“According to the Lapautee, your southernmost continent is uninhabited and unexplored. Perhaps they still exist there.”
“You know about Saj because the Lapautee spy on us, just as we have always suspected.” His scowl lines deepened. “How do I know your request isn’t a Lapautee deception and an advance scouting trip to invade Saj?”
Xander gestured to Alara, Vax, Shannon, and Cyn to join him on the circular stage. “This is my crew. My first officer, Vax, and I are from a planet called Mystique. Alara”—he gestured for her to step forward—“is from Endeki, the land of my greatest enemy. Cyn is from Scartar and Shannon from Earth, a planet hard hit by the plague. You can see we are different races from many worlds. Friends and enemies alike have come together on this quest. All our people are dying of the plague. We have homeworlds we love. We wish to find a cure, not take over your world.”
The Saj leader scowled. “The Lapautee almost wiped out my people. How do I know you aren’t in league with them?”
“You don’t know.” Xander spoke as warrior to warrior. He didn’t back down, but stayed firm without deliberately antagonizing the Saj leader, a tactic Alara admired. “But what do you have to lose? Your people are dying. Your plants and animals are dying.”
“Perhaps we will find your Perceptive Ones and a cure for only the Saj.”
“If you could find them, I suspect you wouldn’t be speaking to me right now.”
“True.” Malk laughed. “We had the same idea to find the Creators. We exhausted all of our resources to search our planet. Why do you think you will be any more successful at finding the Perceptive Ones than we have been?”
“There is strength in our differences. The reason my crew is made up of many races is that one of us may see or think of something that others cannot.” Xander turned to the Lapautee leaders. “Will you let us leave Lapautee?”
While the Lapautee leaders remained silent, they must have given Lithdar permission to speak for his people—either that or Lithdar had never been the minor bureaucrat he’d claimed. “If the Saj accept you, we will most assuredly allow you to go.”
“Will there be peace between your peoples while we search for the Perceptive Ones?” Xander asked. “No bombs, no raids, no killing, no deception?”
“We will agree if the Saj agree.” Lithdar sneered at Malk. “During this time we will not send more ova.”
“Agreed.” Malk didn’t hesitate, and Alara understood why. He needn’t worry about an overpopulated Lapau looking to colonize Saj when all were dying of the plague.
“If we find a cure—we will all share,” Xander insisted. “And the Saj and Lapautee will negotiate their differences. If you would agree to impartial Federation mediation, I can arrange that for you.”
Alara appreciated the way Xander didn’t stop negotiating for what he wanted. His interest in finding a real peace between the two peoples impressed her. She hoped they all had a future in need of negotiation.
DRIK’S GUARDS YANKED Kirek from the office. He supposed he’d gotten off lightly. At least they weren’t going to kill him. However, they hemmed him in, and one shoved him between the shoulder blades. He stumbled, and the guards laughed and talked among themselves.
“Vansek will know just what to do with a Rystani.”
Another guard jeered. “Yeah, she’ll keep you where you belong.”
“On your knees.”
“Servicing her with your tongue.”
“You won’t be escaping again.” Another guard joined them and held up chains. “Vansek will teach you your place.”
Kirek saved his strength. Although his adrenaline surged, he was no physical match for five Endekian guards. If he used his psi, they would learn his true strength. There was no point in revealing his secret when Drik could simply send more men to overpower him.
The guard wound the chain around Kirek’s neck, then crossed it over his chest. They forced his wrists into cuffs that attached to the chains at his side and allowed him almost no freedom. Drik’s man kneeled and placed shackles on his ankles, the length of chain so short, he could walk only in quarter stride.
“You think this is bad?” a guard scoffed, his sour breath slapping Kirek’s face. “Vansek has a taste for pain. Your pain.”
He’d heard of such deviations though he’d never known anyone so twisted, but he refused to show apprehension. However, the chains would slow his exploration of Drik’s residence, and after what he’d learned, he had to find a way to continue.
Something was very wrong. The Endekians hadn’t used the glow stones against any Federation enemy, or Kirek would have heard. Yet from the inventory list he’d seen, the total number of glow stones collected from Rystan was far greater than what the Endekians had in inventory. So where had the unaccounted-for glow stones gone?
Kirek speculated to keep his mind from his current circumstance. But he couldn’t help but notice the women who passed by in the hallways looking at him with pity, and his gut clenched. Had they shipped the glow stones elsewhere? Were the Endekians amassing the stones for a future attack that wasn’t near their homeworld? Trading them outside Federation space?
But why?
Nothing made sense. Although glow stones could cause atomic explosions, the Endekians had more advanced weapons. True, glow stones were cheap. The Endeki had suffered many financial setbacks in the last decade. Their trade routes were no longer as profitable. Their colonies drained the homeworld of precious resources.
The shackles rubbed the skin on his ankles, but the minor discomfort was nothing compared to his frustration at being caught before he’d solved the glow stone mystery. Perhaps he was kidding himself, trying to make his mission seem important because his hostage situation was demeaning.
However, as the guards prodded him into Vansek’s quarters, he checked his illusions at the door. “Go. She’s waiting for you.”
“Salivating.”
“She loves to break in anyone new.”
He shuffled inside, and the door slammed behind him. But he wasn’t alone. The dark hallway was lined with men—all of them chained. All naked. No one met his gaze. Every single chained man had a light shining on his erection.
At the end of the hallway a woman lounged on a raised scarlet dais. A naked slave rubbed her shoulders with oil. Another knelt beside her, his role limited to holding a platter of sweets within her reach. Scars across his broad back and a bleeding welt on his bare buttocks caused Kirek to shudder. But despite the man’s obvious injuries, his tavis was jutting proudly. What kind of hell had he entered?
16
BETWEEN ONE BREATH in and the next out, Xander’s crew left behind the Lapautee chamber to find themselves on Saj. Reunited once again with Clarie and his pet, Delo, who glowed bright orange under the hot yellow Saj sunlight, Xander saw that Malk was no longer a holosim, but living flesh and bone. Xander immediately adjusted his suit to the increased gravity, the thinner air, and the higher temperature of another world.
An enormous marsupial with two strong hind legs and two short front ones with a giant pouch and wearing a strange harness towered over Malk. At their sudden appearance in the forest clearing, the warrior unsheathed his sword, and the metal glinted in the sunlight, drawing Xander’s attention.
Xander stepped in front of his crew. Vax joined him on the right, Cyn flanked his left. Together, they formed a united front, automatically placing themselves between the threat of Malk and the less experienced fighters of his crew.
“What happened?” Malk demanded, showing restraint. Although he held his sword ready, he didn’t attack. “Where have you hidden your ship?”
As much as Xander longed to look around for other dangers, he kept his attention focused on Malk and relied on Vax to watch for an attack from warriors who could hide easily in the thick foliage. While Malk seemed as surprised to see
them as they were to be on Saj, the man could be acting. He could have brought them there to die.
But Xander answered Malk as if they were allies. “The Lapautee must have sent us. You did give us permission to come to your world.” Xander wasn’t certain his statement was true. They seemed to have traveled to Saj the same way they had from his ship to Lapau. The journey had been effortless and almost instantaneous. While he suspected Clarie’s pet might be a gigantic conductor of an alien energy source, he wasn’t about to reveal that to Malk.
Malk lowered his sword but didn’t resheathe it. “How did you get here?”
“We do not know.” Xander didn’t move. He wanted Malk’s cooperation. For a world leader, he certainly seemed to be in an isolated spot. Where were his guards? His residence? Why were they in a jungle—in the middle of nowhere? “The Lapautee probably kept many secrets from us, and their mode of travel is not our concern. While we didn’t expect to arrive without warning, the Lapautee have saved us much time. Can you lead us to your machines where the suits are made?”
As he made his request, a plant sprouted and grew beside Malk. The rate of growth was extraordinary, but Malk paid no attention. Interesting.
Sensing Malk didn’t intend to use his weapon, Xander allowed his gaze to wander. The jungle growth around them expanded, filling in the empty places at an astonishing rate.
He saw no paths from the clearing. Thick plants with leafy stems surrounded them like a prison cell. When a plant grew between Malk and Xander, the warrior calmly slashed the stalk with his sword, and Xander immediately understood the usefulness of such a weapon on the strange world. Meanwhile, the marsupial ate tall grasses behind it, barely keeping back the overflowing foliage.
“I also have no idea how I got here,” Malk admitted. “I was transmitting from my headquarters, and the next moment I was here with you and my darup.”
“Darup?” Xander asked, since his suit failed to translate.
“The animal behind me.” Malk looked around. “I’m not even certain where we are. If I had to guess, I’d say we are somewhere near the center of our uninhabited southern continent.”
“Where does that place us in relation to the machines that make your suits?” Xander asked.
Malk shrugged.
“Could you estimate?” Xander prodded.
Alara spoke up for the first time. “These plants are closing in on us. If we don’t move soon, they may trap us here.”
Xander glanced at the clearing they’d arrived in to find the perimeter much smaller. The rate of plant growth rivaled anything he’d ever seen or heard about. In the space of a few Federation minutes, the plants had taken over most of the clearing. The formerly bare hillock now appeared to be overgrown as densely as the surrounding jungle.
“I can’t even point you in the correct direction.” Malk slashed down a plant that had grown too close to his elbow. “We have never seen any ancient machines on Saj.”
“Then where do your suits come from?” Xander and Vax exchanged glances, and he noted Alara examining a leaf in her palm.
“We are born in our suits.”
Malk’s information startled Xander. No other Federation race was born in the suits. They’d all had to adapt to them after birth. “Where do you obtain the suits that you send to the Lapautee?”
“We recycle by taking them off our dead. That’s why we keep the population rates between the Saj and Lapautee equal.”
“Sir,” Vax interrupted as he grabbed a stalk and yanked a plant from the ground, “we can’t stay here much longer.”
“Agreed.” Xander locked gazes with Malk. “This is your world. What do you suggest?”
“I could scout the area on my darup and figure out which way to go.” He grabbed the animal’s reins, tugged it closer, and offered Xander his sword—hilt first—in an unmistakable gesture of friendship. “I’ll leave you my sword to fight off the foliage.”
“Won’t you need it?” Xander hesitated to accept the generous offer that would leave Malk without a weapon.
“The darup is the perfect traveling animal. I wish we had more of them for us all.” Malk handed the sword to Xander, grabbed the animal’s furry leg, and climbed up its haunch, hand over hand. The patient beast didn’t seem to mind. It continued to munch the high grasses until Malk reached its pouch. He climbed inside and peered down at them. “If I’m not back before sundown, I’m either lost . . . or dead.”
Xander nodded. “Don’t get lost.”
“Or dead,” Shannon muttered, then stomped on a plant and ground her heel into the roots. But another two stalks simply sprouted to either side of the one she’d killed.
“Clarie like plants.” The tiny alien’s antennae waved in the breeze, and he stepped toward the thick jungle.
Cyn tugged him back. “Dangerous animals might hide there. Or the plants could eat you.”
“Delo hungry. Clarie feed Delo.”
“Let Clarie go,” Xander ordered, curious to see what the alien would do.
In the meantime, Malk slapped the reins, and the animal, with him riding in the pouch, bunched its powerful rear haunches and leaped into the air. They couldn’t see where it landed, only glimpsing it again when it leaped high once more. But after one more appearance, Malk vanished, leaving Xander alone with his crew.
As the plants encroached on the clearing, the fresh air ripened with the aroma of too-sweet grasses. A breeze stirred the fronds, and the sun beat down on their heads.
Xander handed Vax the sword. “Don’t use it until we must.”
“Like that’s going to be very long.” Shannon stomped on another plant with vigor, but dark circles under her eyes and hollowed cheekbones revealed the progression of her illness. It wouldn’t be long before it began to affect all of them.
Clarie sat down, folded his legs, and handed Delo a plant stalk. His pet ate, seemingly content with the alien fodder, then closed its eyes and slept as if it hadn’t a care.
Alara had been extremely quiet and thoughtful since their arrival, and when Xander turned around, he found her examining a plant, her eyes puzzled. “I’ve never seen or heard of DNA that can replicate this fast.”
“Can you find a way to stop or slow the growth?”
“Without a laboratory?” Eyes bright more with curiosity than alarm, Alara stared at first one plant with tiny needlelike leaves, then another with broad flat ones. “Normally such a wide variety doesn’t grow within one climate zone. But then Malk’s DNA was also strange.”
“In what way?” Xander asked.
Vax slashed at the base of the plants that encircled them. He was clearly losing the battle. He’d cut two down, and five would spring up in their place.
Alara’s expression went into scientific-analysis mode—far off and distant. “The sequencing was . . . unusual.”
So were the plants. No matter how hard Vax worked to annihilate them, they grew back—faster, bigger, denser.
“Vax, stop.” Xander understood his first officer would keep cutting down the plants until he dropped of exhaustion, but Vax and the sword would only delay the inevitable for an hour at most. He might even be accelerating the process. “Can we hike out of here by squeezing between the plants?”
Alara shook her head. “Plant density is too thick.”
Although she was likely considering the scientific questions, she also was keeping up with the conversation. She had a practical head on her shoulders, one that might make the difference between completing this mission and failure.
“All right, let’s form a circle and extend our shields until they touch each other,” Xander ordered.
Standing between Alara and Shannon, he used his psi to extend his shield until it grazed theirs. The others did the same. While they couldn’t travel through the plants with their shields connected, the psi p
rotection held the plants back so they only grew around them . . . and over them—not between them.
“It won’t be long before these plants entomb us.” Shannon rubbed her forehead. From a big city, she was accustomed to congestion and tight quarters; of them all, she liked the wild outdoors the least. Yet Xander could count on her, too, and if he had to be stranded here on Saj, he couldn’t think of a better crew.
“You think Malk will even try to return?” Cyn asked, staring toward the horizon as if he might reappear any moment.
Xander stepped into the center of the circle. “If you can keep the plants at bay, I’ll search for a way out of the jungle.”
“Look for Perceptive Ones, too,” Clarie reminded him as if Xander could forget his mission. The only problem was, Xander didn’t know what a Perceptive One looked like . . . so even if he saw one, he doubted he’d recognize it. To make that determination, he’d require Alara’s expertise, but even she had never seen a Perceptive One. He hoped something in the DNA would clue her in—but first he had to extract them from the jungle and figure out where to head next.
Xander sat amid his crew, closed his eyes, and focused. He recalled Clarie’s words of relaxation, and one by one he coaxed his muscles to release the pent-up tension. He imagined his stress streaming from his body in lazy cloudlike ribbons, and in a process that became easier each time, his mind followed.
He left his body and soared skyward. From above, his tiny group appeared fragile, but they would hold the shield until he returned. His belief in them remained firm as he tried to mark their precise position. He triangulated his location with the mountain range’s irregular peak to his right, a forked tree on his left shoulder, and the highest tree within miles to his back.
He scanned in all directions but saw only a flat plain covered by the thick jungle in every direction except the mountainous one. If Malk was nearby, he must be resting amid the foliage. Xander soared higher, where the air thinned and he could see the planet from the atmosphere’s thinnest vantage point. Far away, the jungle met the sea on three sides, and mountains continued to the horizon.
The Ultimatum Page 22