Spears of the Sun (Star Sojourner Book 3)

by Jean Kilczer

  “I'm – “

  “Please take off your jacket and the sweater.”

  I did.

  “He is not all well.” Huff leaned toward her. “But we are hoping he will be better well.”

  “Well, thank you for all of that!” She checked my blood pressure, oxygen level and temperature. “That's quite an egg you've got there.” She pointed to my head. What happened?”

  “I fell! Are my vital signs OK?”

  She slid me a look. “Oh, everything's just fine. And your vitals are good, too.”

  I looked at Doc Elliot.

  He shrugged. “Everybody's a comedian.”

  I bit my lip as I watched him fill a syringe.

  Huff slid closer on his haunches. “Should I hold your paw, Jules?” His voice quavered. “I would be helpful to comfort you.”

  Doc Elliot frowned at him.

  “No, it's OK, Huff,” I said.

  He raised up on hind legs and whimpered as he went to stand in a corner.

  The shot was the worst part, a local anesthetic that stung.

  “Ouch,” I mumbled and heard Huff whine.

  But the area around the implanted device went numb and I felt nothing as the doc removed it.

  I stared at the tiny silver ball he held between forceps. It had threatened an entire town, and me. “Can I keep it for a souvenir?”

  “Afraid not.”

  The nurse extended a small container and he dropped the ball into it. “We have orders to transport it to Alpha's lab,” he told me.

  The nurse screwed the cap on tight and winked at me.

  “I'm putting in a stitch,” the doc said quietly. “It will dissolve.”

  Something big crashed to the floor behind me.

  The doc looked toward a corner. “Oh, for Christ's sake!”

  Huff had fainted.

  After they revived him, Huff smiled up at me. “I had a good sleep. I feel refreshed.” I helped him to his feet and he shook himself off.

  “Thanks!” Dr. Elliot said. “My examination room needed a coat of fur!”

  “You're welcome, Healer,” Huff told him with a touch of awe.

  “You can get dressed now, Mr. Rammis,” the nurse informed me. “If you must.”

  I did. My black turtleneck was sagging worse than ever, and my blue jacket had tears crossing the rips.

  Doc Elliot examined the lump on my head. “Put ice packs on that,” he told me, “and make an appointment in a week for a checkup.” He tilted my head to one side and studied the incision he'd made. “I covered it with newskin. Just leave it alone and let it seal up.” He peeled off his surgical gloves. “And do me a favor? When you come in for the checkup, leave Nanook at home.” He opened the door. “Somebody ask the maintenance guy to come in here,” he called down the hallway.

  The maintenance guy turned out to be a retired W-CIA Terran agent who used an open paper clip to spring the handcuff.

  “Well, Mr. Rammis.” Dr. Elliot smiled. “Now you're free to continue to do whatever it is you do.”

  I thanked him and the nurse, and Huff and I left. I paid my tab in Billing from my dwindling credcount and we boarded the hovair camper.

  It felt good to sit back in the comfortable pilot's seat. I clicked on the sublink. “Joe, you out there?”

  “Hatch here,” his voice came through.

  “It's Jules. Where are you? At the spaceport?”

  “No. I'm at the lab with Chancey and Doctor Madison Stone.”

  “Who's Madison Stone?”

  “An Alpha astrophysicist. She accompanied the Shaka raiding party. She's sifting through debris for clues on the project.”

  “Debris? Did Rowdinth's Guards destroy the lab?”

  “They did. Covered their tracks, so to speak.”

  “Huff and I are on our way there.”

  “Take your time. Stone's got her work cut out for her. Did Huff give you the detonator?”

  “Yeah, Joe. The device is out. I'm free of it!”

  He sighed. “Really glad to hear that, kid, but I should still hand you your ass for what you did to me, Chancey and… Do you know Shelley's dead?”

  “I saw it happen. You think she was a counterspy?”

  “It sure looked that way.”

  I heard a harsh voice in the background.

  “Stone's calling me. Out.” He broke the link.

  Speaking of time out, I took time to thermocline by beard, brush my teeth, vib my clothes, and shower. After combing my hair, I brushed Huff's back in places he couldn't reach, and scraped off some local parasites. I gave them to him and he ate them.

  We sat down to hot meals from the camper's supplies of chicken, rice and green beans - mine, and something I couldn't make head or tail of, though it had both-Huff's.

  “Jules?”

  “Hmmm?” I asked around a mouthful.

  “What is a Nanook?”

  I almost choked as I chuckled. “Uh, it's a compliment, Huff.”

  We lifted off and I turned the hovair toward the lab. Only Joe could requisition a light, military Star Sojourner from the spaceport so we could join the hunt for Rowdinth. My tel powers might be a welcome asset in locating him.

  As I flew toward our destination, I realized that I wanted to see Shannon again. Live your life, Willa's kwaii had sent to me from geth state as she drifted to a new planet and a new life form.

  I had a fanciful image of Great Mind, spectacles braced on his nose, a feathered quill clutched in whatever He/She/It used for a hand, keeping track of all the life forms in all the galaxies in a ledger spread open before him. Would He ever run out of ink? Was Great Mind really the Creator, I wondered, or just the accountant for a higher Lord who ruled many universes?

  I shook my head and stared at the night-blanketed sea south of us with its wrinkles of white waves. The great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me, an Earth scientist had said centuries ago. Yeah, and if you pondered the concepts of eternity and infinity long enough, I added, you could go nuts.

  “Jules?”

  “Huh?”

  “No. Huff.”

  “What?”

  “Aren't we intend to land at the laboratory?”

  I looked at the ground below and nodded. “Oh, yeah.” I had overshot the lab. I banked the craft and flew low between the two hillocks and the blasted lab entrance, stark in the crossed lights of the moons.

  Huff and I grew silent as the hovair's lights picked out the torn bodies of Vermakt Guards, and dead native animals that had been caught in the firefight. Blackened tree stumps smoldered and patches of grass, brought to the planet by Terrans, left burned paths as fire consumed them. The hovair's side window was open. Acrid smells rode on sea winds that moaned between the hillocks like a requiem. But any Shaka soldiers killed in battle had been taken away by their comrades.

  It was a scene out of The Inferno. It turned me cold and I slid the window shut. In what dark corner of Great Mind's brain had He thought to endow his creatures with a taste for wanton destruction? As a biologist, I knew that all species were in a continuing arms race for survival. But you'd think the ones with the big brains might've gone beyond the predator-prey mentality. Could Earth herself be reduced to rubble if Rowdinth's two rogue scientists perfected their weapon?

  “Creator and Destroyer,” I muttered to Great Mind as I landed the craft and shut her down, “what the hell were you thinking?”

  “Are you talking to me?” Huff asked.

  “No, just thinking out loud.”

  He leaned over from the co-pilot's seat and put a furry arm around my shoulders. “On Kresthaven we have a saying for times like this.” He sighed.

  I waited, but he was silent.

  “What's the saying, Huff?”

  “Oh. 'Time is the river, and we are all caught in its flow'.”

  “That's it?”

  “No. 'The Great Lord of All Sees All. The Dead Shall Rise Up and Find Their Bones Again and Good Deeds Will Bring Everlasting Love and Joy
as He Stokes the Fire Within the Great Ice Den'.”

  “And the evil-doers?”

  “'Those Who Lift an Angry Paw Against Their Brothers and Sisters Will Remain Outside the comfort of the Den forever'.”

  That's more like it, I thought. “Thanks, Huff. I feel a lot, uh, a lot happier now.”

  “Time with any!” He squeezed my shoulders. “Happy am I as the White Glider who swoops and spears a fish for his nestlings, to help my Terran brother.”

  We left the hovair and walked to the blackened entrance of the laboratory.

  I smelled burning wires when Huff and I entered the dark lab, and crunched a glass shard under my boot.

  “Smells of the rot of the uneaten bones,” Huff said.

  “Yeah, and a quick exodus.” I stepped over pieces of metal.

  Joe turned from talking to a small woman, perhaps in her fifties, as they studied a broken green ring under a makeshift light that hung from the ceiling.

  Doctor Madison Stone, I presumed.

  Her hair was dark and close-cropped. A spider web of wrinkles crisscrossed her dry, pale face and bony hands. But it was her eyes that held me as she turned in my direction. I'd seen that self-contained, focused look on professionals in many fields, the ones who were confident of their abilities and the decisions they'd made in long years of practicing their skills. She wore a baggy tan jacket and pants, and hiking boots. Here there'd be no nonsense, I instinctively knew. I ran my fingers through my hair, straightened, and tried to look focused and professional myself.

  “Jules!” Joe said and approached us. “Huff. This is Doctor Madison Stone.”

  She waited as I smiled and moved past a maze of twisted wires and broken tubes that dangled from the ceiling. But the heart of the project was gone, along with its table on wheels. “Madison,” I said, my hand extended, and nodded, “glad to meet you.”

  She gave my hand a quick pump. “If you don't mind, it's Doctor Stone.”

  “No,” I said softly, “I don't mind. This is my friend Huff.” I gestured toward him.

  Huff went to all fours to navigate the littered floor, then stood up and extended a paw. He drew back his lips in a Vegan smile and wagged his head. “I don't mind either, Doctor Stone.”

  She glanced at the paw and nodded.

  I slid Joe a look. “Uh, where's Chancey?”

  “He went to the spaceport to requisition a light military starship.”

  “So we're on the team that's going after Rowdinth?” I asked.

  “With everything the military's got.” Joe threw aside the green ring. “The Alpha fleet is already searching for him. We'll catch up when Chancey returns.”

  “Doctor Stone,” I said as we walked outside, “do you have any theories about this dark-energy weapon?”

  “I suspect it's a hoax,” she said. “It's not possible to destroy a planet with dark energy.”

  I heard the deep whine as a ship approached, and scanned the night sky.

  “Well, from what I heard those two rogues scientists say,” I told her, “it sure sounded like they were dead serious about their project.”

  “That doesn't mean that they can develop a weapon of such magnitude.” She waved toward the lab's scarred entrance. “Especially in this primitive facility.”

  “We have profiles on those two,” Joe told her. “The father's considered to be at genius level. The son's more of a tag-along. And the notes for the project were stolen from NASA.” He glanced back to the cave entrance. “The project wasn't conceived here.”

  A black ST-Class Four starship made a smooth landing and raised dust on a narrow strip that was probably used by the lab. It was a light, armed-to-the-teeth military Sojourner with provisions for four on a star journey.

  “I guess the port didn't have a bigger ship,” Joe said and strode toward it as the engines whined down.

  I turned to Doctor Stone. “The father was pretty adamant about finishing the project within three or four days. Then they intended to take the creds and run like hell.”

  “Did you also happen to notice,” she remarked drily, “that their incredible planet-destroyer was a table-top model of a chamber and spinning red glass that might make a nice children's toy?”

  “Alpha's taking it pretty seriously,” I told her. I shoved my hands into my pockets and made fists.

  “Oh, yes. Save Earth and get re-elected! And to hell with the body of scientific evidence that tells us that dark energy is a repulsive force. Your rogue scientists threatened to burn Earth to a cinder, if I recall Rowdinth's phrase correctly, not to propel it into the sun.”

  Propel it into the sun? Was that their plan if they didn't get the gold bullion? “Can dark energy push a planet into its sun's gravity well?”

  She smiled without mirth. “No more than you can throw a mountain at a continent, Mister Rammis.”

  I held back a twinge of anger and watched Chancey jump down from the pilot's door. “Do you want to bet Earth,” I asked Doctor Stone, “that they haven't found a means to destroy our world?”

  “I've been told that you have telepathic abilities,” she said as we walked toward the ship.

  “Oh, they told you the right thing!” Huff put in as he followed us. “My Jules Terran friend can even read the minds of aliens.” He chuckled through pointed teeth. “But where I come from, Doctor Rock…I mean Stone, Terrans are the aliens.”

  I couldn't help chuckling. I rubbed Huff's shoulder, then brushed down his fur.

  Huff noticed my laughter and seemed embarrassed. He wandered off to search for bugs under rocks.

  “Don't you consider astroparticle physics to be a bit out of your area of expertise?” Doctor Stone asked me.

  “When you put it that way…” I let it hang there and went to greet Chancey. “Hey, tag,” I called to him, “good to see you again!”

  He gave me that broad toothy grin and shrugged into his leather vest. “Glad you're still among the living, after your little tête-à-tête with the Prince of Rats.”

  What Rowdinth had actually done to me would remain a dark secret I'd take to my grave!

  “Yeah,” I said, and bit my lip as I thought back to when I'd hit him and Joe and Shelley with a stun setting so I could enter Rowdinth's den and try to save the dwarf community. “Uh, about that incident on the beach with the stingler.”

  “You don't play by the rules, do you?” Chancey made a fist. I clenched my teeth, but he just tapped my chin.

  Joe went to check the ship's tires. They were the weakest link in a craft that could traverse the stars. “Ask him what the hell he did with my pipe!” he threw back.

  “It wasn't part of the plan,” Chancey said and shook his head as though he addressed a child, “for you to walk into Rowdinth's den.”

  “Plan?” Joe called. “He doesn't know the meaning of the word.”

  “Well sometimes you have to think outside the box, Joe!” I called in my defense.

  Joe walked around the craft. “You wouldn't know the box,” he told me and wiped his hands on a rag, “if you fell over it.”

  I felt Doctor Stone's gaze burning into my back. I sighed and studied the sky. The great ring of the galaxy twinkled and winked and beckoned us out to cold space and hot stars and a crazed Vermakt who had billions of systems to choose from as hideouts where he could plan the destruction of my homeworld if he didn't get his due. I shook my head and kicked a rock. There was no way we could give him his due!

  Spirit? I sent. You want in on this hunt?

  Use your tel powers.

  I was surprised he deigned to answer at all. But his advice was the counsel of the obvious.

  Still, if I could send and receive across the vast spaces between Fartherland and Halcyon, in their separate star systems, how far, I wondered, could my tel powers extend

  Chapter Seventeen

  Our ST-Class Four Sojourner joined the Worlds Alliance's great fleet in space. Operation Independence Day, the military code name for the massive hunt for Rowdinth, was se
nding probes to all known habitable star systems. But the probes were, to coin a phrase, just shots in the dark.

  Rowdinth could make planetfall on a non-habitable world, and live within the confines of his ship, with BioSuits for outside work, while the two crotefuckers finished their project. Altairians lived in their suits and helmets for lengthy periods of time on Halcyon and Fartherland. And the project, from what I'd overhead the two scientists say, was only Earth days away from completion.

  “You know, Huff…” I gazed through a porthole in our small craft at the great war vessels and light fighters whose dark shapes blocked out stars. “I think– “

  “Yes, I know Huff, my friend,” he said patronizingly. “In fact, I know him very well.”

  “Yeah. Well, I'm afraid we won't find the crotemunger until he contacts Alpha with the weapon ready to fire, and his demand for the gold.” I turned to my furry friend who sat on his haunches and picked his sharp teeth with a sliver of dried bone.

  He paused. “Better to find him before he burns your homeworld up. And down.”

  “Much better. He's already threatened to burn Earth if Alpha doesn't come up with the bullion. In that turn of events, he intends to attack the colony worlds one by one until Alpha hands over the gold.” I paced the small deck. The gold that no longer exists, I thought.

  “Do you have a Jules Terran plan? I know you are very resourceful. The peoples of the worlds all know that Terrans are very resourceful. That's how you make meat without animals and starships.” He picked out a piece of meat stuck between his teeth and extended it to me. “Would you like a bite of real meat?”

  “No, thanks.” I sucked a tooth. “I already ate.”

  He chewed the meat. “My homeworld is cold, by your human degrees. But if Rowdinth destroys your Earthplanet, you are welcome to come and live on the ice as one of us. We have animal furs that will keep you warm, and I think you would make a good hunter of fish.”

  “That's quite an offer, my friend.” I restrained a chuckle and turned it into a smile. Mi ice floe es su ice floe. “But I thought you couldn't go back.”

  He shrugged his broad white shoulders. “If I carry my people enough checkerboards and fish eggs in freeze to thaw and hatch in the ponds, they would receive Lord Vorlof, Pit Master of Fire, Himself!”