by Renee Duke
Jip’s Vorlan calming technique kept Challa from exploding in her usual fashion, but she wasn’t about to co-operate either. She went under a bed and wouldn’t come out. I dare say we could have pulled her out, but that would probably have negated Jip’s efforts to avert a tantrum. And Kadi? Well, Jip could only calm one child at a time, so he cried, squirmed, and otherwise made it impossible for the woman to do her job.
“Why not work on me first and let them watch?” Arlyne proposed.
The woman agreed but had only got as far as eliminating her eyebrows when Nathan burst into the room.
“Forget it. There isn’t time. We can’t wait for make-overs, passports, or anything else. They won’t do you any good now anyway. You’ve got to leave Borel as fast as you can, however you can.”
“What? Why?” I shrieked, scrambling up from the floor where I’d still been trying to tempt Challa out from under the bed.
“I’ve just had a message from Dad. He said, ‘Tell those kids to run. Drazok knows where they are’.”
Chapter Fifteen
“How?” Kirsty demanded.
“Taz’s transmission,” I moaned. “Drazok must have picked it up. The channel he used wasn’t as secure as he thought.”
Nate — convinced, now, of the boys’ sincerity, I could think of them less formally — shook his head. “Oh, it was secure. His Majesty would have made sure of that. I’m betting there’s nothing in the universe as secure as that channel. Drazok’s information came from Ramsweir.”
“Ramsweir? How could he know?”
“The bank accounts on Yaix. The accounts of minors have parental alerts on them. When Arlyne and Simon accessed theirs, your parents were notified.”
“And they…they notified Mr. Ramsweir?” Arlyne said, stricken.
“I canna believe oor parents would do that!” Kirsty exclaimed.
“Yours didn’t. It was your old man who warned ours. In a way.”
“What way?” Leo wanted to know.
“A friend of Dad’s still works AUP security. He’s stationed on the same potential-member planet as their parents and was called in to sort out a big dust-up between them. He told Dad Mr. Brent was trying to call Ramsweir, and Mr. and Mrs. MacGregor were trying to stop him. It even got physical. MacGregor said there was no telling what Drazok might do with that kind of information, and they wouldn’t be a party to anything that might endanger their offspring.”
Whereas our parents had no qualms. I pushed the thought aside and tried to ignore the sudden crushing pain around my heart as I said, “Just what kind of information does Drazok have?”
“The bank accounts showed activity on Lurgos but Ramsweir wasn’t able to pass that on to Drazok in time for him to get the Lurgosians to stop you escaping with the kids. Starport officials didn’t have any record of Simon and Jip leaving but did tell them that Arlyne took passage to Borel shortly after accessing her account and confirmed you and Kirsty as being with her. If the ship had been registered to an AUP-planet they could have made it turn around, but luckily it wasn’t. The captain went all Vorlan vagueness on them and kept going. And when it got to Borel, the starport manager played the neutrality card and wouldn’t let it be searched.”
Remembering Taz’s words, I wondered if that was another piece of luck, or if both were examples of Vorla and Borel not being as neutral as they appeared.
“But Drazok knows none of you would have left Lurgos without the prince and princess,” Nate went on. “Ergo, they must be with one or more of you, and if three are on record as having headed for Borel, chances are the other two did as well. He has people here watching for all of you.”
“Aye, for us, but not for Ploxians, so why are the passports and disguises no longer of use?” Kirsty queried. “I canna say Challa and Kadi seem all that keen on being turned into wee Ploxians, but if we can get them to co-operate, we’d still stand a good chance of getting aboard a ship wi’oot being recognized.”
Nate shook his head. “No more ships are going out of here. Not starliners, not cruisers, not freighters. Nothing. Now Drazok’s got a definite fix on you, AUP has suddenly added Borel to the list of suspect planets and deemed it as dangerous and non-compliant as Cholar. A blockade is going up around it even as we speak.”
“So, we’re stuck here?” I wailed.
“No. Ships just can’t officially leave Borel.” Nate looked at the Borelian woman.
“I will find you something unofficial,” she said, and hurriedly left.
“How will even something unofficial get past the blockade?” Jip asked. “Any ship leaving Borel will be fired upon.”
“No, it won’t,” Nate said. “AUP ships won’t chance harming Drazok’s little bargaining chips. They’re more likely to go with tractor beams and try to pull us aboard.”
“Us? You’re coming with us now?” I queried.
“It wouldn’t be very gallant of us to let you go alone.”
“Fortunately, some spacecraft are harder to lock onto than others,” Leo said before I could make a biting reply. “There are some called space zoomers that couldn’t do a long space journey but can easily get to Cholar. They’re fast, manoeuvrable, and have powerful shields.”
“Is that woman going to be able to get us one of those?” Jip inquired.
“It’s what she’ll be trying for,” said Nate. “She works for other people besides the passport guy and they have a lot of connections.”
“The hire of such a vehicle and the services of a pilot could prove expensive. Possibly prohibitively so.”
“Don’t worry about it. Borel may claim neutrality in local disputes, but AUP’s involved in this one, and most Borelians hate AUP.”
“Drazok’s impersonator didn’t,” I said.
“There are always exceptions.”
“With luck, the lady who just left isn’t one of them,” said Kirsty.
She wasn’t. She was back in half an hour and handed Leo the control codes for a space zoomer. It was all powered up and could accommodate eight people in addition to the pilot. She had not, however, been able to find a pilot. She said Leo would have to fly it himself.
“Uh, okay,” he said hesitantly.
“Can you fly a spaceship?” I asked after the woman had gone.
“Yes.”
“That type of spaceship?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“I did quite well with them in simulation.”
“But that all-vehicle licence Trithox recommended you for…you don’t actually have it yet, do you?”
‘Um, no.”
“And you expect the rest of us to get in a spaceship you only sort of know how to operate?”
“You have to. It’s your only way out of here.”
“And his skills have been vouched for,” said Kirsty. “Trithox can handle any type of craft going, and if he’s for thinking Leo can too, well then, he probably can.”
Simon added his opinion. “It’s not complicated, Meda. We have to leave Borel. And, hey, we managed to get through Klavor’s Outer Regions with Taz. He drives okay now, but back then he didn’t even have ‘sort of’.”
“I have tried to forget that experience,” I said, but only half-heartedly. I knew they were right. The space zoomer was our only way off Borel.
It had already been mid-evening when we got to the hotel, so we ordered in a meal and a couple of hours later ventured out into the night. Nate had been able to rent a multi-seater ground car and Kadi and Challa were both sleeping soundly in its combo baby-toddler seat by the time we got to the private starport the zoomer was secreted in. (I got the idea this was not its first covert operation.)
Once Leo was settled in the pilot’s seat, Nate and Simon took the two seats directly behind him, leaving the two rows of three seats for the rest of us. The middle seat of the middle row was wider than the others, so we affixed the baby-toddler seat to that one and strapped Challa and Kadi (still sleeping) into it, with Arlyne on one side of t
hem and Jip on the other. Kirsty and I took two of the back seats and tossed the Quorlians’ hold-all onto the floor.
The planet was, as yet, only being blockaded by seven ships. Three from Lurgos, two from Shavo, and two from Orec. No other AUP-member planets were close enough to add to their numbers, but even seven large warships were plenty for one small, unarmed, zoomer to try to get past. But Leo launched the craft without mishap and knew some tricks for avoiding notice until we got right up into space, where we were immediately spotted and hailed. A hail we ignored.
As anticipated, a tractor beam shot out from one of the Lurgosian ships, but Leo swerved it with ease, and ones from the other Lurgosian ships as well. Once the Shavoan and Orecian ships got in on the act, it wasn’t so easy, but then Leo pulled off a clever manoeuvre that resulted in a Lurgosian tractor beam catching one of the Shavoan ship’s beams and a Shavoan beam catching an Orecian one. Delighted, Leo modified the manoeuvre and repeated it until all the tractor beams were either locked on the wrong targets or had broken, shorted out, or whatever it is tangled tractor beams do, leaving us free to shoot off towards Cholar while they were sorting them out.
“I take it all back,” I said. “You can go for your all-vehicle licence any time, Leo.”
He grinned. “They’ll soon be after us, but at least we’ve got a bit of a lead. We should contact the Supreme Ruler and tell him we’re on our way. What’s the frequency for that secure channel?”
I gave it to him. Moments later three figures appeared on the zoomer’s communications screen. Taz, Ezrias, and Chief Rupin. All seemed a little taken aback to see the Praeger twins, but Taz quickly got down to business.
“Sources inform me a small ship just successfully ran the Borelian blockade and assumed it to be you. This transmission confirms it.”
“They’re right behind us,” said Leo.
“No doubt.”
The wild manoeuvres had woken both children and the screen was visible to them as well.
“Kovo!” Challa called out and waved both hands to attract Taz’s attention.
“That’s right, my darling. It’s Kovo, and you will soon be home with me. Just do everything Meda and the others tell you.”
“D-D-o-d-o,” said Kadi and stretched out his arms.
I’m sure he was just babbling, like babies do, but Taz read it as an attempt to repeat what his sister had just said. Never mind that only one of the sounds even approximated it, as far as Taz was concerned, his son had just said his first word.
“Yes, Kadi. Kovo. Very good. Did you hear that, Ezrias? Rupin? He called me by name. He may not yet be crawling, but he is obviously going to be precocious in his speech.”
“Without a doubt, Your Majesty,” Chief Rupin replied, hiding a smile.
Challa didn’t think one mangled word — if it was one — was worthy of such admiration. Not when her own accomplishments were so much more outstanding.
“I kicked the big hairy thing,” she announced.
“Good for you,” said Chief Rupin.
“I kicked him lots of times.”
“Even better.”
If Taz disapproved of this endorsement of violence, he didn’t say so. Merely smiled and addressed Leo.
“How soon do you anticipate arriving at Cholar?”
“We’re in a zoomer, and these things are fast, so, barring having to go off course to get away from our pursuers, about nine hours.”
“Do not worry about your pursuers. They are themselves pursued. It is when you are approaching Cholar you must be on your guard.”
“Yeah, we know about the blockade. But I should be able to run it like I did on Borel. Maybe even easier, with cover from Cholarian ships.”
“I fear you might be dealing with more than a blockade. If things here escalate — and we have reason to believe they very soon will — it will not be at all easy for you to get past the AUP ships in your path and land on Cholar.”
“Escalate how?” Nate queried.
“You could be entering a war zone,” Ezrias told him. “When the Association’s involvement in Cholar’s succession dispute caused it to become discredited in the eyes of many, a number of the planets within its sphere of influence withdrew from membership and reclaimed their independent status. Those whose governments still possessed some principles voluntarily; those who had but puppet governments because people long oppressed rose up and forced them to. All this signalled the end of the Association of United Planets being, to employ an old Earth phrase, ‘top dog’, but the Directorate refuses to accept that.”
“The Association is, of course, still in existence,” said Taz, “albeit on a smaller scale, and could, with effort and a return to its root principles, perhaps regain some of the dignity and respect it once enjoyed. But the Directorate is apparently not prepared to settle for mere ‘crumbs’. Its members have come to think that, by overthrowing the monarchy responsible for AUP’s downfall. they will be able to gain back everything the Association has lost. Or, to put it more accurately, what they have lost.”
“The contagion story they’ve been putting about provided them with an excuse to intercept the royal children and hand them on to Drazok,” said Chief Rupin. “With the expectation that, once he’d taken over, he’d use them to force Cholar into the Association. Making it evident to one and all that the Association’s reversals were but temporary and it will always triumph in the end. But we have been told they now have doubts about that expectation ever being fulfilled and know that, if things do not go the way they want, they will be worse off than they were before, with even more planets withdrawing from the Association or shunning future connections with it. Because of this, the Directorate has called for support from all of AUP’s most reliable members and, according to military intelligence, intends to take Cholar by force and add it to the Association’s collection by right of conquest.”
I gasped. “But AUP’s never invaded any world before. Not in all its history.”
“It hasn’t had to,” Ezrias replied. “When it first started, planets joined willingly because such an alliance offered the best means of protection and development. Later, as its leaders became less and less altruistic, planets were added through trickery, manipulation, coercion, and interference in local politics. Methods that were known, but not widely known, until the Directorate’s involvement with Drazok drew universal attention.”
“Fortunately, AUP does not have as many member-worlds in the Zaidus system as it once did,” said Chief Rupin, “and not all of those are willing to render assistance. Yaix has not outright refused the request but appears to be ignoring it. As are most of the others. Quorl and Jorthoa have both responded but are too far away to get ships here for several days. Lurgos, Shav, and Orec are the only planets close enough by to be of immediate use, and they have ordered their war fleets to join up with some Terran ships that recently arrived here.”
“Ambrose Ramsweir is aboard one of them,” Taz put in. “Presumably to serve as the Directorate’s representative and carry out their instructions. The ships at his disposal are all making their way to the section of neutral space closest to Cholar and will either wait there for more allied ships or launch an attack on us without them. If the Directorate believes it already has a formidable enough force to take on a small planet like Cholar, it will be the latter.”
“Small in size only,” said Chief Rupin. “And it is an attack they will regret. As soon as an AUP ship attempts to strike, protective energy domes will cover all inhabited areas of Cholar and repel incoming missiles. These domes are extremely powerful and are as much offensive as defensive because, they do not merely repel. They also hurl the missiles back to their point of origin with great accuracy.” He shook his head. “One of the reasons the Directorate wanted Cholar as a member was to gain the right to study, copy, and market our defence technology — a system even Ralgonians admire. It is extremely foolish of the Directorate to go up against it. Their earlier interest in it indicates they know it to be
impressive, and I can only assume they do not know exactly how it works, for I do not believe they would even be considering an attack if they knew Cholarian casualties would be minimal and their own devastating.”
“You’d think Drazok would have told them,” said Kirsty.
“Yes. It is strange he has not. Perhaps he seeks revenge upon them for cutting him out of their new approach to the acquisition of Cholar.”
“Have they?” I asked.
The chief nodded. “I’m inclined to think so. He is now superfluous to requirements. If the Directorate were to succeed in claiming the planet through right of conquest, they would set up their own government.”
“They will not succeed,” said Taz. “The war will be short, and we will win, for we, too, have allies. But if Cholar is under attack when you get here, we will not be able to retract the domes to let you land. And I do not, in any case, want you in the line of fire. I have arranged for you to be met and escorted to a safe planet until hostilities have ceased.”
“Och, aye? Well, right now, I think they’re aboot to begin,” said Kirsty, waving a hand towards the side screens that showed the space around us. “Those ships that were behind us have just caught up.”
As if to confirm this, one of the Lurgosian ones fired at us, barely missing.
Which could only mean the Directorate no longer considered Challa and Kadi essential to their plans and really was about to go to war with Cholar.
“We’re under attack!” Leo said, making ready to dodge another torpedo.
But no more came our way, the seven AUP warships having suddenly switched their focus to four other warships.
Ralgonian warships.
Uncloaking.