by T. J. Quinn
With the child still clutched under one arm, Orin leaned forward and put his hand to Nalina's throat to feel for a pulse. It was faint but steady. Judging from her sunburnt skin, exposed by a frothy gown and elegant sandals, Orin figured she was probably overcome by heat exhaustion and exposure. She was clearly not accustomed to the physical hardships of the desert as he had become since his forced induction into the Tregan Army.
He sat the little boy on the ground beside him and knelt at the woman's side. He turned her over carefully, cradling her dark head on one arm, and brushed the dirt from her mouth and nose. Reaching for his canteen, he sprinkled a few drops of precious water on her parched lips. As she became conscious, she swallowed a few sips of water then lost consciousness again.
"Can you walk little one?" Orin asked the boy.
He nodded. "You talk funny," the boy remarked and paused to study him curiously through large violet eyes. "And I can't read you either. I should be able to read you like I could my father and co-mothers and Nalina."
“You’re a telepath.” Orin shook his head as he understood what the child meant. "I was bred to resist telepathic mind scans and most types of mind probing. I'll tell you about it later. Right now, we've got to get your friend out of the sun. Since you can walk, I'll carry her, and we'll go to that agricomplex. See it over there?" Orin pointed, resting his hand on the boy's shoulder. "We should be able to find water and shelter there."
"You didn't come to kill us?" the child asked suddenly. "No." Orin shook his head grimly. "I quit being a soldier. I'm sick of the senseless killing. I just want to help you and her if I can."
"What's your name?" the boy asked, watching him lift Nalina's slender form into his arms with no great effort.
"Orin Hart. And yours?"
"Lanimer."
"Well, Lanimer, let's go." Without another word, Orin started walking. Lanimer had to triple-step to keep up with the big man, but he made no complaints. Although the young telepath couldn't actually read Orin's mind, he was still somewhat sensitive to the big man's vibes. Lanimer felt that he could trust him. Even when Orin knew Lanimer meant to kill him, he didn't hurt him afterward. A real Tregan would have killed him.
TWO
Almost an hour later, Orin gently set Nalina down on the grass in the shade while he went in search of water about the deserted oasis. He left little Lanimer with her to keep watch.
There was no pool near the charred hole where the dwelling had once stood, yet the grounds were still lush and green. Orin knew there must be a well somewhere. With just a pint of water left in his canteen, he wished he had taken the scanner from Farlo's pack before he fled. It certainly would have helped. Too late now, he would just have to look.
In a little while, Orin gave up temporarily and went back to where he'd left the woman and the boy. He shrugged off his full pack and jacket and threw down his heavy helmet, revealing a head of thick, tawny hair. Before he left again, he took up the three weapons---two hand lasers and his ion rifle. Orin felt pretty sure that Nalina would take his presence the same way Lanimer had a first, and he wasn't in the mood to have a hole burned through his back.
After nearly an hour of walking in a wider and wider perimeter around the bombed out buildings, Orin finally found the sheltered mound that held the artesian well's auxiliary pump in a half-buried concrete bunker.
There was a massive metal door without a lock at its entrance. Orin moved toward it cautiously, pressing his ear to the cold metal as he drew his blaster. When he flung open the door, the light streaming in from the sun revealed a cool, damp room about three by four meters. There were a large pump and a mass of pipes at the far end, but space enough in front of the apparatus to provide adequate shelter. Orin quickly found the water outlet and filled his canteen, hiding his two extra weapons before he returned to Nalina and Lanimer.
Nalina was conscious but disoriented. She didn't recognize Orin as a Tregan Raider. She saw only a man whose gentle hands pushed back her hair and held her head so she could drink from the cool water in the canteen that he held to her lips. Murmuring something in Zevian, she drifted back into her feverish sleep.
When he had moved his charges to the shelter of the bunker, Orin pulled his compressed sleeping pallet from the pack and inflated it to make a comfortable bed for Nalina. After that, he gave Lanimer some food wafers from his rations. Then there was little else to do but wait.
For nearly three days and nights, Orin waited while Nalina lay in a fevered delirium, taking food and water less often than he thought she should. He sat for hours, watching her restless sleep and bathing her delicate face with a cool, moist cloth.
She isn't stunning, Orin thought, but she has a lovely face. Her hair could be beautiful if it weren't all tangled like that.
Nalina was a native Zevian, a member of a golden-skinned race that had originally colonized the desert planet. Darkened by the Zevian sun, her skin was now a rich coppery brown, somewhat darker than Orin's own tanned fair skin.
Orin guessed that Lanimer's family were more recent transplants from one of the older colonies on Belderon or Aledus. The child would never say, but it was clear he wasn't a native even if he could speak the language like one.
"Is Nalina ever going to get better?" Lanimer asked on the third day as Orin sponged her face yet another time.
"I hope so," Orin answered in a grim tone. How the hell should I know? He was no physician. He had been a farmer before the Tregans dragged him from the only home he'd ever known.
"She can't die. Mother told me that she would take care of me before she died, and it was Father's wish, too. It came to me here." He pointed to his head. "... Before their essence left their bodies. Nalina has to be all right. She just has to."
"I'm doing the best I can," Orin told him. "But I don't have much medicine in my pack, and what I have isn't much good to Nalina. All we can do is wait."
Lanimer nodded thoughtfully. "Do you have parents, Orin?"
"I did once." Orin frowned and sadness filled his eyes. "I wasn't supposed to. Laboratory-bred fighting stock aren't raised like other children. Only my host mother ran away from Tregas and the project before I was born. She settled on one of the farm colonies inside Federation Territory. The Tregans seized control of that system a few months ago, and they found me. The authorities hauled me away, but my mother and father escaped. I don't know where they are or if they still live." Orin sighed.
"They tried to make me a soldier . . . Tried to make me forget they tore me from my home. But all of their training and brainwashing couldn't make me forget or make me like the others ...." Orin stopped suddenly. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth tightened at the unspoken memories of torture that clouded his thoughts.
He remembered being hung naked by the shackles on his wrists for hours while his tormentors took turns using pain sticks on him until he screamed in pain.
Or they would flog him with a whip that delivered an electric shock every time they struck him with it. He tried to resist until he realized that they would just kill him if he didn’t swear allegiance to the Tregan Empire. So he did, but only to save his life.
"Why?"
"I don't really know." Orin shrugged and slowly came back to the present. "The brainwashing didn't work. They couldn't make me a killer for their reasons---and it makes me sick to watch the others kill for pleasure. Killing isn't fun at all---not even when you think you have a good reason---I know that now."
"You killed the other Tregans, didn't you?" Lanimer asked suddenly.
"Yeah. It was the only way. I just couldn't watch them kill you and Nalina. "They had no right ...."
"I wish you had killed them before they killed my father and co-mothers. I wish they didn't die ...." Lanimer's eyes grew bright with tears that he blinked away, trying to hide them from his new friend. He wasn't a baby anymore.
"So do I, kid," he murmured huskily against the sudden tightness in his throat. "So do I."
THREE
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. He more than liked her; he wanted 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 around 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 occurred 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 hairbrush 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, murmuring 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 for 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...
FOUR
About sixty miles from Elran a small desert mining village, life in the abandoned pump house fell into a daily routine for the odd threesome sheltered there.
Nalina still treated Orin with wary aloofness, but she didn't seem as frightened of him as she was fifteen days ago. Maybe it helped that he took the trouble to learn some Zevian from them. Now Orin could talk directly to her without needing the little boy to translate.
Their days were busy. They foraged for fresh food from the cultivated fields and tried to coax some scrawny bushes to bear fruit by carrying water to them. The previous bombardments had knocked out the automated irrigation system, the house and the other outbuildings. Many of the plants were dying for lack of water in the scorching desert heat. So the three watered as many plants as possible to keep them producing the food, they needed to survive.
During the evening meals in the darkened pump house, they each talked about their past lives. They never dared to look toward the future because it didn't seem very promising for any of them.
At barely twenty, Nalina was orphaned during the bombardments at Lake Lessat. The village had been razed while Nalina was working at Mikal's agricomplex. She lived there with him and his two young wives, serving as governess for Lanimer. Mikal's two wives worked---Lania as an interpreter at Medrin Starport, and Merris worked in the mine outside of Elran. Mikal had been a Master Technician at the Elran Medical Clinic. He'd been hoping one day to complete his physician's training so he could become a physician like his old friend Hankura.
"All those dreams are gone now," Nalina's voice was thick with emotion. "He and his wives were all I had left. I think Mikal was beginning to care for me---maybe enough to make me his third wife. I could have been housemate for all their children. Merris' baby would have been born just before the winter solstice. Maybe next year I could have born a third child for Mikal." She sniffled. "Now they're all dead. No one even buried them."
"I buried them---side by side," he told her. "I'm sorry they died. I thought they would make it, I wanted them to make it."
"So you buried them to salve your conscience?" Nalina's tone was sar
castic.
"I'm not like them! I hate them!" Orin asserted.
"If you hate the Tregans so much, why do you wear their uniform? Why do you look like them? What makes you different from those murderers?"
"My genes may have been strung together in the same pattern as theirs, but Nalina, I wasn't raised as an animal and conditioned to become a ruthless killer from childhood as they were.”
"I grew up on Veldis Lar before the Tregans took it. My host mother and her mate raised me with the same love they would have given a naturally conceived son. We were warned in time for my parents to escape, but the soldiers found me. Because I looked like the other soldiers, the Commander General had me dragged from my home in chains. They tried to break me on Tregas. Two months of brainwashing and survival training and they thought they could make me into a soldier. Ha! That kind of brainwashing only works with the young ones before the mental shield is fully matured. They figured pain would work instead."
Orin shuddered. "I pretended to be like them so they wouldn't kill me. I didn't want to die. Then, they sent me here to kill people who never did anything to me. But, they're the ones who made my life hell, so I killed them."
He fell silent for a time, staring out into the darkness through the doorway of the bunker. The things he had seen since he came to Zevus Mar gave him many sleepless nights. He could still hear that Zevian girl screaming in his dreams as Damon tortured her. He should have killed Damon then---before he had the chance to hurt anyone else. But then, they would have killed him on the spot.
Orin wished he could stop feeling guilty. At least he had saved Nalina and Lanimer. They were safe now, and they could take care of themselves.
"You won't have to worry about me anymore, Nalina. I'll be gone by sunset tomorrow," he said abruptly.
She gasped. "You're just going to leave us here?"
"Do you want me to stay?" Orin's eyes mocked her, and he laughed. "It's been two weeks, and you're still terrified of me. You've been scared so long; you see only a soldier---not a man. You'll be glad to see the last of me."