Orion’s forehead wrinkled. “Unfortunately, the rules of conflict are very specific. You are only allowed to question them once.”
Jaspar’s skin went scaly, and long, cruel claws curved from his fingertips. “I never got to question him at all. You contacted Fabian, not us.”
Orion shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t really matter who questioned him. He answered. The rules are set in stone. I cannot change them.”
Jaspar glared at him. “I am immediately writing up a report of this incident and sending it to our Federation representative.”
The Arbitrator looked worried. “Now, I don’t see any reason to do that,” he said nervously. “I took time out from my vacation to contact the Harbingers. I don’t see what you’re complaining about.”
“You may have cost me the ability to find my clan members, my brother among them. Your actions may have paved the way to another war,” Jaspar snarled, and closed their connection.
Liza was standing there watching, and she shook her head in dismay. “How long will the message take to reach the Galactic Federation?”
“The Drakken representative is at the far end of the galaxy. Several days at best.”
“That can’t be it,” she said, panic clutching at her. “We have to find them.”
“We will never give up,” Jaspar said.
Liza shook her head. This was getting them nowhere. They weren’t anywhere on the surface of the planet. The Harbinger crew had said that they were not on their ship. The Harbinger Starliner had not left the planetoid’s orbit, so they couldn’t have taken them anywhere.
She enlarged the map and stared at the area where the Drakken and Marjan had last been seen.
“There’s the entrance to a cave there, in that small mountain,” she pointed out.
Sterran shook his head. “If they were in that cave, we would be able to pick up their electronic signals. I could trace them under a thousand feet of solid rock.”
“Still, I’m going to contact Barbara and the postmaster and get permission to search that cave system. There’s no reason not to, after all.”
She called Barbara but there was no answer. Then she tried to call Barbara’s husband, Paul, and also got no answer.
She and Jaspar and Sterran got in Jaspar’s hovercraft and headed to the post office.
A harassed-looking Barbara was working there, waiting on a long line of customers.
Liza and the Drakken pushed their way to the front, to the annoyance of the customers waiting in line. “Barbara, we need permission to explore the cave system on your property,” Liza said.
“No way,” Barbara said quickly, frowning at her. “I heard that you and the Drakken have been tramping around on our property already, and you never asked my permission. That is trespassing, and until the property transfer occurs, we are still the owners.”
Liza stared at Barbara. Why was she acting this way? “Well actually, you told me that the Drakken can tramp around on your property all they want.”
Barbara met her gaze, her pale gray eyes steely with resolve. “All right, I see that I should have been clearer. The Harbingers can tramp around on my property all they want.”
“Now, that sounds suspiciously as if you’re taking their side in the dispute,” Jaspar said.
Barbara glared at him. “I don’t have to speak to you. Your crew is the one that took over this planet, and as for picking sides, Liza and her family have clearly picked yours.”
The line of people began grumbling in agreement and shooting resentful looks at the Drakken.
“Marjan is with them,” Liza said angrily. “She’s one of us.”
“Is she?” Barbara snapped. “Maybe she shouldn’t have been hanging around with Drakken if she’s really one of us. I guess she picked a side too.”
Liza was frustrated and angry and worried. However, she could see that the crowd was not at all sympathetic, and pushing the matter further wouldn’t accomplish anything.
As she and Jaspar left, she muttered to him, “This isn’t over. Can your long-distance surveillance drones keep an eye on their house?”
“Yes,” he said. “What do you suggest we look for? We have been watching the Harbinger clan, and have not spotted them visiting Barbara’s house, ever.”
“I don’t know.” A thought occurred to her. “I haven’t seen Barbara’s children in days. Or her husband either, for that matter.”
That afternoon, Jaspar confirmed her suspicions. “We checked the heat signature of Barbara’s house. Only her husband is there.”
“I’m going to go back to town to talk to her,” Liza said.
Jaspar and Sterran stood up.
Liza shook her head. “No, it’s better if you don’t come with me,” she said. “There’s a lot of resentment from the colonists about the fact that you bought our planet. If I go alone, I might at least have the possibility of getting her to speak to me.”
“Stay in touch with me the entire time,” Jaspar said. “Contact me the minute you know anything.”
But Liza was already running for the door. “I will!” she yelled over her shoulder.
La La insisted on tagging along with Liza. They arrived just as Barbara was locking the front door of the post office. When she saw Liza, she flashed her a look of alarm and started to hurry off. Liza set off after her at a dead run, and grabbed her arm.
“Your children aren’t here and they aren’t at home. Something’s up,” she said accusingly.
“My children are home sick,” Barbara said indignantly. “I already told you that. Get away from me!” Passersby stopped and looked at Liza strangely.
Liza didn’t care. “Bull,” she said. “The Drakken ran a heat scan of your house. Only your husband is home. Where are your children, and why are you cooperating with the Harbingers?”
“I don’t have to listen to this!” Barbara’s face went red, and she yanked her arm out of Liza’s grasp and stalked off. More people were staring at them now.
“I’m going to report you to the authorities and demand that they investigate why your children are missing!” Liza yelled at the top of her lungs. People clutched their packages to their chests, murmuring to each other.
“I said they’re sick!” Barbara cried, her eyes going wide and frightened now. She hurried back to Liza and hissed, “You keep your voice down, and you keep your nose out of this!”
It was all Liza could do not to slap Barbara on the spot. “No way in hell that’s going to happen. My best friend is missing. And so are the Drakken. And so are your children, apparently.”
Barbara’s hands balled into fists. “You’re going to get them killed!”
Liza glared at her. “You’d better explain.”
Barbara glanced around, then lowered her voice furtively. “The Harbingers offered to take them on a Drakken ride, and then they never brought them back. That was over a week ago. We don’t know where they are. They told me that if we let you near the cave system, I’d never see my children again. My husband is sitting at home waiting for the Harbingers to contact him.”
“Then that is exactly where we need to search,” Liza said. “And we will report it back to the Federation as well. There are rules against involving non-combatants.”
“How do I know that the Harbingers won’t kill my children as an act of revenge?” Barbara demanded.
“Because they are afraid of the Federation. We’ll get your children back, Barbara, don’t worry.” Liza said that with more confidence than she felt. Who knew what the Harbingers might already have done to them?
With La La at her heels, Liza hurried to the hovercraft and headed back towards the bed and breakfast. She only made it halfway before the hovercraft suddenly lost power and landed. Liza tried to call for help, but both her wrist holo and her craft communicator had failed. Something had killed all power and was blocking her communications.
Then the door opened of its own accord.
“La?” The Srilaa looked alarmed and dove behind th
e seat.
Fabian stood there, with five of his men…and Barbara.
Barbara shook her head. “I’m sorry, Liza, I had to call them,” she said. “I couldn’t take the risk.”
Fear flared in Liza, choking her. The Harbingers were sadistic maniacs. What would they do to Marjan, to Barbara’s children? Now there would be no rescue. “You stupid, stupid woman—”
One of the Harbingers pointed a small silver wand at her and the world turned white and silent.
Chapter Fourteen
It was the day before Christmas – and the morning of the negotiations.
Liza had been missing all night. Jaspar had sent a message to his home planet – prepare for war. The message would take several days to arrive, because of the great distance it had to travel.
Jaspar had also sent a message to Fabian, spelling out exactly what he would do to Fabian if Liza and the rest of the clan were not returned to him. Fabian had not yet bothered to reply.
They were all due at the conference center in two hours.
And to make things worse, the Weather Control Station was malfunctioning again. An enormous snowstorm had descended on the entire continent. The snowstorm made it impossible for Jaspar and his clan to shift and fly. They would be entirely reliant on their hovercraft.
Jaspar could barely keep his Drakken inside his skin. He was burning with rage, skin covered with scales, and the air around him shimmered with the heat that boiled inside his body.
“We will destroy them,” Sterran snarled, stamping on the floor. He was so hot with rage that he left a burning footprint.
Jaspar had scorched track marks into the wooden floor.
“My son is not dead,” Karmelite said, arms crossed across her chest. Her brow furrowed in concentration. “I would feel it if he were dead, the way I felt your father and Adriel’s loss.” Adriel, Jaspar’s brother from another clutch, had died in the same battle, ten years earlier. Their mother had gone on a terrifying rampage against the Raar, the horned race of beasts who had tried to claim their planet. Jaspar and his other clutch mates had joined her in glorious battle. The Raar were now extinct, and their horns decorated the Balthazar Clan’s feasting hall.
Karmelite looked up at Jaspar. “Do you feel that your heart-mate, Liza, is still alive?”
Jaspar was not sure, but he had not felt the devastating explosion of pain and fury that others who had lost their heart-mates had described. “I believe she is.” Then he glanced at his mother skeptically. “You acknowledge that she is my heart-mate?”
She inclined her head in a slight nod. “Perhaps.”
“And you vow that you did not sabotage the weather machine this time?”
His mother stared at him in genuine shock. “Of course not. I am solely focused on the safe return of our people. And your…Liza,” she added.
“Why do we not simply enter the caves without the property owner’s permission?” Sterran demanded angrily.
Jaspar let out a growl of frustration. “We do not have any reason to believe that she is there. Our tracking devices have scanned the caves multiple times and found nothing.”
The door opened, and Mawmaw and Pawpaw hurried in. They slammed the door shut and stamped snow from their boots.
“Anything?” Mawmaw asked, her tone despairing.
Jaspar shook his head. “Not yet. I will find her. This I vow.”
“I am sure you will never give up.” Pawpaw had tears in his eyes, and he blinked hard. “Anything I can do to help? We’ve filed a complaint with the North Pole police force, demanding to be allowed to search the cave, but it might not be approved until the end of the day.”
There was a rapping on the door, from low down, about three feet high. Jaspar yanked the door open, and La La stood there, looking frazzled and, oddly, waving a pink flower at him. She wasn’t wearing her elf costume, and her right arm had a burn on it.
“Sriii, sriii, sriii!” she shrieked, and pulled on Jaspar’s hand.
“She knows where they are,” Jaspar said, and quickly followed her out, with his brothers and clan mates at his heels.
He looked down at La La, who was still waving the flower at him. He’d never seen a flower like that before. It was fresh, and it certainly wasn’t from Far North. “Have they taken them off-planet in one of their ships?”
La La kicked him in the shin, hard.
“Are they imprisoned in the Harbingers’ hotel?” Sterran asked.
La La ran over and bit his hand. “Ow! Wretched little beast!” Sterran yelled, pulling his hand away and glaring at her.
“Is she in the cave?” Jaspar suggested.
La La nodded so hard it looked as if her head would fall off.
“Told you,” Sterran said as Jaspar ran towards the hovercraft, at full speed, with his clan mates following him.
“The meeting will start soon,” Loren said as they leaped into the craft. “If you go after Liza, you may miss the meeting. The Regis must lead the negotiations. You would forfeit.”
“I know that, but she is my heart,” Jaspar said. He pointed at two of his men, Ragnar and Fevganian. “You, stay with Loren. Go to the meeting and wait for me there.”
Jaspar’s mother hurried up to the craft, and climbed in just as the door was sealing closed.
“What?” she said at Jaspar’s surprised look. “When have you known me to miss a good blood-bath?”
“Never,” Jaspar admitted as the hovercraft zoomed towards the cave.
They landed nearby and hurried to the cave opening. The snow was still falling hard. As soon as they entered the cave, Jaspar saw footprints leading to the back of the cave system.
A shred of white fake fur had snagged on a stalactite that jutted up from the floor.
“Liza,” Jaspar snarled. He went scaly, and his fangs descended. He felt his wings itching to unfurl, but there was no room to shift in here.
As they rushed towards the tunnel opening in the back of the cavern, they were greeted by half a dozen Harbingers. Valeria the Bloody was with them, and Fabian’s older brother Vangar.
“You are not at the meeting? You will lose,” Vangar sneered.
“You know where my heart-mate is,” Jaspar snarled back. “Tell me now, or you will die.”
Valeria hissed, exposing her fangs, and lunged at Jaspar. She never reached him, though. Karmelite spun quickly into her path and hit her with a backhand so powerful that the younger female was thrown against the stone of the cavern with a sickening crack. The back of her head left a thick trail of dark blood as she slid down the wall.
“Weak,” Karmelite spat, and turned to grapple with one of Fabian’s henchmen. The male was much taller than the Balthazar matriarch, and rippling with muscle, but she attacked with such bloodthirsty savagery that it was clear at once that she would win.
Sterran and the others joined the fray, but everyone knew Vangar was Jaspar’s to kill.
They stood face to face. The air crackled with testosterone and anger.
“Tell me now what you have done with my clan mates and my heart,” Jaspar said. “Or I will kill you in a way more terrible than you can possibly imagine.”
Vangar sneered. “I have slaughtered thousands,” he boasted. “I have ripped the spines from my living enemies and drunk their blood. Death in battle does not frighten me, Balthazar scum.”
Almost too fast for the eye to follow, Jaspar lashed out and knocked the Harbinger to the ground. He kicked him viciously in the side, and Vangar rolled onto his hands and knees, shaking his head muzzily as he tried to regain his feet.
Claws sliced from the ends of Jaspar’s fingers, and he gouged them into the backs of Vangar’s legs, ripping his hamstrings.
With a howl, the Harbinger collapsed back to the ground, blood pumping from the wounds. He’d never walk again, let alone fight. One who would keep a Drakken’s heart-mate from him did not deserve an honorable death.
“You can lie here and bleed to death like a weakling,” Jaspar said. “Or you ca
n crawl to your clan mates and be put out of your misery. But you will never die a glorious death in battle.”
He watched the horrified realization creep into the other Drakken’s eyes, then nodded and turned his back on him contemptuously.
The rest of theHarbingers lay sprawled at the feet of his mother and his clan mates.
They hurried down the tunnel. Sterran used his scanner to lead them through several more branches of the cave system, following the heat signature of recent footprints.
“Do you feel that?” Jaspar asked him.
There was an odd crackling sensation now. The air felt like static electricity and tasted like metal.
As if…as if they were near a portal.
They burst out into a large underground cavern. In the center of it, about thirty feet wide and ten feet tall, was a huge, swirling void.
Sterran hurried over to it.
“Stop! Wait!” Jaspar called after him as Sterran stuck his hand in. A portal could lead anywhere – into the vast void of space, into the heart of a sun…
Sterran pulled his hand back out…and he was holding a pink tropical flower that smelled like ripe fruit. “It’s warm,” he said happily.
“You are an idiot,” Jaspar snapped at him.
“Am I? Watch this.” Sterran stepped through, then quickly stepped back. “It is a tropical paradise! The air is breathable!”
Jaspar let out a low growl, and they all hurried through the portal. They emerged in a thick tropical forest, under a purple sky. The moon overhead was enormous.
Before Jaspar had a chance to speak, eight Drakken rushed from the trees, pointing laser spears at them. They looked bedraggled, as if they had just been fighting. Their furs were torn and shredded, and several of them bore open wounds.
“When I give the signal, shift,” Jaspar muttered to his brother.
A strange cry rang out through the jungle, like the cawing of a bird. The Harbingers glanced at each other fearfully.
“It’s them,” one of them muttered.
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