“I heard that you were looking for an Elder,” the Rajani said. He towered over James by a good six inches. James thought that he was even bigger than Bhakat, though he would have imagined that to be impossible.
“Yes, are you one, or can you lead me to one?” James asked. “I came here with Rauphangelaa, though we became separated when his ship was shot down.”
“So, that was the Tukuli we saw,” the one with the eye patch said. His face was bruised and bloodied, either from the recent fighting or earlier treatment at the hands of the Krahn; James wasn’t sure.
“You saw it crash?” James asked.
“We saw it fly overhead, yes,” the Rajani said. “We didn’t see it crash, though. I was hoping that there were survivors. By the way, my name is Kedar.”
“James,” James answered, pointing to himself. “I understand by your name that you’re not an Elder. Can you lead me to one here?”
Kedar smiled. “No, I am no longer an Elder, nor a Priest of the Kha. That time in my life is over now. If you’ll follow me, I can lead you to the Elder Tumaani.”
As James walked behind the tall Rajani, he pondered his words. ‘No longer an Elder,’ he’d said. James didn’t understand what that meant, but he didn’t feel like he should ask. The Rajani had spoken with a bitterness that was palpable. Kedar led him over to a Rajani who was knelt down beside the bodies of two other Rajani, cradling one in each arm. “The Kha save us,” he was sobbing.
“Oh no,” Kedar said when he saw them. He reached out and squeezed Tumaani’s shoulder. “Cry not for the fallen,” he said softly. The Rajani named Tumaani looked up at Kedar, and then gently laid the two bodies down on the ground. He wiped his eyes and stood shakily.
“I’m glad to see that you’re alive, Volaan,” he said.
James caught the fact that Tumaani had addressed the other by a different name than he had given. He must have changed it recently, or at least hadn’t told anyone that he was going to do it. James wasn’t sure how to proceed. He didn’t really want to barge in on their private conversation. He needn’t have worried.
“This is…” Kedar began, looking at him.
“James,” he replied.
“James,” Kedar said. “He came here with Rauphangelaa.”
“I could have guessed that by his entrance,” Tumaani said, turning an appraising eye on James.
“Yes,” James said. “But now is not the time to speak of this. We need to get all of you to shelter somewhere before the Krahn return. We’re too open here in this courtyard; this isn’t a defensible position.”
Just then, Mazal and the other Jirina that had come with him entered the courtyard. He rushed up to James. “James, I’m happy to see that you’re unhurt.”
“Thank you, Mazal,” James said. “I feel the same about you. Thank you for returning to the prison.” He turned back to Tumaani. “We have to leave now, I’m afraid. It isn’t safe here.”
“I agree,” Tumaani said, looking down at the two dead bodies lying next to his feet. “Volaan, can you find someone to carry the dead? I’m afraid I’m not quite up to it at the moment. But we need to bring them with us for proper burials.”
Kedar nodded. He looked at James and nodded again. James nodded back to him. Kedar walked away, beginning to bark orders at Jirina and Rajani alike, to start preparing to leave. James wondered when he was going to inform Tumaani that he had changed his name.
Doesn’t matter right now, he thought.
The real work was about to begin.
Chapter 10
Gianni and Kieren were leading a group of Sekani on a quest to find food and water, walking down a narrow alleyway that was choked with debris. They were both powered up, aware that they were in the heart of Krahn territory. They came to a dead end; the passage was blocked with all manner of building pieces, abandoned vehicles, and trash. It was the detritus of war that they had become all too accustomed to since arriving on Rajan.
The food situation was becoming desperate for the Sekani. They had begun to ration what food stores they had, but they knew that it wouldn’t last long, even at the current rate of consumption. Zanth had suggested that they expand their search area, but asked the two humans to come along for protection with the search party, which was larger than any they had sent out before.
“Tell them to wait a second,” Gianni whispered to Kieren as they neared the end of the alleyway.
Kieren started whispering to Zanth, who was the first Sekani in line behind them. “Hold on for a second.”
“Hold on to what?” Zanth whispered back. “What is a second?”
“No,” Kieren said, feeling her cheeks turn red. “I mean stop. Please.” It wasn’t the first time she had used a common phrase from Earth that didn’t translate well. She turned to Gianni. “Okay, now what?” she whispered. “And why are we all whispering?”
“I was attempting to keep things quiet,” Gianni answered her, now talking in a normal volume. “We need to know what’s behind all this junk,” he said, looking at the piles of debris that blocked their way. He turned to look at Kieren. “Why don’t you fly up above it and check it out?”
“Oh, sure,” Kieren answered. “I get to stick my neck out while you all stay here safe.”
“That’s right,” Gianni told her. “If I could fly, I’d be the one doing it. Would you rather have one of the Sekani try and climb over this mess? Quit whining and go.”
Kieren started to rise. “Whatever,” she said, exasperated.
“Kieren?” Gianni said quietly.
Kieren was about three feet off the ground next to Gianni when she stopped rising. “What?”
“Be careful,” he answered.
“Thanks,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I guess.”
She rose up over the top of the debris to look around, hovering about twenty feet off the ground. Suddenly, a shot from an energy weapon came from the other side of the wall and hit her square in the chest. She screamed, her power field disappearing at the same time she let her concentration waver. She started falling toward the rocky debris below.
“Kieren!” Gianni screamed.
She fell until she was only about ten feet from the ground, then regained her composure and powered up again, pulling out of the dive.
They all heard a loud voice from the other side of the wall yell, “Stop!” in Talondarian Standard.
Kieren landed next to Gianni and almost lost her balance. Gianni caught her in what was almost an embrace, stopping her momentum before she ran into the side of a burned-out vehicle.
“Are you all right?” he asked her, real concern sounding in his voice.
“I…think so,” she answered. She wasn’t very sure about it, though. She’d had problems keeping her energy field up back on the Tukuli as well. She thought she’d overcome the problem during her training on the spaceship, and was disappointed that she hadn’t.
A large piece of stone from a building was tossed aside in front of them. Gianni’s hands, which were still on either side of Kieren, were pointed toward the wall and ready to fire. “Son of a bitch,” he said, angry now. “I’m going to kill whoever it is.”
James walked through the small crack in the debris that he’d made. He was powered up. “Hold your fire! Kieren, tell them all to hold their fire.”
Kieren was still in Gianni’s embrace. “James!” she yelled. She turned to the Sekani. “Hold your fire! He’s our leader.”
James came fully into sight; he had dropped his energy field. Kieren ran to him and hugged him. She was crying.
“It’s all right, girl,” he told her softly. “Shhh…are you okay? Where’s the rest?”
Gianni walked over to them, still powered up. “Of course we’re okay,” he said. “We would have been even better if you hadn’t fired on her.”
“It wasn’t me,” James told him.
“Then who was it?” Gianni asked.
“Them,” James answered, pointing in the direction he had just come from. They
all turned to look and saw a much larger force of Jirina and Rajani, with Mazal and Tumaani in the lead.
#
James was relieved to see that Kieren and Gianni had survived the crash on Rajan, even if Gianni was still being a pain in the ass. But he knew that the hard work had just started. The situation on Rajan was worse than they thought it would be. The three races, the Rajani, Sekani, and Jirina, were scattered and disorganized. The recent liberation of the Krahn slave camp had released a few thousand Rajani and a few hundred Jirina from their bondage, but there had to be other camps that hadn’t been found yet. For one thing, the camp had only held Rajani and Jirina, and only Rajani males. The young and female Rajani must have been held somewhere else.
Tumaani had told him that the Krahn had herded them out of the prison, and had reportedly released them as a sign of good faith. If so, then they should be easy enough to find, James thought, but he wasn’t about to trust that the Krahn were true to their word. For all he knew, they were being held at another site. They would need to be found quickly. Aboard the Tukuli, James had thought that they would have to train the Rajani in the methods of warfare, but the Rajani and Sekani had picked up the fighting pretty well without having to be taught. Their methods were still crude, but effective. The Jirina, on the other hand, were still rather timid, but James thought they would come around once the fighting grew more intense. At least, he hoped they would.
Luckily, most of the Krahn seemed to be concentrated closer to the center of Melaanse. Unluckily, if they wanted to defeat the Krahn, there were going to have to take the city back. They outnumbered the Krahn, but were heavily outgunned by the invaders, and they had no ships. They had a few weapons that they had confiscated from the slave camp, plus some that came from Krahn outposts that they had overrun in the days following the escape. But those skirmishes had resulted in heavy Rajani casualties, and the scouts still had brought no word on their search for the other humans and the crew of the Tukuli, which weighed heavily on James’s mind as the days passed.
James now had to worry about bringing the three races together to fight as one team. So far, the Jirina had only done what he’d told them. They would not take the initiative by themselves. The Sekani refused to fight alongside the Rajani, and the Rajani didn’t really seem to care that the Sekani wouldn’t fight alongside them. He would have to get across the fact that they needed each other if they hoped to win this war. He determined that he would have to call a meeting between the leaders of each race. The Rajani seemed to defer to the Elder Tumaani, so James thought he would be a good candidate for the Rajani. The Sekani seemed to have elected a leader, Zanth.
The Jirina weren’t used to having any type of leadership hierarchy within their own race. They had not been able to hold any type of leadership position in the Rajani society, and were mostly uneducated laborers. Their status seemed to have come from whatever Rajani House they worked for at the time. Mazal seemed to have gained the esteem of his fellow Jirina by becoming James’s personal assistant. Not that James had asked him to perform any of the tasks James required. Mazal had taken it upon himself to become James’s servant, no matter how many times James protested. But, James thought, maybe I can use that to my advantage.
James had been led by Tumaani and Kedar to an abandoned building that was once used to make textiles and carpeting. It was large and had thick stone walls. James was sure that it hadn’t always been a textile factory, but no one there seemed to know its history. He thought it would serve the purpose of becoming a secure base for the Rajani who had been liberated from the prison. The Rajani had dispersed to various buildings around the factory and had begun the process of cleaning them up and making them suitable for living in. Kieren and Gianni had briefed him on what they had been up to since landing in Rajan, and about the Sekani and the condition their own base was in. James made it his first order of business to secure the locations of the Rajanai, Sekani, and Jirina. They would then need to find the others, as well as clean drinking water and food.
He had deployed search teams to try and discover word of any other slave camps or pockets of free Rajani. He also sent out reconnaissance teams to spy out Krahn troops and where they were located. He needed to know where the enemy was if he was going to fight them. Up until that point, they had just been fighting what seemed to be small patrols of three or four Krahn at various roadblocks and small outposts. There had to be a base of operations that they were using.
Finally, he’d created teams that would be able to begin cleanup efforts to at least bury the remaining bodies from the initial Krahn attack, so that there wouldn’t be an outbreak of disease. The last thing he needed was for the resistance, as he had begun to think of them, to be brought down by some type of plague. There was also the fact that having dead bodies around would hurt the morale of the living.
James had been given a dwelling space within the factory building. He wanted to be close to the Rajani to help advise them. He had felt bad that he would no longer be staying with the Jirina; his time among them had been enjoyable. But he knew that even though the three species had split up into individual groups, the Rajani were still the leaders on the planet, and he would need to have their backing if he was going to succeed.
It was early in the afternoon when he left his room to find Mazal sitting outside in the hallway, next to his translating device. The Jirina hurriedly stood up, smiling. “Where are we going, James?”
“Mazal, you haven’t been sitting out here all this time waiting for me, have you?” James asked.
“No, I’ve only been here about half a standard hour,” Mazal said, with no sign of irony on his earnest face.
“We need to talk to the Rajani and Sekani,” James replied. “We need to get everyone together and work out a strategy for moving forward.” James began walking down the hallway, with Mazal following behind and carrying the translating device. “I’m going to need you there as well,” he said, looking back at Mazal. “The Jirina must be represented too.”
He found Tumaani in the basement of the textile factory, which had been cleared out and set up as a meeting room, with a large table and chairs, per James’s orders. He knew that they would need somewhere to meet in the coming days, weeks, and months, depending on how long the fighting lasted. He prayed the war for liberation wouldn’t last longer than that.
“Tumaani,” James said, nodding to the Elder. “I’m happy I found you.”
“James,” Tumaani said, nodding back. He didn’t acknowledge Mazal’s presence.
“I want to set up a meeting tonight between the Rajani, Sekani, and Jirina,” James said. “We need to speak about why the other humans and I are here, and what needs to happen in the future, if we’re to help free you all from the Krahn.”
“If that is your wish,” Tumaani said. “I’m in no position to say no.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I apologize; I’m quite tired, and still not recovered from my treatment at the hands of the Krahn. Of course we need to meet. I suggest after the evening meal, at Tamaa’s time. I’m sure your Jirina servant can tell you when that is.”
“Thank you, Tumaani,” James said, deciding not to address the fact that Mazal was not his servant. “I’ll see you here, then.” He turned and quickly left the basement by the same stairwell he’d used to descend, his mind already working on his plan to have the Sekani come to the Rajani building for a meeting. “Mazal,” he said, turning to the Jirina. “Can you lead me to where the Sekani are staying?”
“Of course,” the Jirina responded.
They made their way through streets still choked with debris, and finally arrived at the outside of the Sekani compound. Sekani guards with rifles stood outside the gates of the area.
James walked up to one of the guards. “I must speak to the other humans,” he said, the translating device conveying his words.
“You cannot enter without permission,” one of the guards said.
“I understand that,” James replied. “Can one of you p
lease send for either Gianni or Kieren?”
“No need for that,” a voice said, coming up behind them.
James turned to see that Gianni and a small group of Sekani males were walking toward the compound. He noticed that the Sekani were ringed around him, either in a protective posture or in reverence, he wasn’t sure which. Either way, it was strange to see Gianni shown such respect.
“What do you need?” Gianni said, stopping in front of James.
James clicked off the translating device before speaking. “I’m organizing a meeting tonight between the leaders of the three species,” he said. “Do you think you and Kieren can convince the Sekani to send someone? Hopefully Zanth.”
“I’m sure we can,” Gianni said. “You know relations between the Sekani and Rajani aren’t that great, right?”
“Yes,” James said. “Just tell them that this is for the best. Actually, maybe you should let Kieren do the talking.” He smiled at the other man, letting him know that he was joking. Mostly.
“Ha-ha,” Gianni said, scowling.
“You know I’m just kidding,” James said. “I need all of us to be on the same page here, Gianni. We need to get them all together to talk, or relations are only going to become worse between them.”
“Yeah, I know,” Gianni said. “Don’t worry, we’ll be there.”
“Great,” James said. “I’ll see you tonight. Tell them that the meeting will begin at something called Tamaa’s time. I’m sure they’ll understand when that is.”
“Okay, see you then,” Gianni said. He turned to his group of Sekani and spoke some words in a language that James couldn’t understand.
As Gianni walked away, surrounded by his group of Sekani warriors, James was surprised at the changes in the man since they’d been reunited. He seemed more mature than he had on the ship. He wasn’t sure if it was Kieren’s influence, or the Sekani he’d been living with since coming to Rajan, but he was happy to see it. He turned toward Mazal, who was looking at him expectantly. He clicked on the translating device. “Well, I guess that’s all we can do for now. How long until this Tamaa’s time that Tumaani spoke of?”
Rajani Chronicles II Page 12