The Siege of New Terra (Star Sojourner Book 7)

by Jean Kilczer

  When I stood up, so did Chancey.

  “I'm going to take a leak, Chance,” I said. “Want to come?”

  “Yeah.” He glanced at Joe. “We'll be right back.”

  Joe nodded.

  Damn them both!

  I slung my rifle over my shoulder. “Never know what's out there at night.”

  I strode into the woods with Chancey following me. Then I broke into a trot and used trees for cover as I circled back and hid among the draks. I thought of Oldore's warning that draks allowed you to ride them only when they wanted to. I grabbed a saddle with a canteen of water tied on, and a bridle.

  “Nice drak,” I whispered to a mare who quietly chewed cracked bones, and tried to throw the saddle over her slanted, ridged, green-scaled back. She swung her long snake neck, fixed me with round, red eyes, hissed a brimstone breath, and nipped my butt.

  “Bitch!” I said, and backed out of the way as she swung her thick, reptilian tail at me.

  I retreated to a tall stallion and held the saddle and bridle in front of me as I approached. “Nice drak,” I said.

  He extended his horny neck and I lifted the saddle for protection. He raised his head, sniffed me and gave me a hot, slimy lick on my cheek.

  “I guess that's hello!” I wiped my cheek on a sleeve and gingerly swung the saddle over his back. He stood quietly as I cinched it. “Good drak.” I patted his neck. He twisted his head for an ear scratch and I obliged, scraping off parasites. Then I put on the bridle.

  He stared behind me and snorted.

  “What?” I turned.

  Chancey gripped my arm. I hadn't seen him in the dark. “I'm not supposed to let you leave, Superstar. Joe wants you in the village.” His rifle was over his shoulder.

  I threw off his hand and backed a step. “That's Joe's plan, not mine.”

  “Maybe you ain't heard.” He grinned. “He be the boss.”

  “And you be his lackey. I'm leaving, Chance. Don't try to stop me.”

  “Yo jus' a one-man rumble, ain't you?”

  “Cut out the bullshit accent. Just go back and tell Joe I already left.”

  He strolled between me and the saddled drak. “You think you can take me?”

  “You don't move away from that drak, we'll find out. I've got places to go!”

  He unslung his rifle and laid it on the ground. “I could put out your lights with one hand tied behind me.”

  “Now's the time to make good on that claim.”

  “Maybe.” He hooked his thumbs in his pants pockets. “What's your plan?”

  “Is this an academic question or are you really interested?”

  "I'm always curious on how your mountain-goat brain works. What's the plan?

  “OK. I'm going to sneak into Big Mack's base camp and kill him.”

  He raised his brows. “Stingler or tel probe?”

  “Either way.” I exhaled a breath. “Chance, with him dead, the mercs and the Shayls will pack their bags. They don't work without pay.”

  “So why didn't you just say that first, man, 'stead of dancing around it?”

  I shrugged. “You take orders from Joe.”

  “Only when it suits me. Why don't we take a jeep?”

  “We?” It would be good to have Chancey along for backup. “We'd be limited to roads in these thick woods, and we don't have extra batteries. And jeeps whine.”

  He gestured toward the draks. “I hate those things! They're nasty, and they smell.”

  I chuckled. “Maybe they feel the same way about us. Don't take the mare. She's a bitch.”

  “Doesn't like a tag riding her, huh?” I think he winked. “I guess there ain't no geldings.”

  “I wouldn't want to try to turn a stallion into one.”

  “Couldn't blame him.” He saddled an even-tempered stallion and we walked them into the woods.

  “Chance, can you find the merc base again?”

  He chuckled. “You saying you can't?”

  “I'm not sure. It's this way, right?” I pointed.

  He shook his head. “You'll take us right back to the Orghe Village. Joe would like that.”

  We mounted and he chuckled as I followed his lead. “Good thing you brought me along, Superstar.”

  * * *

  It was a cold night's ride. During rest stops for the draks, we used our stinglers to heat piles of rocks we'd gather and sit near as though they were fires.

  It was after midnight. I was piling rocks when I heard a branch snap off to my left. I unholstered my stingler and swung.

  “Hey, man,” Chancey said, “we've had our differences, but–”

  “Dammit, Chance! Don't sneak up on me.”

  “I wasn't sneakin' up!”

  He dumped his rocks on the pile and I beamed them with the stingler.

  We sat and held our hands over the hot rocks. Besides the warmth, the welcome glow held back a night filled with chortles, grunts, and other wild forms of communication.

  “ 'I warm my hands,' ” I recited, “ 'over the fire of life.' ”

  “ 'It dies,' ” Chancey said, “but I ain't ready to depart.”

  “I didn't know you had the soul of a poet, Chance, even if you did get it wrong. 'And I am ready to depart',” I corrected.

  “I didn't get it wrong, man. I ain't ready to depart no way.”

  I peered into the black night and thought of my daughter Lisa and Sophia. “Nor am I, Chance,” I said softly.

  A sudden bolt of electricity coursed through my body and tore open my mind. I cried out and clutched my head as images from my sister Ginny's death burst through and I was reaching again, braced on solid rock, as her small fingers touched mine, her face contorted in terror, and she slipped away and screamed as she plunged down to the valley below.

  My limbs grew rigid and I gasped in a shaky breath.

  Chancey jumped to his feet and swung his rifle, squinting into darkness. “What is it, man? Who's there?”

  I tried to lift my mental shields, to block this brutal tel-send. My barriers shattered like waves on rocks. “A tel probe,” I groaned out. “A powerful…” I pictured the bee that is my imagined essence and plunged it down to the protection of the flower's roots, there in my mind, the way my Kubraen mentor, Star Speaker, had taught me.

  I moaned as the sender dissected my images, past culture, past memory, past instincts, as though picking petals, down to a wet response to light and touch, and skewered the bee to the flower's roots.

  My heart beat with a primal determination that spoke of early creatures crawling doggedly out of shrinking tidal pools, while the tel-probe burrowed like a mining laser. Whomever he was, the sender bored into that protected mind-womb where our deepest feelings abide in their true form.

  I blocked with a vision of Shiva. Fear not, Shiva said, His arms and legs swayed in a cosmic dance. He held up a palm. All rests well in God. The hand reached out to me. Blood flowed from its pierced wrist. For your sins. Christ smiled, became Buddha, beneath his Bo Tree, pressing the ground with fingertips. His fingers curled into a fist that breached the walls I tried to erect.

  “A tel probe from where?” Chancey was saying. “There ain't nothin' around here for thirty miles.”

  “I think,” I squeezed out, “the merc base.”

  This is your warning, the sender verbalized within my mind. Leave New Terra with the rest of your crew. I do not wish to kill.

  Who are you? I sent. Besides Spirit, the only powerful tels I knew of was the race on planet Equus. Are you from Equus? Why are you doing this?

  For the love of credits.

  Then you're a rogue! Your people have no need of credits. They're beyond science and technology. They produce whatever they need with their minds.

  We need when we are expelled from the community. When the All-Mind shuts us out. Return to the village, and wait peacefully for your starship.

  I can't! Your boss intends to kill every Orghe on the island. You told him where we were, didn't you? If yo
u don't want to kill, you're doing a poor job of it!

  I gasped as I felt him touch my brainstem.

  Yaywa! Will you and your cohort go back, or must you force me to kill?

  I clenched my fists, squeezed my eyes shut, and threw every ounce of my concentration and energy into pushing him out of my mind. I felt his grip loosen.

  You have improved since Equus, he sent and released his hold on my mind. The distance taxes my life force. If you come closer, Jules, Terran of Earth, I will exterminate you both like the rats of your homeworld. This I promise you.

  Don't make promises you can't keep! I sent, but he was gone. I slid to the ground.

  Chancey laid down his rifle. “Are you all right, man?”

  I nodded. “I just need to rest.”

  “Was it Spirit?”

  “No. No, an alien from planet Equus.”

  In the glow from the rocks, I saw the look of fear on Chancey's face. “The telepaths that killed Bristra with just their minds?”

  “I forced him to let go of me, Chance.” I rubbed my temples. “I made him get out. Help me up.”

  He grasped my hand. “You beat him?”

  I sat up and stared at the rocks. The heat had died and they were a pile of cold rocks. “Just round one. But you've got to go back.”

  “How come?”

  “He threatened to kill us both if we continue to the merc base. He wants us to leave the planet when the starship arrives.”

  Chancey sat back on his heels. “He's the traitor who told Mack where the new village was located. Right?”

  I nodded. “He's a rogue…working for Mack. You've got to go back, Chance.”

  “And you?”

  I took a breath. “I've got to prepare for round two.”

  Chancey got up, pulled me to my feet and brushed me off. “When the bell rings for round two, Superstar, I'll be waiting in your corner with the bandages.”

  “You taking over Bat's job?”

  “With you around, he needs an assistant.” He gestured toward the woods. “The draks are rested, even if we ain't.” He lifted his brows. “Shall we continue on our way now?”

  I mounted my drak. “You're a stubborn bastard, Chancey, and you know they'll be waiting for us. But I'm honored to have you along.”

  “Do tell.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dawn was breaking clouds apart, and dissolving them in a cauldron of hot fusion that peeked over an eastern ridge.

  We dismounted and Chancey watered the draks by a swift-running stream that foamed white, while he refilled our two canteens. In the far west, blue mountains rose to glistening white peaks. Cloud shadows deepened their forested flanks in drifting mats. It was so much like the Colorado Rockies that I had to remind myself I wasn't home.

  I sat cross-legged near a pile of rocks we'd gathered and beamed for warmth, while wind whistled over my head.

  Spirit, I sent, I need your help. I don't think I can do this alone. I need–

  Nor I, Terran.

  I felt a pang of fear. You always call me Terran when you're pissed at me. What'd I do now?

  If you wish me to add my tel powers to yours, in a word, no.

  I suppose you have a reason, because I really need your assistance! Did you forget that Lisa and I helped rid your world of the Dream Czar who was destroying your very being?

  I forget nothing.

  Then how about some payback? This alien tel is too powerful for me to tackle alone, and if I'm forced to back off…or if I'm killed, the Orghe Village will be–

  Destroyed.

  Yes! Now do you get it?

  You, above all the beings of your race, Terran, are familiar with the geth state and how the kwaii goes on to new lifebinds.

  In good time, Spirit. But this village isn't ready to go down under merc guns!

  I cannot help you, though I wish it were otherwise.

  I mentally sighed. You always helped me in the past. I thought we were friends. I thought we could depend on each other. What changed?

  I have been warned.

  You, warned? By whom?

  A messenger sent from Great Mind Himself. Sye Morth.

  Sye Morth, the Loranth? I know Morth. We're friends! Is he back in geth state?

  He was summoned by Great Mind to deliver the message.

  What message?

  Great Mind was not pleased that I forced you and your young offspring to Halcyon to destroy the Terran czar.

  Morth told you that?

  In no uncertain sends.

  Why?

  I do not question the Absolute Laws of the Creator and Designer of All Things. He decreed that I should no longer harm an alien race with His gifts to me of tel power. That we are all His children.

  You'll be harming the Orghe people if you don't help me.

  That is an indirect consequence of events and not the same as harming an Evgran to help others.

  Is that what the alien calls himself, an Evgran?

  She. It is the chosen name of her race for themselves. My orders from the Lord Creator are to keep hands off, in your language.

  He's taking the wrong side, Spirit. And so are you.

  You Terrans are a haughty race.

  We've been called worse. So then I'm on my own?

  Your future is in the convoluted twists and turns of your own mind.

  Spirit, I couldn't look in a mirror if I sat back and let the mercenaries kill every Orghe on this island. The women. Children… And what about the other islands?

  Have you ever considered that it might not be your task to save them?

  No, I haven't. Not in this bind, or hopefully, the next! Have a nice day, Spirit. Say hello to Sylvia for me. I cut the tel-link, stood up, and stared at the ground.

  Chancey came back with the draks. “What'd he say, man?”

  “The cavalry's not coming to the rescue, Chance.”

  “Are you shittin' me? We're on our own?”

  “I told you to go back. You still can.”

  “Well, what the fuck is his problem? You risked your life, man, an' you had to risk your kid's life too, to help that scud on his own planet!”

  “He got his orders from higher up, Chance.” I mounted the drak. I felt weary from the night's ride and from what lay ahead. “I don't want to talk about it right now.”

  Chancey followed me as I turned my drak toward the mercenaries' camp and tapped his sides. He moved forward eagerly, swinging his long scaly neck and snorting in the cold morning air, unaware, in his reptilian mind, of the danger I was guiding him into. He trusted me, as I had trusted Spirit. Not the best approach for survival.

  Chancey rode up beside me. I got a poem for you, Superstar."

  “Go for it.”

  "Boldly they rode and well,

  Into the jaws of Death,

  Into the mouth of Hell,

  Rode the two fools."

  “Yeah,” I said, “that's a good one too.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Evrill trilled anxiously below the sound level audible to humans as Big Mack left his desk and strode up to her in the cinderblock interrogation room. Early light filtered hazily through the window behind him, forcing Evrill to squint to see the Terran clearly. At least two feet taller than the short, squat Egruan woman, with two strips of thick hair above his narrow, forward-set eyes, and hanging in scraggly clumps from his head, the thick-lipped Terran appeared to hairless, tanned-skinned Evrill as a large predatory biped of her new homeworld, Equus. His smell of rotted fish had her holding her breath and calling on her reserve lung sac of oxygen. Her round amber eyes, placed on the sides of her smooth head, grew larger and moved forward to focus. Her stomach churned with fear and disgust as he approached. She spread her spindly legs for balance on wide hips beneath the brown smock, drew back thin lips in an attempt at a Terran smile, and took a step back.

  Big Mack clenched his great white-knuckled fists as he towered over her. “You were supposed to stop the human tel,” he shouted. �
��To kill him, if need be.”

  Her eardrums, vibrating above their normal range of waves, sent flashes of pain coursing through her skull. She maintained her composure against the onslaught, blinked her eyes, and wished she were back on Equus.

  “I was not hired to kill,” she retorted in her tremulous voice, “only to threaten him into leaving New Terra.”

  “Well, is he leaving New Terra, or is he continuing toward my base camp?”

  Evrill probed, found the Jules mind and locked onto it. “He continues to approach with his cohort.”

  “I didn't ask for a progress report. Why haven't you stopped him?”

  She threw up mental images and chose one. “He is…determined to prevent you from exterminating the Orghes.”

  “No fucking kidding, lady? An' the sun's gonna rise in the east tomorrow! I didn't need to pay you mucho creds to hear that.” He paced to a wall. “Goddammit!” He slammed his fist into it and turned back, rubbing his knuckles.

  Evrill winced and tucked her eyes further back in her head for protection as Mack approached.

  “That motherless fucker is coming here to kill me. You understand? He figures with me dead, my people will leave New Terra. He may be right!”

  She nodded in Terran style. What was wrong with this human? She had told him that herself after reading the Jules Terran mind yesterday.

  “I want to know,” Big Mack said too softly, “what you plan to do to stop him?” His bushy brows lifted further up on his forehead. She hadn't known that humans could do that.

  “When he gets closer,” she said and trilled, “I will choose an image from my mental store, and confuse him into thinking he's someplace else.” She drew back lips in an imitation of a smile, and nodded.

  Big Mack glanced at his two guards, stationed at the door.

  “How about Hawaii, back on Earth, Evrill,” he said quietly. “He should like that.”

  “Uh,” Evrill scratched flaking skin from around her left eye, “if you prefer, but… But I was considering a place that would confuse his mind, and while he was struggling to make sense of his surroundings…” She spread a dark, clawed hand. “I would attack.”

  Mack straightened. “And kill the crotefucker?”

  Only if he refuses to retreat, she thought but wouldn't say. “Yes, Sir Big Mack, and kill the crotefucker.”