“Josh, drop your gun,” the man added to the cowboy who had wanted to try the gate when the man stood there, glaring at them. His counterpart had leaned his gun up against the rock wall of the mine’s entrance during his unsuccessful attack on the gate, but was eyeing the piece.
“Do it,” Jeff added, not impolitely. “Nobody is going to get hurt.”
It took five minutes to strip the rest of the weapons from the foursome; four of them were spent on the two cowboys, who had five handguns, six knives, and a pair of brass knuckles between them. Kyle wasn’t close to sure that he’d gotten them all and said as much as he signaled Dom to keep the duo covered and separated, a few feet away from the expectant parents.
“Who are you guys?” the black man asked him and Jeff as they walked back towards them.
“I’m Kyle; this is Jeff.” He pointed at the two cowboys kneeling with their hands behind their heads. “That’s Dom, watching your . . . bodyguards?”
The woman smiled, and shook her head. “Don’t hurt them; they aren’t part of this.”
Kyle nodded and regarded them both. “This?”
They exchanged a look with one another but remained quiet.
“How about I help?” He took a knee in front of where they sat. “You’re here at the behest of the world’s angriest, most annoying old man. Sir Geoff?”
He enjoyed the look of surprise on the woman’s face. Her husband had a great poker face.
“So are we,” he added. “In a roundabout way.”
“Who are you?” the man repeated.
“We’re from Eden,” he said. The words sounded strange to him as he said them. “We came back for a piece of gear that we need and certainly didn’t expect to find anyone here. We’ve been watching and tracking you since yesterday. I think we’re on the same side here.”
“Bullshit . . .” one of the cowboys voiced from the ground behind him. “Don’t trust them, Miss Denise. They’re Feds.”
He turned his head over his shoulder to glare at the cowboys. “Which one of you two sings ‘Oh! Susanna’ while taking a leak?”
“Dude!” The blond-haired one was shaking his head at the other one. “Still?”
Kyle stood up. “We were around your campfire last night, listening. I could have reached out and pushed ‘Oh! Susanna’ here into the creek. We could have done a lot worse. Then we heard you mention Sir Geoff.”
“You know him?” the black man spoke.
“I used to kind of work for him.” He pointed at Jeff and Dom. “I guess we still do, now that we know he’s alive. We figured the government buried him.”
“They are trying to,” the woman spoke up. “They put him on ice with our team. He sort of recruited us.”
“Sounds like the old man,” Jeff agreed.
“The fact you’re here,” Kyle said, “is all the proof that I need. I can’t imagine him telling anybody that he didn’t trust about this place.” And . . . he thought, if the government had used other methods to get to the information, the response team would have looked nothing like these people.
“Sir Geoff can’t operate a smartphone,” Jeff kicked in. “Let alone what’s in the mine. How is sending you here going to help him?”
“I’ve got mad skills,” the woman smiled. “You don’t think I’d decide to go camping for the hell of it, do you?” For emphasis, she held her belly, looking down at it. “The government is hunting us as well.” She reached a hand over to her man and smiled. “Derek can tell you all about it. Right now, I need to find a place to pee.”
“Ahhh, right.” He nodded at Derek and backed up, as he helped his wife to her feet. “We’ve got some facilities inside; it’s not much, but it beats a tree.”
He called for Jensen to send out one of the techs as a grip, but the man himself appeared at the mine’s entrance a minute later, with Hans’s hulking presence just behind him.
Jensen took one look at the group and then did a double take at Denise.
“This woman is pregnant.”
“Uhh, Denise, Derek, meet Dr. Jensen. He built the machine inside, so if any of us has hope of leaving here, it sits with him.”
“Derek, if you’ll trust your wife with Doc Jensen for a moment, can you help me talk to these two?”
“You do know we can hear you, right?” the blond-haired cowboy spoke up.
“So, what I’m saying,” Danny explained to them all, “if Grant, his crazy-ass dad, ninja lady and her husband can’t get Sir Geoff here, no one can.”
Kyle was warming to the two cowboys. They looked like strange versions of each other. Danny, the older, had dark hair and features a little sharper than his younger brother’s, Josh, the one with blond hair.
“And they’re going to fly in?”
“After they steal some fuel for their Hawk.”
“Osprey, dumbass,” Danny offered a correction.
“Whatever, between the Ballards and that crazy Miss Brittany, they’ll get here.”
“When?” he asked.
“Eight, no . . . nine days,” Danny answered. “We got here a day ahead of schedule.”
“How many in Sir Geoff’s group?”
“Well, there’s the old man, the ice princess, Miss Brittany, her husband, Tom.” Danny started counting off on his fingers. “He’s really cool, by the way. He’s like you guys, a real soldier. They’ve got two kids with them, twin boys about eight or nine years old. There’re the two pilots, no kids for them . . .”
“Twelve, there’s twelve of them, all told.” Josh was shaking his head in disgust at his older brother.
Kyle felt the blood drain from his face. Twelve? Jensen’s phone booth was going to be crammed near capacity just getting his own team back.
“Is that bad?”
He just shook his head. “Doc, get over here! We’ve got a problem.”
Jensen listened to his explanation, and just shook his head. “Two trips, minimum.” Jensen was his characteristic blunt self.
“We might be able to squeeze a dozen folks into the device, but our group is ten, plus these four new arrivals. We are already at capacity, if not over.”
“Does this mean we can’t go?” Derek had followed Jensen across the chamber with the pronouncement that there was a problem.
Kyle’s worst fear of being trapped on Earth was that much closer.
“We’ll get you there,” Kyle pronounced. “You and your wife will go with the first group, along with the old man, as well as the three kids that are coming in. I figure we send one parent along with them if they agree and they can squeeze a little.”
“Who stays?” Jensen was looking at him.
“Me, my team”—he pointed at the two cowboys—“these two, and maybe two of your techs and most of Sir Geoff’s group. You’ll just have to turn that machine around quick to come back and get us.”
“It doesn’t turn around quick, Kyle.” Jensen was rubbing his chin and looking past Kyle at the corner of the CONEX that could be seen through the entrance of the portal’s chamber.
“Figure it out, Doc. Chances are, Sir Geoff is going to show up with a posse on his ass.”
“Getting back here isn’t a problem, coming back with a charge ready to roll is. We have to recharge and that takes time.” Jensen waved at the mine’s gallery around them. “I’m sorry, nine, maybe eight days at best.”
“Figure something else out, Doc.”
“It’s physics, Kyle.” Jensen shrugged. “There aren’t any shortcuts.”
“Then cheat! Dammit.” Kyle surged to his feet. “You figured out a way to get to another universe. Don’t tell me you can’t figure out a way to charge a battery more quickly.”
They all watched as Kyle walked out of the chamber, entering the passage that led to the mine’s entrance.
“Maybe we could get The Mudder up here,” Danny added after a moment. “I think we could drive right up the bed of that creek. Set up a long-ass jumper cable.”
“Young man.” Jensen placed a hand
on the cowboy’s shoulder. “We require as much energy as it would take to run a small town for a couple of months. I’m sorry to say, a jump-start isn’t going to help.”
Josh shook his head at his older brother in derision. “Seriously, jumper cables?” *
Chapter 11
Baltic Islands, Chandra
“How the hell was I supposed to know the guy’s . . . a bit touched?” Jake felt bad, but in the end, results were all that mattered, and he’d abducted the village idiot.
“Touched?” Audy was looking at him strangely.
“You know.” Jake tapped his head. “The guy’s not all there.”
“No, he’s not,” Audy agreed. “But he gave me an idea.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Jake asked.
“You speak our tongue well, Jake. But with a strange accent. One thing he has been able to say is that his people have had no contact with the Kaerin. I believe him, because the Kaerin would kill one such as him on sight, even if he were born a Kaerin. You can be a Kaerin again, and return the boy to his family. Insist on another local guide to take his place.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes.” Audy nodded. “They will not refuse a Kaerin.”
How could they refuse? Kyle, with a party consisting of Lupe, a Jema female scout named Hyrika, and the young man he’d abducted walked into the village square that he’d hid within the night before. The crowd slowly gathered, exiting the long huts, mostly old men, women, and children. They sure looked like they could refuse. Then he realized what he had taken for suspicion was fear. The village was gathering as if for inspection. This whole planet was effed up like a soup sandwich.
A young boy, after a barked command, was sent running. It was nearly ten minutes before men began filtering back into the village from the fields or pastures where they’d been working. No one approached him in the meantime. They just stood there, maybe thirty people all told, waiting to be commanded.
“What would they call their leader?” he whispered to Hyrika, who glared at the villagers with a healthy dose of contempt.
“Krathik,” the scout grunted in Chandrian. “It means same as a shepherd in Chandrian,” she added in whispered English.
“I wish to speak to your krathik,” he shouted.
The group recoiled at the sound of his voice. It didn’t surprise him; he knew how hard the Kaerin ruled these people. The bastards had cowed the whole planet. Which was why he felt nothing but respect for the elderly woman who separated herself from the gathered crowd, shedding more than one hand that tried to hold her back. Her head held upright, she walked across the flagstones looking as if she knew she was walking to her death.
The woman stopped in front of him and bowed deeply. Jake caught her glancing at his abductee. For his part, the young man seemed to be enjoying the fact that the whole village had come out to greet him.
“My Lord,” the woman intoned, “my mate, Arsolis, our krathik, is on the water checking his nets.”
Of course, he is; nothing was easy.
“Who claims this one?” he said, and gave the young man’s shoulder a push towards the crowd. Audy had warned him against believing that he owed these people an explanation. “Understanding or kindness will just confuse them,” Audy had said with a huge smile on his face. “You people are always concerned whether or not someone likes you. This would be alien to them. Be like a Jema.”
“So, an asshole.” He’d nodded. “I can do that.”
“Yes.” Audy had grinned after a moment. “You can. I’ll be close by with others, but trust me, they will deny you nothing.”
The old woman, standing in front of him now, glanced behind her for a moment towards the crowd.
“Forgive him, my Lord,” the woman said, turning back. “He knows no better.”
He kept his eyes drilling holes through the woman’s forehead. “We took him, not knowing he was useless to us. We have need of a scout who knows this area well, the surrounding islands, and the mainland.”
“My husband is—”
“Checking his nets,” he interrupted the woman. “Present another.”
The old woman hesitated a moment before bowing again and turning to face the crowd. “Tama, present yourself to the High Blood.”
Jake followed the movement in the crowd as a young raven-haired woman forced her way through. He did a double take. He couldn’t be certain; the light had been bad, and the image through his NVGs had been for shit. He felt it was the same woman he’d considered abducting two nights ago from her outhouse.
“Our daughter, my Lord,” the old woman explained. “She spends much time on the water with her father. She knows the area well.”
“Tama!” His first abductee seemed excited to see the young woman. For her part, Tama nodded in the boy’s direction before facing him with a face full of dread.
Jake felt himself swallow hard with nerves. Clean this girl up, and she’d have most guy’s legs turning to jelly.
“My Lord.”
Be an asshole . . . you’re an asshole . . . “You know this area well?”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“You will be coming with us,” he said. “Retrieve your things.”
The young woman, whose eyes looked older than the rest of her, gazed directly at him, then Lupe, and finally Hyrika in turn, as if acknowledging the shape of her doom. She bowed her head again and led the young man off by the hand.
“What do I tell my husband, my Lord?”
Jake realized he’d been watching the woman walk away before her mother got his attention.
“Tell him what you will,” he said. “It is of no concern to me.”
It must have been an appropriate Kaerin thing to say. The old woman’s chin dipped to her chest in acceptance.
He glanced over at Lupe, and the former poacher just looked back at him like he couldn’t believe where he was or what he was doing. Jake understood; it was exactly how he felt. They didn’t have to wait long before the woman, Tama, reemerged from the larger of the longhouses with what looked like a tight bedroll of deer hide slung over her shoulder.
“She carries a blade,” Hyrika announced with a questioning tone.
Jake was so used to being around the Jema, he hadn’t even noticed. He had to remind himself that the Jema women were all warriors; that was far from the norm with other subjugated clans on Chandra.
“Her husband was chosen for the Hatwa campaign three summers past,” Tama’s mother explained. “There has been no word. She took up her own blade, a winter past.”
Jake acted as if he understood the significance of any of that. In keeping with his Kaerin identity, he ignored the old woman.
“She will be returned, unharmed,” he announced to no one in particular, ignoring the look of disdain he got from Hyrika.
“We go.” He drew an imaginary circle around his head and pointed back the way they’d come from, back to the beach.
Glancing back at the young woman, he couldn’t help but feel for her. Her world was about to get turned on its head. Audy would come clean with her regarding who they were and why they were here. She’d either help, or she wouldn’t. He didn’t want to think about what might happen if she freaked.
“Jema?” the young woman, Tama, asked. It was clear she did not believe the story Audy had just told her as they gathered around the campfire.
Audy motioned to those Jema gathered around him as he unzipped his jacket and pulled the bottom of his sweater up to his chin. Jake just watched as she took in the half dozen eagles, done in black ink, appear on as many bare chests.
“And you are not Kaerin?” She turned to him and asked hesitantly, head half bowed as if she were hedging her bets.
“Not hardly,” he said.
Audy pointed at him. “He is one of many who defeated the Strema on the Shareki world. The world on which the Jema now live as a free people.”
It was the first night since arriving that they could see the stars. Tama look
ed overhead for a moment, before turning back to them all. Her attention settled on him.
“I have heard the old story that the Kaerin came to Chandra from a different world. Now your people come. Will you rule us in their place?” The question was asked in a tone that offered no possibility of Chandra existing without a master.
“Tama.” He shook his head somewhat sadly. “We don’t even rule ourselves very well. We aren’t going to rule over anybody, but neither will we be ruled. To my people, the Kaerin are evil, and freedom is everything.”
Audy gave a little laugh at his explanation. “He speaks the truth; his people are strange, but they live in freedom on their world, as do the Jema. We are here to defeat the Kaerin.”
“What could you want with me?” she asked, again turning to look at him. “I thought I was to be used by you as the Kaerin traders sometimes take our women from Legrasi. The thought of that, disgusting though it may be, did not frighten me so much as these words do.”
Her gaze traveled to Audy and then back to him. “The Kaerin cannot be defeated. You would see us all killed, as your people were.”
“They can,” Jake said, swallowing his pride and letting her “disgusting” comment go. He nodded at Audy. “Show her the video.”
He had to smile at her look of fear as she reached out to touch the screen of the compad playing a video file. She drew her fingers back and looked at them. “It is magic?”
“It is not magic,” Audy said. “My people thought as much as well. It is just a tool. One of many.”
They left Tama with Hyrika, who sat talking the Hatwa “volunteer” through the images on the compad.
Audy and he stepped a short distance away. Audy wasted no time in getting to the point that had him concerned.
“The thought of lying with you is disgusting.” Audy smiled. “Proof she has a good head on her shoulders.”
“Thanks, smart-ass. What do you think?”
“She’s accompanied her father many times on his trips to Legrasi, the Hatwa capital. She can take us there.”
“Hell, I can take you there, Audy.” They could all see the glow of the city on the mainland, on the southern horizon across the length of what would have been the Bay of Riga. “Will she help us? Or is she going to introduce us to the first Kaerin dickhead she spots?”
New Shores: The Eden Chronicles - Book Three Page 14
