Wyst

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  He didn’t raise his head as he heard the chime of the call being disconnected but as he raised his head to the screen he saw Stege remained connected.

  “What do you hope to accomplish with this little coup? You want my job? You want to be the decision-maker, the one to raise funds in order to pay for our attempts to repopulate our worlds?” The sneer in Gwynt’s voice showed what he thought of Bronsyn’s ability to lead. “I just bet you’d love to be in the middle of it all, trying to appease the movers and the shakers on both sides of the issue, of being caught in the vise of those who are happy with the status quo and those demanding we infect our society with fracking females. But you couldn’t even handle being a diplomat and negotiating with Ater and Castic, could you? No. And if memory serves, you lost more deals than you won in meeting with the others of the Picari system.”

  Bronsyn didn’t reply, shocked at the vitriol of his old friend’s words.

  “Let me tell you this, Commander. It will take those two old fools time to do what they threatened. Time enough for me to blast your residence into oblivion with nothing more than one laser flare from the Searcher. At the same time, your two missing warriors and their mates will be found and executed where they stand, all at my command. And then we’ll just see who remains in their position of leadership.”

  “You are mad, Stege, and need serious help,” Bronsyn breathed, staring into the wild, crazed eyes of his one-time friend.

  “Am I? Or is it that you simply do not recognize true cunning, true power when confronted with it?”

  With shaking fingers, Bronsyn disconnected first.

  *.*.*.*.*

  He gave himself a few minutes to calm, reviewing what was said and the reactions of the leaders before he rejoined the group in the main house. His warriors needed to be apprised of the situation and discuss the possible outcomes since it would affect them directly.

  Gathering them together and accessing Rykhan and Wyst remotely, he recounted the conference call. When he was finished, he found it interesting to note the warriors went silent and still, much as the other males had done during the call.

  “I didn’t think the Searcher had such weaponry, commander.” Leave it to Laxon to bring up something Bronsyn hadn’t considered. “I mean, wasn’t ours supposed to be a peaceful mission and had no need for anything other than speed to evade any threat?”

  “It’s my thought that we were told quite a number of untruths,” Tyshar responded. “My concern is how the Searcher can get into position to fire without detection from Earth’s monitoring satellites.”

  Arbrynt looked around the group as ideas were brought up and discarded one by one. “The house is impervious with the shield I put up but there is the possible a laser might bounce off it.”

  “That would be good though, right?” Wyst’s voice came through only the slightly bit tinny through the electronic connection.

  All eyes went to Arbrynt and he shifted in his seat at the unwanted attention. “Not necessarily. There’s no guarantee the beam might not hit any of the neighboring houses.”

  “Frack!” Rykhan’s expletive summed up the issue succinctly.

  “So did you get a feel for if the Writ of Treason is really in place?” Bronsyn knew it would be the number one focus for Wyst stuck in the small town without his warrior-brothers around him.

  “You are starting to speak like the pixie, brother,” Gyard quipped with a grin.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Wyst shot back. “We’ve been told we have three Picari searching for us around Wayward.”

  “Captain Pryntal’s men or are they with Dr. Jyrl?” Bronsyn couldn’t see the Searcher’s captain obeying an order to hunt down, then kill any Protector, much less their mates. But Laxon’s question held merit. Better to determine their enemy in order to evade them.

  “I will confer with Pryntal since he needs to know what is transpiring. But if I were to hazard a guess I would say they were from Jyrl’s crew.”

  “That makes sense,” Rykhan agreed. “The doctor has more to lose than Pryntal and seems more aligned with Stege’s plans. There’s been no one approaching the ranch but I will stay alert in order to protect my plyca from any strangers.”

  “Do you have anywhere you can hide yourself and your mate until the car is repaired?”

  “Unfortunately no,” Wyst replied sourly. “But I will make that my number one goal.”

  Bronsyn stared around the table at the remaining men, taking in their quiet contemplation. Wyst’s Pam had said it true when she’d said, ‘all for one and one for all’ because each of them considered the other warrior’s problems as their own.

  “I still cannot determine how they were able to locate Wyst’s location,” Laxon grumbled to no male in particular.

  Arbrynt huffed out a breath. “All they would have to do is set their equipment to seek out a being with dual heartbeats since humans only have one.”

  And with that dire but unassailable logic, the meeting concluded with no resolution but a lot of determination in a successful outcome.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Wyst walked towards the bar, idly glancing into the windows of the shops he’d not made the time or felt the need to explore. He was early to pick up his pixie, but had been both bored and afraid Ms. Myrtle would renew her plea for him to join her in the office. Better to be outside and moving than stuck indoors with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company.

  Dark thoughts about things he couldn’t accept nor change, mainly centering around a certain bouncy-haired sprite and the incomprehensible link of mind and heart they shared.

  Stopping at the door to Dr’ala, Wyst paused to try and get a read on the emotions rolling off her in waves. Though it had only been a few hours since he’d first realized he could feel as well as hear her, he was still getting used to receiving so much information. And to know she felt so many divergent emotions at one time made him dizzy.

  Were all humans like that? Did each of them have layers of feelings, one edging out the other as they went through their days? That wasn’t his nature, at least he didn’t think it was, preferring instead to fully experience one emotion before he shifted into another.

  And it seemed she either couldn’t or wouldn’t control her feelings, something he’d been taught to do at a very early age with the learning reinforced at the academy to help mold him into a better warrior.

  Deciding to delay his entry, Wyst walked past the door his eyes on the night sky as he tried to pinpoint the Picari sun which should have been visible as a star in the east.

  “You’re looking the wrong direction, warrior,” came a rough voice from the shadows at the corner of the building. Strafing his eyes toward the sound, Wyst saw the face behind the voice in the glow of the cigarette the man held between his blue lips. The Basule!

  Everything within Wyst went on high alert, his muscles tightening and flexing as his feet automatically shifted into battle stance. Reaching for his tresl, he turned his body to provide the smallest possible target as his thumb immediately punched in the code to turn the black electronic device into a weapon.

  The Basule though didn’t move anything except his eyes as Wyst prepared for an attack that never came. “Why are you hesitating, Basule,” he asked, grinding his question out through clenched teeth as he spoke in a combination of Picari and old, formal Baspic.

  Taking another puff, the large other male casually tossed the end of his glowing smoke to the pavement and used his shoe to extinguish it. “I haven’t heard that language in a long time. Maybe too long to truly understand the insult your tone indicated. Why don’t you try it again, only in English this time?”

  Wyst blinked and stared at the Basule as he tried to make sense of the other man’s words. Finding no hidden agenda, he finally answered. “I simply asked why you hesitated to attack me.”

  “And named me as a Basule as well,” the male countered on a deep sigh, his strange purple eyes roaming the street beyond where Wyst stood
. “Is that what they still call my people? Are we still considered ‘rebels’ by the Picari governments even after all these years?”

  Wyst heard a definitive note of sorrow in the male’s voice and found himself relaxing his pose in small measures.

  But he needed to stay in defensive mode, didn’t he? The fracking Basules were the mortal enemies of the Picari, pirating and plundering their way across space, taking what wasn’t theirs and using it against the great people of the Picari for their own gain!

  Tightening his grip on his tresl, Wyst brought it up to shoulder height and lifted his chin. “You know what you are and, yes, the label still applies.”

  “Not for me, it doesn’t. And I can see you expect us to continue the battle our worlds have been fighting for a millennia or more by the way you’re aiming your weapon my way.” While pointing out Wyst’s aggressive moves, the man seemed totally unconcerned about them. “If you plan to kill me then do it. But do not name me as a Basule. On Earth I’m called C’ynyt. And I’m no longer your enemy, son.”

  Shocked to his very core, Wyst didn’t know how to react or even what to think. But C’ynyt’s sincerity rang out with every word, especially those at the end. Could Wyst believe him?

  “Since it’s colder than a witch’s tit and I’m fucking freezing out here, how about you and I take this inside?”

  Wyst realized his hands and nose were feeling the chill of the night air as well, but even more, he was curious about what two alien males, strangers to the planet they found themselves on, would have to talk about. But if it helped provide him and the other warriors with strategic information, he would be a fool not to accept the offer. “This is not a trick?”

  C’ynyt raised his palms in the air at ear level, much in the manner Pam had demonstrated when they’d been surprised by the thieves in the forest. “I promise. No tricks, no attacks. Just a couple of foreigners getting to know one another over a couple of drinks.”

  Wyst studied the other male, trying to detect even the tiniest trace of dishonesty and in finding none, he disengaged his tresl and tucked it back into the pocket of his jeans. “I will trust you and agree to speak with you. But only until my Pam is off work.”

  As the young warrior turned back to the sidewalk, C’ynyt stopped him with a soft touch on his shoulder. “I don’t go into the common area if I can help it. My coloring and size seems to scare the shit out of humans and disrupt business. Let’s go this way instead.”

  Following the broad, muscled back of the male who’d admitted he wasn’t an enemy (although that had yet to be proven), Wyst tried to find one cohesive thought in the spinning circles of his mind to grab on to. But he still hadn’t found his center when C’ynyt opened a plain, unobtrusive door at the rear of the brick building. Nor had he when he was lead into a tiny room crowded with a desk, a chair, a long couch and upright metal boxes lining the length of one wall.

  “Take a seat and I’ll have Dah’Ani bring us some drinks.” Making the connection between the name his pixie used for her boss and C’ynyt’s correct pronunciation of a Baspic female’s name, Wyst felt some of the tension leave his body. “I’ve also gotta check on my son to make sure he’s on track. You know how teenagers are.”

  But when the man didn’t leave the room nor pick up receiver of one of Earth’s communication devices, Wyst frowned and took his gaze from the room to the male across the desk. As C’ynyt’s eyes lost their focus, Wyst realized he was communicating with his children in the same way he did with Pam-ah-lah. And that knowledge, more than anything else in the time they’d been in each other’s company scared him.

  “You share thoughts with your children?”

  C’ynyt nodded and sat back in his chair, propping his big boots against the edge of the desk as he crossed his arms across his chest. “I can and have since they were still in their mother’s womb.”

  Just as Wyst was about to offload a barrage of questions, a knock on the door to the small office jarred him out of his thoughts.

  “Your drinks, tra-pa,” the woman who manned the bar murmured as she entered. The fact she called C’ynyt the Picari endearment for ‘father’, sent Wyst’s senses reeling. And as her large, light lavender eyes rimmed in thick black lines lifted to his own, she continued. “Although I wanted to, I didn’t poison yours, Picari. According to my father, you are to consider yourself…safe here.”

  Wyst didn’t know how to respond other than to utter a soft, but heartfelt, “Thank you,” at her implied threat. He wasn’t sure there were protocols of how to behave in the situation he found himself in, but could only hope to represent his people in their best light by responding with the utmost courtesy.

  Just as she was leaving, a younger man shouldered her out of the doorway. “Pops? Dah’Ani said you had a Picari in the office! Is that true? Can I talk to him and get his take—”

  Sliding to a full stop, the mid-youngling male ceased speaking and stared at Wyst in open mouthed surprise. “Are you him? I mean…ah. Are you really a Picari warrior, like the ones who shot my pop’s vessel down?”

  Shooting a shocked gaze to C’ynyt and receiving a nod in return, Wyst looked back to the boy-male who he thought was in his mid-to-late teens, one that would be called ‘mid-young’ at the Academy. Not quite a man and no longer a boy, it was a difficult time for any male. “I am Wyst Sangyre Manrd, decorated and lauded warrior of the Picari Protectorate. May I have your name?”

  “Reg,” the man-child replied on a swallow, his eyes wide and unblinking. And then, as if pulling himself together, he stood tall and strong before speaking again. “I am Ry’fryg C’ynyt Droos, first son of C’ynyt Treslyng Droos and Blythe Whitefeather of the Lakota-Sioux nation.”

  Without breaking the confident gaze of the mid-youngling, Wyst took the high road and spoke to his father directly. “Your son has pride in his heritage. You and your mate have done well.”

  C’ynyt nodded in a way that found Wyst holding back a smile before he dismissed his son with both a rueful grin and a wave of his hand. “You’ve still got a lot to do before you call it quits for the night, Reg. Better get to it. Mr. Manrd can answer your questions another time, okay?”

  “Would you mind, sir? I mean, I’ve heard Pop’s stories a thousand times but to get your take on it all would be awesome!”

  “With your tra-pa’s permission I would enjoy speaking with you, young...Reg.”

  After the crestfallen boy left, softly closing the office door behind him, Wyst again looked to the male on the other side of the desk who held his drink up in salute. “Thank you for that. The kid’s curious and too smart for his own good. He’s already figured shit out regarding the Picari-Basule conflicts I didn’t realize until I’d been here a few years.”

  Wyst reached for his own glass but stopped at what C’ynyt said, or rather, implied. “You do not believe our battles were just and true?”

  The Basule tilted his head and pointed his eyes to Wyst’s untouched drink. “Let’s toast to our unlikely meeting first, all right?”

  Fair enough. Wyst picked up his glass and brought it to his nose. He and his warrior-brothers found in short order the Earth’s versions of alcohol didn’t affect them in the least. However, the bubbly, fizzy drinks the humans called soda got them drunk faster than Byze-wad, one of the potent liqueurs the hooded and hidden Casticians traded in order to support their world.

  The drink delivered by C’ynyt’s daughter smelled more of alcohol than soda, giving Wyst the internal approval to drink deeply.

  “Why’re you here?”

  Although C’ynyt’s abrupt words were stated plainly and without rancor or threat, Wyst still found himself tensing at how baldly they were stated. “I volunteered to come to Earth.”

  “Sure you did,” the other male said with a half-canted smile and sharp gaze. “Volunteered to travel thousands of light-years in order to land on a rocky little planet with almost none of the technology you’re used to having, in order to stay in a dirty little room, in
a po-dunk piece of shit town, so you could shack up with a human female on the sly? Sorry, buck-o. I ain’t buying it.”

  “Why are you here, then? Is your tale any different, Basule?”

  C’ynyt did the unthinkable by throwing back his head and allowing his blue lips to point towards the ceiling as he crowed out his laughter. Which went on for many minutes, at least in Wyst’s opinion. “No, shithead. My ‘tale’, as you call it, was totally different. I didn’t volunteer for nothing. I, like all of my kind, was pressed into service when I was only ten yons. Learned to fight, then learned about space flight before being turned over to a son-of-a-bitching captain who enjoyed coupling with young boys until he was tired of them. Fucking and sucking through his young harem as he planned his next raid to steal from the Picari pricks who’d enslaved us.”

  If his host expected some sort of reaction to his story, Wyst made sure he disappointed the blue-lipped male by not showing any. “So you were a reluctant pirate?”

  “Reluctant? Hell, yeah,” he bellowed. “Well, at first I was. Then one of the scientists took me under his wing and gave me the history of this whole…” He raised a thick, muscled arm, raising and waving it around the room. “Conflict. Told me things no one else talked about. But did I believe him when he whispered that shit in my ear as he shoved himself into me night after night? No.”

  Wyst wasn’t shocked by the male’s admission because it was a common tale told by many of his classmates, especially in the all-male societies on Galaxia and Nutrol. Some younglings even at the time he’d been accepted for mission, were targeted by older men, offered up first as mentors before their true natures became evident. Although there were laws in place, abuse was still rife and all too true within even the ranks of the Protectorate. What was astounding though was the way C’ynyt offered up his debasement so casually. “What were you told that made you less…reluctant?”

  Swiping off the knitted cap he wore, the Basule stared balefully into the young Picari’s eyes. “That yours and mine lived in a diverse society, our cultures meshing and adding to one another’s in harmony. That we completed one another as we worked, traded…and just fucking lived!”