He had taken no pleasure in the killing he had done. In dark moments, he wished he’d acted sooner so he could have saved Lanimer’s parents. He didn’t know what he needed to do until he saw Nalina, so small and so brave.
Not until he found her lying in the desert did he realize he was attracted to her. Now he knew he loved her and he always would whether they could make a life together or not. He had no way of knowing what the future would bring. So, there was no sense in worrying.
They had today. It would have to be enough.
TEN
When Casir E’Lonne’s hovercraft settled down on the complex, Nalina was gathering fruit in a field alone a short way from the pump house. Orin and Lanimer were near the far side of the complex gathering roots and teal lizards for a stew. It had been two or three weeks since they'd eaten the last of Orin's food wafers---not that it was a real hardship. They were living off the land quite nicely.
Nalina was terrified when she first heard the hovercraft landing. Unarmed, she ran an indirect course toward the pump house where they kept a nearly spent laser hidden. But, before she could get there and slip inside unnoticed, more vehicles landed, and men and women began crossing the various points back and forth between Nalina and shelter. She could only hide and pray for Orin to come back and save her. He had the only other laser that worked, and he would know what to do.
On the other side of the desert farm, Lanimer suddenly stopped and looked up from the thick yellow root he was digging with a small piece of metal. A worried look crinkled his elfin features, and he shook his blond head, trying to discern the source of his unease.
"Orin, I think we should go back now," he said finally. "Sometimes, Nalina doesn't like to be alone."
"Sure, kid. I know that, but we have to eat. Just let me snare a couple more of these lizards. That'll last us a couple days."
"Okay," Lanimer sighed reluctantly. "Make it quick. I just feel that Nalina wants you to come now ... but there are other feelings and thoughts jumbled in with hers. It's hard for me to pick up just what is bothering her."
A cold fear sent a chill down Orin's spine, and he shuddered suddenly when he looked over at his little companion from where he was squatted over a lizard's den. "What do you mean?" Orin asked in that serious, quiet tone of his.
"When there are other people around, it's hard for me to pick out one special person's thought patterns. I-I'm still young for it. Mother said it would take many years for me to learn that well," Lanimer explained. "She was pretty good at it; she could usually pick father or me out of a small group and sometimes even in town if we concentrated on her. Right now, I feel that Nalina is thinking hard about you---and I'm not sure why."
"Well, then, let's not waste time trying to figure it out," Orin said decisively. "I don't want to take any chances. Let's take what we've got and get back to her. We can come back and get more in a couple days."
Orin's face set in a worried frown as he stood and checked the power pack in the laser in his belt. It was pretty low. Now he wished he had kept the weapons he had sent back to Elran with that load of dead Tregans. He might need one right now.
At the time, he was so sick of killing, he didn't want to touch another weapon let alone use one. He had only had second thoughts for a while afterward---and now . . .
ELEVEN
Construction foreman Bren Maxim paused as he was going over the old plastic on the original layout of the agricomplex and watched Casir climb from the gray company hovercraft. He'd sent for it from Farelix where he left his own for his friend Hankura Narcaza to use and join them later when he finished his medical cases there.
A mild breeze ruffled Casir's platinum hair, and Bren pushed thick fingers through his own hair. No wonder Casir was the boss---as always, he looked like a man who was well in charge of things. He would know just what to do. Most of the equipment was already unloaded, and the crew was just waiting for Casir to give the word before they got to work. But, Bren wanted him to take a look at what he had found in the pump house before they went any further.
You think somebody's been living here? Casir looked at him, raising his nearly white brows.
Bren nodded a mute affirmation. In the span of his next thoughts, Casir knew all he did.
The telepath stood silently for a moment, listening with his mind. His face went through several thoughtful expressions before he turned his gaze back to Bren. I'm getting images from another telepath---a child. But, he won't respond to me, and I can't figure out where he is or what he's up to.
Bren shrugged and waited for Casir to walk with him to the pump house to look at the collection of possessions inside it. Casir looked them over carefully for a minute or so before he finally spoke again.
"I guess you might as well have someone pack up this stuff until we find out who it belongs to. Some of that stuff is Tregan, but that doesn't mean anything. The Zevians stole from them every chance they got. I promised Hankura we'd try to help him find out what happened to Lanimer before we go and I meant it. Chelle's having a kid, and they need to get to Oltarin and build a place to live before she delivers."
"When did this happen?" Bren asked.
"A day or so ago, I guess. Hankura told me they confirmed it this morning."
"And that's just making you all the more itchy to see those two sweet ladies of yours."
"You're telling me. If we get off this rock soon enough, I can make Rego in time to see the babies come out of the Nurtury."
Bren just grinned at his friend. His tough, iron-handed boss was soft as hell where they were concerned. He couldn't blame him a bit; Jana and Delara were two fine women. He should be so lucky.
"Are Hankura and Chelle making out all right now?"
"Yeah, but this morning we found his friend Mikal's grave. He's taking it pretty hard."
Bren shook his head ruefully. "That's rough. I still don't quite figure him and Chelle coming back here after the hell of that prison camp. I'd have thought they would want to get as far away as they could."
"Not if you knew him the way I do. It's just the kind of thing I would expect from him---and Chelle is a whole lot like him. Of course, they're psi-mates."
"Whatever that means," Bren muttered. He didn't really understand.
"Hell, Bren! I explained it to you before. All it means is that they are telepathically en rapport on some level all the time. I'm on the same level, telepathically, but I don't have that kind of closeness with my ladies," Casir told him. "Anyway, Hankura's conscience wouldn't let him turn away from the people he tried to help when they broke out. That was only half the job."
As the two started back toward the com center, they heard a woman scream. Then, a fair-sized rock glanced off the side of Casir's head painfully. Other rocks followed, pelting them mercilessly, with the thrower screaming curses at them in Zevian.
Hey, cut it out! We're not trying to hurt you, woman. We aren't Tregans; we're just looking for a kid for a friend. Casir sent his thoughts into her mind, but she seemed oblivious to them. The rocks kept coming, and they tried to shield themselves almost futilely.
There was no reasoning with her, panicked as she was. Casir hated to do it, but there was only one way to deal with her short of violence---and that was getting tempting. He stunned her with the force of his telepathy under careful control. Nalina became quiet and docile immediately and stood staring blankly ahead in a daze.
Bren looked at Casir sharply. "Casir, you didn't---"
"No!" he retorted indignantly. "I didn't wipe her mind. What do you take me for, anyway? She'll be okay in a while. By then, I'll get a hold of Chelle and Tira and have them come out and try to reason with her. You go and keep looking. I'll get her and take her back to the portable com center."
A pained look of surprise crossed Casir's face as he walked mindfully toward the woman. He sank to his knees and coughed, trying to breathe. Blood colored his lips as he fell to the side on the ground.
Bren stared in shock and cursed. "Mother of
Life! It's a goddamned Tregan!"
Before the big man could fire again, Bren pulled out the utility laser from his belt and fired a fully-charged shot into the midsection of the hulking body.
The hand laser slipped from Orin's fingers, and he sank heavily to the ground, his eyes reaching wildly for one more glimpse of the little Zevian woman who had captured his heart.
So, this is how I die, he thought bleakly as darkness enveloped his mind and his eyes closed out the red sun in the hazy, purplish sky.
Another cry pierced the air and Bren saw a little fair-haired boy streak toward the fallen Tregan. The boy fell to his knees, sobbing and pleading alternately in three languages for him to wake up.
But Bren was more concerned with his fallen friend than a little boy's strange attachment to a fucking Tregan. He hunkered down beside Casir and opened the zipper of his loose-fitting shirt to get a look at the wound. There was a small laser burn hole that went through his right lung. Casir's coughing had broken the sealing effect of the laser, and his lung had started to bleed.
It's not bad, Bren. Casir assured him. Give me a few minutes, and I'll be okay. Get somebody up here with a stretcher for that Tregan---I mean it. I'll explain later. I understand what's going on now.
"You think Hankura's going to treat him? After what the Tregans did to Chelle and him?" Bren looked down at him dubiously.
Casir nodded, deadly serious. The kid will make him understand. Now get with it. I can heal this little wound myself if you leave me alone for a few minutes. Then, I'll take a look at that Tregan.
Bren had a lot of questions, but he didn't ask them. He got up and ran to the com center. Casir closed his eyes and withdrew inside himself in a trance-like state, turning his mind to the functions of his own body. He forced his cells to reproduce at an accelerated rate to eliminate the damaged tissues and close his wound. He wasn't a healer, unlike Hankura; he could heal himself if the damage weren't too great. He was on his feet again a few minutes later.
Slowly, he walked to the place where the little boy wept brokenly over his friend, 'father,' and beloved companion. Casir felt a lump in his throat as he knelt beside the boy; he felt the child's anguish, and he understood everything that Orin had been to him these last few months. It was a crazy mistake, the shooting of Orin Hart. Casir couldn't even blame Orin for shooting him. Anyway, his wound was healed now. It didn't matter.
Gently, he rested his hand on Lanimer's shoulder after a moment.
He's dying. Lanimer sobbed with his ear to Orin's chest. His heart is getting tired, and the blood is running from his body.
I know. Casir returned and blinked slowly. I want to help. I can't heal him, but maybe together we can help Orin live until my friend comes. He's a physician---the best. If anyone can save him, Hankura can.
TWELVE
Hankura was already on his way to the agricomplex when Bren contacted him. His smoldering eyes flashed, and he scowled as Bren told him what had happened as quickly as he could. The invasion was over, but the memory still lingered bitterly in his mind.
"Let the bastard die!" Hankura thundered over the vid-com. "I treated my last Tregan in that stinking Tregan prison. What the hell do you think I am?"
His response didn't surprise Bren at all, as he gazed back at the angry face of the physician and let out a sigh. "Hey, don't tell me. That's the message Casir sent. He said you'd understand when you know the rest of the story. Just hurry up and get here," Bren pleaded. "I've got a crazy Zevian woman Casir stunned to keep from throwing rocks at us, a kid crying his eyes out over a half-dead Tregan reject, and I don't know what the hell to do for any of them. I'm just an engineer. Get your tail up here and hash it out with Casir. I’m just the messenger."
"Okay, okay," Hankura finally relented. "How bad is the son of a---uh---how bad is he hurt?"
"Bad, Hankura. I got him good, probably made a real mess of his gut." Bren shook his head distastefully.
"You got him," Hankura frowned.
"Yeah," Bren drawled miserably, "he shot Casir with a nearly spent laser. Oh, don't worry, he's okay---took care of it himself---but he's really upset about the kid and that Tregan."
"What kid?"
"Hell, I don't know. Just a kid about four or five---cute blond boy."
"All right," Hankura said with a glitter of something Bren didn't understand in his eyes. "I'll be right there---about three or four minutes. I'll have Chelle bring a portable surgical cell. It sounds like we'll need it. Tell Casir to hold on."
Hankura knelt with Casir and the little boy beside the fallen Tregan, assessing his condition with his bio-scanner. The boy was Mikal's son, and he loved the Tregan---Orin Hart. Hankura would do his best to save him for that reason, but it didn't look good.
"Good grief!" Hankura muttered at each new reading. "His stomach is shot, lungs are badly damaged, the liver is ruptured, and his bowel is a disaster in most of the upper quadrant." Hankura flicked off the scanner.
"I hope you're feeling okay, Casir. You're going to have to help. Chelle can't get another Tech that we can trust to help us and keep this quiet. You know what'll happen if the Federation liaison gets wind of this---I'm not sure he deserves that. "
"It's going to take a lot of work just to get him stabilized on the way back to Elran, and by the looks of things, the whole procedure will have to be done in that portable cell. He'll die for sure if we try to move him too much. So, I'll need you to do the neural block. As you said, you're still pretty good at it."
"So what do we tell the liaison at the clinic after we're done, and we want to put him on life support?"
Hankura shrugged. "Tell him he's part of your crew. They don't know all of your people. Cran and Bren are nearly as big as he is. Who's to know the difference---besides us?" A pause, as Hankura, eyed Casir thoughtfully. Mother knows why we're doing this! A couple of soft touches for a sob story, we are.
Why the hell else would we come back to this godforsaken rock? Casir gave him a knowing grin.
Why indeed? Hankura returned a wry grin and pushed the bio-scanner back into his pouch belt. There was a lot to be done and little time to waste doing it. Hankura had little time to further consider his motives while he was waiting for Chelle to arrive at the complex with the portable surgical cell. It took every bit of his skill and knowledge just to keep Orin Hart alive that long. The best he'd been able to do was slow down his dying.
Once they got him into the cell and put him on life support, the hard work began. Hankura had an extremely delicate and tedious job of repairing the damaged lungs and reconstructing the Tregan's digestive system with individual protoplasm grafts.
Those grafts would provide the framework for the regeneration of his severely damaged organs. Even with accelerating healants, it would be close to ten days before they would know the grafting procedure was successful. As a precaution---if he lived---Hankura would have to regenerate these same organs in an artificial environment just in case a full transplant became necessary.
However, he didn't waste time on that line of thinking. Even though transplant was primarily the standard procedure in a case like this, there were no organs synthesized in the nurturing tanks at the Elran Clinic, yet. The facilities weren't ready for that and wouldn't be for another day or two. And, Hankura didn't want to think all his careful work would be in vain. He persisted with Casir's and Chelle's assistance for nearly seven consecutive hours of surgery on the Tregan. He completed every procedure flawlessly, but it wasn't good enough.
He took the scan readings twice to be sure there was no mistake even when his gut feeling told him they were right the first time.
"Mother, I don't know what else to do," Hankura muttered, looking up at Casir and then to his wife beside him. "I've outdone myself as it is. It would have been easier to clone him another body and switch brains---and they don't teach that on Velran, or anywhere else I know of. The son of a bitch is still dying, and I can't bring him back."
But---maybe I could. Her thoug
ht whispered itself in his mind.
"No!" Hankura pulled off his surgical mask and gripped her shoulders. No, Chelle. It isn't worth the risk. He's just a fucking Tregan. You can't risk your life and our son's for him. I sensed the fault in his mental shield, too... but you can't. He could take your life...
I know that, Hankura. It terrifies me, but he isn't like the others. We can't forget about Lanimer and Nalina. He saved them at the risk of his life. Can we do less?
But, his killings cost Kaara's life and nearly yours.
But he didn't know. Hankura, he was thrown in the middle of this the same as we were. Who are we to condemn him to death when we can save him? He is a man, and we have sworn to preserve human life if it is within our power. We went against that once---we have a choice this time.
Mother of Life, Chelle! I could lose you in the process. His life is not worth yours to me ... you are everything to me---the essence of my life. I can't lose you.
Then, help me, Hankura. Help me save him and keep my life's essence. We could do it together---together our wills must surely be stronger than his.
Hankura stared intensely into her shining blue eyes, torn by the stirring of his conscience and his love for this woman carrying his child. She believed that his love was the key, the controlling factor in her healer's power. If they could keep Orin Hart alive, make him whole again, it would in some small way pay the debt they felt they owed for the killings in their escape.
Hankura prayed that the key would fit the lock.
THIRTEEN
"All right," Hankura agreed reluctantly. "Take off the neural block, Casir."
Casir didn't move immediately. He cast a worried glance from one to the other of his friends. He didn't like what they were contemplating. He wanted to save this Tregan deserter just as much as they did, but not at the risk of their lives.
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