16
