by T. J. Quinn
It was an effort just to close her fingers around the hilt. If only she had the strength to rise up and use it. She would kill Commander Stagg where he stood. But her fight with him had taken it all. She hadn't the strength to get up, let alone drive the dagger into his flesh.
She would have to wait for another chance. Just then, she needed rest. She would wait and watch and gather strength. She slipped the weapon into her boot and went on looking for her dress. Her hand had barely closed over the rough fabric when Stagg's fingers gripped her soft upper arm. He pulled her to her feet without even letting her put it on before he dragged her naked out into the compound.
Near the sunken bunker where Hankura was imprisoned, Chelle hesitated. She'd seen movement inside and sensed that Hankura was watching them. At her hesitation, Stagg turned and back handed her in the face so hard that she slammed to the ground.
"Chelle!" Hankura cried from within his prison. "Leave her alone, you bastard!” He shook the metal grating over the window violently, trying to break it loose with his bare hands. "I'll kill you, I swear---first chance I get!"
The Tregan laughed. He found the physician's threat was amusing under the circumstances. It puzzled him for a moment, too. He looked at the woman trying to regain her senses at his feet and then at the cell window and laughed again as he understood.
"So! You are his woman." Stagg laughed again and hauled her to her feet by a handful of her long, tangled hair. He pulled her close against him and jerked her head back until she thought her neck would snap. "You want to see that spineless physician? Maybe you would like to see me kill him."
"No!" Chelle sobbed and tried to pull away. She wished she had found the strength to kill him when she'd had the chance. She could only pound her fists against his hard body and weep helplessly as he laughed. Mother of Life, how she hated him! Somehow, she had to find the strength to kill him---if not to save her to save Hankura.
Desperation gave her new strength. She could have killed Stagg then if only she could have reached the dagger in her boot. But Stagg quickly caught her pounding fists and dragged her the rest of the way back to the barracks. There he pulled open the door and threw her inside. Chelle lost her balance and fell, rolling across the floor, as the door slammed behind her. Her body ached, so she barely felt the splinters that pierced her skin. She lay still for several minutes before she could will her muscles to move so she could pull on her torn dress.
Then she finally realized Luran was crying and crawled across the floor to her friend in the darkness. Chelle found her kneeling beside Kaara's pallet. Kaara was barely breathing, and Chelle could feel her life force ebbing. Through her own ordeal with Stagg, Chelle had sensed Kaara's torture, but even that pain had not prepared her for the extent of her friend's injuries.
New tears flooded Chelle's eyes as they adjusted to the dim light from the moons and the stars that filtered through the cracks in the building's metal roof.
Chelle began to cry softly again as she reached out to examine Kaara's broken and bloody body by touch and through her special insight. Kaara had been tortured and stabbed. Many bones were broken and organs damaged. Her skull was fractured, and her brain was injured. Kaara's breathing slowed, even more, telling Chelle what she didn't want to know.
"No! Don't die, Kaara," Chelle cried softly. "I won't let you . . ." The healer reverted to telepathy instinctively. Kaara, don't leave me. I didn't mean it. I didn't want them to take you. Take my strength, all that I have. Don't go. Please don't go.
It's time, Chelle. Let me go. Only one of us can live, and you know it. I have seen the other side of death ... I'm not afraid anymore. They've already killed Gray, and he is there on the other side. Let me join with his essence in death. It's my destiny. You have to live. Hankura needs you. I know what I'm asking is hard for you. I guess dying is easier after all. But it's not for you ... not your time. I love you ...always remember. Live for both of us, and live well...
Chelle could only sob brokenly as she sensed the steady egression of Kaara's life essence. How could she be dead? Only fifteen days ago, they were laughing and talking with their friends in the crew lounge on the Searching Star, reminiscing about the past, sharing plans for the future and planning how to spend their crew leaves on Zevus Mar...
But the Tregans changed those lighthearted plans when they captured the Searching Star. Captain Beras had had no warning that the desert world had been invaded three months before. Now, Kaara and nearly half the crew were dead. Would the nightmare ever end? Mother of life, how could Kaara be dead?
Late afternoon the fourth day, Orin and Lanimer left Nalina asleep in the pump house while they went to forage for fresh fruits and vegetables in the fields. They found enough food for several meals---some starchy tubers, nuts, and a kind of juicy, mango-like fruit from some cultivated bushes on the far side of the agricomplex.
When they returned to the bunker, Lanimer stopped Orin as he was about to go inside to check Nalina.
"Don't go in, Orin" Lanimer whispered urgently, tugging at his shirt sleeve. "She found your laser, and she's waiting to shoot you when you open the door. She thinks you came to kill us."
Orin hunkered down to the boy's level and looked the precocious little fellow in the eyes. "Do you believe that?"
"No! I told you I didn't before," Lanimer scolded.
"Then will you help me get the laser from Nalina, so she won't hurt me with it? I like her, and I don't want to hurt her." As he said it, Orin knew it was true. He did like her.
Lanimer nodded, and Orin told him his plan.
Orin crept toward the opening from the side and stood with his body flattened against the warm concrete beside the metal pump house door. Then he signaled Lanimer. The child screamed to Nalina for help. Without thinking, she lunged through the opening. Orin seized her round the waist and snatched the laser from her hand as he caught her.
With a terror stricken shriek, Nalina clawed and kicked him desperately, trying to get away. Orin was nearly sixty kilos heavier and at least twenty centimeters taller than she. It took little effort for him to quickly end her attack. Her screams died, and she sagged against him, trembling with fear. She expected him to do something terrible to her at any moment. But he didn't. Instead, he held her gently but securely in his arms and turned her around to face him. Nalina shrank back from him, cursing his Tregan heritage. She raised her dark eyes to his, cringing, waiting for the blows she was sure would come after her attempt to kill him. Tears glistened on her thick, dark lashes.
Through gentle hazel eyes, Orin stared into her nearly black ones. "Don't look at me like that!" he flared in Aledan and gave her a little shake. "I'm not like them! I won't hurt you. Believe me; I'm trying to help you."
She knit her brows and cocked her head to one side, uncomprehending, suspicious of his deceivingly gentle tone. Lanimer's family had all spoken Zevian to her, and she never bothered to learn more than a few words of Aledan.
Orin arched a tawny brow and made a wry face, sighing as he realized she didn't understand. He looked down at her for a moment, holding her firmly with one hand, and then he pressed his other palm to her forehead. Her brow was cool for the first time since he had found her. He nodded in satisfaction and smoothed her tangled hair almost tenderly with his massive hand.
Lanimer, who had been watching the exchange, came to his aid once again. Chattering in Zevian for a moment, he fell silent. It then came clear to Orin that the little boy was talking to his nurse by sending images directly into her mind through telepathy. Though still wary, Nalina looked up at Orin again, through different eyes so to speak. Seeing the change in her attitude, Orin loosened his grip on her arm and gently coaxed her to come inside the bunker out of the hot sun.
Sitting on the cool floor, they shared a simple meal in silence with Nalina still watching Orin through suspicious eyes. While Lanimer gathered up the left-over food scraps and carried them outside, Orin rummaged through his pack until he found a plastic hair brush at the bottom
.
Nalina watched nervously as he came over and sat down beside her. Orin gave her a sad smile as she cringed from him. Slowly, he reached toward her with a clean, stiff bristled brush and started to brush her tangled ebony hair, talking softly in Aledan, hoping to soothe her. It took quite a while to straighten out her matted hair, but he didn't mind. He had no place to go and nothing more pressing to occupy his time.
Finally, Orin leaned back to survey his work with a grin. Nalina's hair was a lot longer than it had looked before he'd brushed out the tangles. It hung thick and straight just past her shoulders.
"Beautiful," Orin told her.
She squinted curiously, not understanding, and turned to Lanimer for interpretation.
"He thinks you're pretty," Lanimer giggled.
Nalina flashed Orin a fearful look and searched his face anxiously.
Without even being a mind reader, he knew what she was probably thinking. "Damn!” he swore under his breath and shook his head. "No, Nalina," he chided gently. He patted her shoulder reassuringly, got up and walked out of the bunker, heading toward the desert.
What could I expect her to think? He asked himself as he sauntered aimlessly in long easy strides toward the edge of the lush greenery. He was a Tregan in her eyes, however, misplaced. The Tregan Empire controlled a rogue dominion that was hated everywhere in the seven sectors of the Galaxy under Federation control.
On Zevus Mar as on a hundred other worlds they’d raided, the Tregan soldiers had raped and murdered more than one woman since they landed. Orin shuddered at the memory of what he had seen Damon do to a Zevian girl in Elran before he finally killed her.
Orin stopped walking at the edge of the complex where the desert began. He kicked a rock with his heavy boot and looked out across the barren wasteland. Shimmering heat waves rose from the hot sand.
No, he didn't blame Nalina from being scared of a big, hulking brute like him. If his looks and size weren't enough to frighten her, his shirt and trousers still carried the Tregan insignia and rank patches. Viciously, Orin reached for the patch on his right sleeve and tore it off. He tore all the other Tregan markings from his uniform as well. Dropping them into a small pile on the sand, he aimed his laser and turned them all to ashes.
Orin Hart was not and would never be a Tregan Raider again. He was his own man once more, and he had just discovered something really worth fighting for...
Chapter FOUR
Hopes, Dreams,
and
Nightmares Come True
Even as she held Kaara's lifeless form in her arms, Kaara and Gray still lived in Chelle's memory...
Kaara and Gray sat across from Chelle and Hankura in the plush circular booth. Their friends, Delmran and Dana, sat to their left with Cran and Luran at their right. They had lingered after their evening meal to socialize over mugs of hot jern tea.
"I can't believe you two are going to leave us and break up the team." Gray looked from Hankura to Chelle and shook his head. "We've been together since Aledus."
"Oh, Gray," Chelle signed, "that's not fair. We don't want to break up the team. We're going to miss you all terribly. But we want to make a home and raise a family. We've waited seven years. Why don't you and Kaara come with us? Remember that world—they called it Demus, but it was really Oltarin---that lost colony with the feuding factions of horsemen? It's a lush Class M with climates ranging from tropical to arctic---and they have the most beautiful horses since Earth. It's just been reopened for settlement. You can purchase land in exchange for technical services, stuff that's second nature to all of us."
“I don't know," Gray hesitated and looked to his mate.
"Couldn't we just go for a visit and then decide?" Kaara asked. "We could still hook up with the Star on Manna Lau.” If we decided not to stay. Kaara added silently.
"Aw, go on," Delmran put in. "You know you want to. I almost stayed myself. It'd be a great place to raise kids."
"What do you know about kids? You wouldn't know what to do if you had one," Cran taunted.
"And you would?" Delmran laughed. "Someday maybe. But I've got a lot of star systems to see before I settle down to just one planet and two or three women."
"Only two or three," Hankura laughed.
"At least I don't have to share with you and Casir anymore."
"Just try it." Hankura retorted only half jokingly.
"Not after your wife thrashed the daylights out of me on the chackrin floor. And I thought I would teach her a few things." Delmran shrugged him off.
"Oh, Delmran, don't joke," Chelle admonished. "I almost killed you."
"But you were only trying to kill the nightmare of the past--- not me, love. Forget about it---no, I guess not," Delmran murmured. "But let's not dwell on it. All is forgiven. Besides, if I'd accidentally hurt you, Hankura would have killed me."
"That would be correct." Hankura grinned.
"What about Zevus Mar?" Cran wanted to know. "What are we going to do on that desert rock?"
"Celebrate!" Delmran raised his mug of jern. "Those miners import the best Aledan yash and carava. We can do a little dancing, place a few wagers, and enjoy the food at Mid-Summer’s Festival. This leave has been a long time coming."
"Our last all together," Kaara said softly. "We'll have to make it one we'll never forget...."
Chelle rocked Kaara in her arms, sobbing softly as Jerry’s last words echoed through her mind. "Never forget...Mishy... never forget...."
She was alone in the dark, more afraid than she had ever been in her five years. The smell the decaying human wastes stung her nose. She could see the people fighting savagely with knives and clubs in the shadows beside the ruin of an ancient skyscraper. Mommy! No, leave Mommy alone!
Her mother, a tall woman with long, dark hair, fought beside a red haired boy, her brother Jerry. Then a man with a club struck her down from behind. The boy couldn't defend them both alone, and the man---big but indistinct in the shadows---clubbed the boy to the ground. The two men grabbed the woman before she could get up again. She struggled and screamed while they ripped off her clothes, but nobody came to help her.
It was following those terrifying moments that Hankura first touched her mind. Thoughts from another human mind spiraled through hers, twisting around her own desperate unhappiness with a different kind of despair.
He was a boy of ten, alone in his darkened cabin aboard the star ship Argus Lu. The passenger freighter was about to put into Earth orbit to take on two more passengers and leave some freight, then it would go to Velran, taking Hankura to the University of Learning.
Stupid laws! Why did he have to go to Velran alone?
Why didn't Trevin and Capra, his brother and sister have to go, too?
It wasn't fair! He didn't want to be alone on this ship with these stupid people who tried to make him like his journey. He just wanted to go home. He wanted his mother ... he wanted his father to love him again.
Someday, he would go back and show them all they were wrong. They would be sorry. Someday.
By then, Mishy or Michelle, as Chelle was known when she was still on Earth, didn't know where the little the boy's despair stopped, and hers began. She felt him fighting against her terrible visions---a nightmare to him---reality to her.
His mother's image became transposed over that of hers. The shadow-men were taking turns laying on top of her mother who from moment to moment alternated to the image of his mother while she cried and screamed, and neither Chelle nor Hankura could do anything to stop the men.
More screams---Chelle's and Hankura's, she was wide eyed awake, and he thought he had awakened from a nightmare, but the vision was still there in his mind. Chelle could feel him crying inside her pain even though he now knew the woman was not his mother. The men had gone, but she was lying very still. The boy---Jerry---groaned.
"Mama?" said Jerry. Relief---the little girl's entwined with Hankura's. He was glad her brother Jerry wasn't dead and glad that the woman wasn't really his mot
her. "Mama? Oh, no---Mama!" A string of bitter expletives followed. Relief turned to fear. The girl went closer. "Mishy, stay back!"
"I want Mommy! Make her get up," she cried.
"She is never getting up again. She's dead."
"No, she's just sleeping. She'll wake up."
"No, Mishy. She's gonna sleep forever, and I'm gonna kill those goons who did it. They didn't have to kill her."
Back then neither Chelle nor the Hankura really understood death. Could people just go to sleep and never wake up? Could it happen to her? Would it happen to her? No! Chelle pushed the thought away. People don't die for no reason. Those men made her mother die, she was sure of that, but not how. Now, Jerry was going to make them die, too.
It seemed fair to Chelle and to Hankura, too. On Aledus, the Enforcers would have wiped their minds---if they were Psions. Hankura wondered if that was like being dead, but Chelle didn't understand any of that until years later.
At daylight, Jerry took Chelle to Farringay Star Port. Never having been there before, she stared in awe at the huge new buildings inside the wire fence near where they had taken Mommy. She and Jerry put colorful flowers in her cold hands then all around her. She lay on a slab of concrete, wrapped like a goddess in stolen white muslin. When they finished, Jerry knelt with Mishy beside the body.
Chelle started to cry.
"Don't cry, Mishy. I told you. Mommy's gonna be all right. One of these big space ships'll take Mommy to heaven. God'll give her a new life there. Nobody'll ever hurt her again."
"I don't want her to go. She's never coming back. I want her to stay."
She watched Jerry kiss their mother's cheek through tear- filled eyes. "Good bye, Mama. Good journey." Chelle kissed her cool skin and said the same. Then Jerry took her hand and led her away.
