Halcyon Nights (Star Sojourner Book 2)

by Kilczer, Jean

  In any case, we had to leave the module ASAP. As soon as Bjorn's mind cleared, he'd contact the czar, and the czar's people would know exactly where to look for us. If they thought I were an I-DEA agent, their orders would probably be to fire on sight. I looked at Lisa and the pain in my gut intensified.

  OK, silver being, or whatever you prefer to be called. What now?

  Now is too soon to know, he sent.

  Then a small request. Let me know if the czar's minions are on their way here! Or is that also beyond your ken?

  He did not deign to answer. Perhaps he was feeling sulky too.

  The module settled to the ground with a thump and a sigh of hydraulics, sending up swirls of snow. I rubbed fog from the porthole and squinted out. In the sweeping light of the red beacon atop the craft's dome, I saw only a narrow view of that open field. There were no lights beyond, no structures visible, just a serpents' den of coiled ground roots that lay intertwined like fat, wet black snakes. Strange plant life, I thought, that could melt snow off their trunks.

  A bleak feeling settled inside me, more wintery than the view. Had Bjorn blinked awake and reprogrammed the module to touch down in this desolate area on purpose? By now he might have contacted the czar. I glanced at Lisa and tried not to broadcast the thought, but these wilds, in the midst of a blanketing storm, were a great place for an execution.

  I swept the compartment with the flashlight and located the beacon lever to shut off the outside light. But there was no way to reach it past piled crates and I wasn't about to fire at it in these tight quarters, even on the stingler's lowest setting.

  Tikkie crawled to Lisa and flopped his sticky head onto her lap. He was still struggling up from cold sleep.

  “Hi, Tikkie,” Lisa said and hugged him. His tail lifted and dropped.

  I'd told her she could rename him and Tikkie was the result. She patted his wet head and whispered something to him, as though all the threats in her young life were tolerable, as long as she had her dog.

  I wondered if this adventure of ours, provided we both survived, would make her a stronger adult someday, or mar her for life. I was afraid it might turn her bitter. Althea was fond of saying that all we do is provide our children's spirits with a passage into life. They arrive with their own imprinted personalities. Al knew instinctively what I'd learned from Sye Morth, my Loranth friend who'd been in geth-state last time we'd talked.

  I sat down beside Lisa, shifted position against the loading tracks that ran back and up to the main hatch, closed my eyes and opened my mind to that great sadness which was the silver being.

  Nothing. Damn him. He knew we couldn't stay here. Why wasn't he making contact?

  A moving light! Below clouds. A small aircar dropped into the clearing with a whine of its single engine. It bounced, skidded, threw up a tail of snow and slid to a stop. The pilot jumped out and ran toward the module. Had Laurel seen us and sent help?

  The shriek of an approaching air manta, low in the sky!

  The pilot stumbled, got up and raced toward the module.

  “Uh oh.” I pictured the ship's missiles destroying the module if it were after the pilot. “Uh oh.” I hooked the flashlight to my belt, scooped up Lisa and sprang the hatch.

  The manta streaked into view with a roar that shook snow off the module's dome. Arctic air took my breath as I scrambled down the base ladder with Lisa wrapped in a blanket.

  “Daddy. Tikkie!”

  I jumped to the ground and snow folded over my shoes, was flung aside as I ran for the black root system hugging the frosty ground. Ahead, opaque distances. I turned, saw the pilot dash toward the module. Blue light snapped from the manta's wings. The running figure screamed and I realized it was a woman. Her arms flailed as she fell. Her body spasmed and sprayed up snow. Snow that misted around her still form.

  I sat down heavily in the shadow of tangled roots, clutching Lisa to my chest, and hid her face from the sight of the body lying in the snow. Wind slapped my jacket collar against my cheek.

  “Daddy!” Lisa gasped. I was squeezing her too hard. I loosened my grip. Had they murdered the woman for stealing crystals, or perhaps for just attempting to leave this idyllic world? Then again, did she have information they didn't want to reach other worlds? Or Interstel?

  The manta circled, lifted in a harpy shriek, climbed into the storm and was gone.

  Silence burned holes in moaning wind. Lisa cried softly against my chest. I patted her head and kissed her cold cheek.

  How could Interstel have allowed this to happen? Interstel serves Interstel, the silver being had said. I knew its agencies were understaffed and spread thin. I'd heard talk of graft and lost files of criminal activities on the outback colonies, but I'd always thought it was just the usual criticism of government. Wouldn't the Worlds Government on planet Alpha regulate its own branches, including Interstel? Now I wasn't so sure. If Interstel could be bought, then who could a poor silver tag count on for help but me and my six-year-old daughter? Who indeed!

  How far were we from Laurel? I studied the aircar. Would be nice to use it, but then again, someone, perhaps the czar's people, would be coming to claim it. Vehicles had to be imported to the planet in parts and were very expensive items. The woman might have stolen this one. I thought on igloos, or a crude lean-to for the night, fashioned from branches and blankets and camouflaged from mantas.

  A sucking sound. Something cold and sharp caressed my thigh! I stood quickly, holding Lisa away from it, and slipped the stingler from its holster as a root-branch snaked around my leg.

  “Daddy, there's a – “

  “I know!” I burned the tendril and shook off the convulsing limb. Another root-branch reared from under snow and sprang toward us. I seared its root and it toppled. Snow melted around it as I beat a slippery retreat into the clearing with Lisa held tight in my arms. My thigh stung as though feral teeth had raked it.

  A forest from hell!

  “It was, uh, just a log,” I told Lisa when we reached the module's legs and crawled underneath. “But let's not go in there again, OK?” she said.

  “OK, Lis'.”

  A predatory jungle? Why not, if the soil were deficient in nitrogen, and if nitrogen was something these alien plants required. Slow for predators, though. Could be the cold. Still, it's a terrible thing to confront a being who wants to eat you, whether it's your mind, your body, or your soul the creature desires.

  I know.

  Somewhere within that banshee wind, a growl began and grew into the distinctive thud of powerful air freighter engines. The czar's people come for their merchandise? I carried Lisa behind the module's skirt and we huddled there. The snow was slushy from the warm exhaust. But for such a god-abandoned locale, this place was sure well-traveled!

  “Daddy, can we get Tikkie now?”

  “Not yet, Lis'. Not yet.” I prayed he was still too groggy to try the ladder. I didn't want our visitors to know there was life on board, if they didn't already know it. Ice crystals whirled in diffuse light from the module's interior. I rubbed my frozen hands and stretched the fingers. They burned as blood pumped back into them.

  The heavy thud of engines deepened and I unholstered my stingler and set it on hot. The ship was a class F-11 atmospheric freighter. It lifted a haze of snow as it settled near the module.

  “Lis', stay very quiet,” I whispered when a crew of three men and a woman swung out through the freighter's hatch. Exterior lights caught gold insignias on their dark uniforms as they moved around their vehicle.

  “Colder than a miner's ass on level six!” I heard one of them exclaim.

  I held my breath as I strained to hear any mention of us. I heard none and wondered how long the mindlock on Bjorn would last.

  The four shuffled around their freighter. One shouted instructions to its pilot as they guided the backing vehicle to the module's main lock. Pools of light flashed diamond sparks across the snow.

  One man checked the dead pilot. I turned Lisa's head aw
ay as he hefted her body over his shoulder, stalked to the ground woods and threw her in. But I couldn't protect her from the sucking sounds that followed.

  With a jolt the freighter locked onto the module's hatch. Doors rolled open. I heard the rumble of a conveyor belt as crates were automatically loaded from the module into the freighter. How conceited of me to think the module had set down here just because of us. I felt relieved, though I had no idea where “here” was. But the frying pan is, after all, preferable to the fire. Fire would've been nice, though. A few stars gleamed through shedding clouds as the storm prowled north. The howl of wind faded to echoes. But the storm's footprints left an icy night.

  “Hey, dreamsuck,” one of the crew shouted to another when they were finished loading, “contact the czar's hauler and tell them to come on in now. And make sure The Laurel Wreath gets the story of this dead runner for tomorrow's paper. The boss wants those vine weavers in town to know what happens when they interfere with his business. Let's close up the freighter and point her to Wolf Ridge. Daniel, get the car!”

  So the czar ran Laurel too, or at least its government? I rested my head against Lisa's hood and watched Daniel trot to the aircar. The trouble with being pacifists, as I imagined Laurel was, is that when you meet predators you have no defenses. Turn the other cheek and that gets slapped too. Who had said that?

  I'd hoped the czar just held the crystal mines, and now this place called Wolf Ridge, possibly his base of operations. Wolf Ridge… Sort of rang of high stone walls girdling high stone buildings, and parapets spiked with rail-A cannons, and invincible robots at high bronze doors. Then the native Kubraens were our only chance for sanctuary. According to Lisa's cube back at her grandparents' house, their closest village was located twenty kilometers northwest of Laurel. The other villages were hundreds of kilometers away. How did the Kubraens feel about Terrans? We'd find out. If we were lucky enough to make it to their village.

  Daniel drove the aircar back. They clamped it to the freighter's tow bar and started across the clearing with a rumble of engines.

  I closed my eyes and let out a frosty breath. What had Lisa and I to do with dream czars and illegal crystal mines? More important right now, that tag had said to contact the hauler, waiting somewhere beyond the clearing, and tell it to come in. Which left some hope that the vehicle was automated. Though robots, too, could discern and send messages.

  Circus! I thought when the freighter was gone. Was our misery just circus for that slimetroll alien who had summoned us to Halcyon?

  Lisa pulled off a glove and put her warm hand on my cheek. “You're so cold, Daddy.”

  I smiled and kissed her hand. “I'm all right, Lis'.” I crawled out from under the module.

  She followed. “Where you going, Daddy?”

  I heard the fear in her voice. ”No place, baby.” I slipped her glove back on. “I just have to get Tikkie.”

  He was heavier than he looked as I carried him down the module's ladder and set him on his feet.

  Guess I'd fed him pretty well back on Earth. He lifted his leg and peed against a stud.

  “Daddy, a ghost!” Lisa pointed at the woods and ran to me. Demon eyes winked and shuffled through macabre ground branches. A deep growl ranged over the black woods.

  The hauler.

  “It's a truck,” I told her. “It's just a truck, Lis'.” I grabbed Tikkie by his collar and we retreated to the motor skirt again as headlights bounced over roots, snapping their backs.

  About twenty meters long, the hauler had an automated cab, I saw with relief as the vehicle swung wide and backed to the module, its rear lights blazing. Cargo doors rolled open. Tikkie barked at it and Lisa held him back.

  ”Stay here, Lis, and keep Tikkie here too. I'll be right back, OK?” This unmanned hauler could be our way out!

  She nodded solemnly. “Don't be afraid, Tikkie.” She stroked his neck and hugged him. “You're a big dog now.”

  I moved carefully toward the truck. No signs of life, but there were cameras on its hood and sides.

  I expected that. I approached from the rear, maneuvered below the cameras' fields of vision to the front of the vehicle, and tried the cab doors.

  Locked!

  I attempted to burn a hole through the door, then the lock, with my stingler. They didn't burn. Whatever material they were made of was impervious to light, hand-held beamers.

  I returned to the back of the long cargo bay and watched a conveyor belt rumble out of the hauler and snap in place on the module's main hatch. Robot arms inside the module systematically hooked crates and set them on the moving conveyer belt, which carried them into the hauler.

  I climbed to the truck's bay and scanned crates with my flashlight. There were no 'bots inside, I was relieved to see. I set the flashlight on its base. With the stingler on hot I burned through the straps of one of many unmarked crates, then coughed as acrid smoke filled the compartment. The cover creaked as I opened it and dug under soft packing material. I came up with something heavy and round wrapped in thick enzylastic. I unwrapped it and peeled off the covering.

  Crystal!

  Yes. More a diamond, but warm to the touch. The size of a tennis ball. I was surprised at the weight of it as I lifted the orb and turned it. The facets caught every hint of light and reflected them against walls with pristine clarity in the smoky air. Light and warmth emanated from its glowing center. My fingers tingled. I held the warm globe blissfully to my cheek. I'd go get Lisa and –

  A sudden image!

  It held me, wiped away concern for my daughter, the burn of my cold fingers, as I felt torrential rains beat down on early seas. Black rock sizzled under the assault of lightning. Volcanoes cracked and spilled lava in births of land. Swirling ash and vaporous clouds. Asteroids crashed to the surface, bringing water that pooled and merged as a volley of asteroids tore into the early planet like bullets.

  The image surrounded me, drew me in with a sense of primal energy and expanded my own being till I no longer knew where my consciousness ended and the planet's awareness began. I nestled against the planet's skin, suckled power from magma bubbling through sea fissures. I grew, envisioned life and drove myself deep, my tendrils spreading, as currents pulsed beneath me.

  Vision…to desire…to fulfillment. I plunged my being into hot seas of organic soup and scattered coils of DNA.

  Life, I made the slumbering planet say. Life! I allowed the rains to end, the sky to clear. Clear to emerald. Primal life… Microbes. Drifting in seas where broken sunlight danced on rocky floors. The delicate living cells, imbued with my gift of DNA, multiplied and combined under my guidance. I extended my being into the planet's mantle, folded the earth above me, and felt a tidal surge of love as my spawn awakened to consciousness. And finally, questing awareness.

  ”Jesus and Vishnu,” I muttered, lowered the crystal and stared at it. Had this globe, acting as catalyst, glommed me onto Great Mind, the Loranths' name for that unknowable entity beyond space and time which we call God? Or just made this image seem more real than the conveyor belt and the cold?

  Lisa!

  I leaped down from the hauler's bed, felt the same guilt and remorse, which had haunted my dreams of Ginny not so very long ago. I stuffed the heavy crystal into my pocket, heard gears reverse as the extended belt prepared now for loading the module with crates of crystals. Cameras swiveled to track the procedure. I took a circuitous route to the back of the module.

  “Can we go in the truck now?” Lisa asked. “I'm cold, Daddy!”

  “Sure we can.” I rubbed her arms through her jacket and glanced at the bloody trail left by the pilot's body. But not into Laurel.

  “Tikkie? C'mon!”

  Chapter Six

  Though I felt his hunger as a craving in my own mind, I dragged Tikkie away from an open crate inside the hauler as it ground its slow way through snow. This cargo was not for eating. It was for growing plants from seeds and animals from fertilized eggs. I wanted no trace of our presence left
behind.

  Lisa was asleep.

  “Stay away from there!” I whispered, as though Tikkie could understand. But he recognized the command in my voice. He hung his tail and licked my hand. ”All right. Good dog.” He licked harder and delicately chewed a finger. I let him chew for a while, then absently pulled dangling ice balls off his fur as I read labels on the boxes. One Hundred Frozen Fertilized Red Plymouth Rock Chicken Eggs. One Hundred Frozen Fertilized Black Angus Cattle - Guaranteed Breeders.

  I felt sick as I pictured the czar's people growing real animals and slaughtering them for meat, instead of eating mock meat grown from cloned parts of animals. Another crate held the fertilized eggs from a champion Arabian stallion and mare.

  I dug for packages of food, digestalls, those tiny pink pills that make it possible to break down and digest alien forms of cellulose. I sat back when I came up empty. Empty spread to a feeling inside me too. I would have given a lot for those pills just then. I shook my head and dug deeper. Boots, sweaters, socks, thick mortex winter gloves!

  Cold air blew through vents in the cargo bay walls. I shivered as I checked through them for searchers.

  The road was clear, but strange colored lights sailed between lumpy yellow trees. I wished I had the time and the peace of mind to examine them closer. There was a wealth of flora and faunae to study on Halcyon.

  I eased off Lisa's boots and replaced her thin socks with a thick woolen pair. They reached above her knees.

  “Cushy!” I chuckled, after dressing myself in a heavy black turtleneck sweater, thick socks, gloves, boots, a blue winter jacket, and a wide- brimmed Western hat that would keep off the snow. The turtleneck felt warm over my chin as I stared out the forward window. Real cushy. This merchandise was expensive to import. Was it more lucrative for the czar to keep workers in the mines and import staples instead of producing them here on Halcyon??

  Could well be.