Living among the Stars (Sky Riders #2)

by Rebecca Lorino Pond

  “Remember what I said, little one.” He stopped outside the door to warn Kelly one last time. She nodded her response then urged him inside.

  Stepping inside the bar, he found that it was empty with the exception of one man sitting at the bar. He guided Kelly to the bar then pulled out a barstool for her to sit on.

  “What will it be,” the bartender asked.

  “Two house specials,” he said. He leaned on the bar to survey the surrounding area. A mirror ran the entire length of the wall behind the bar, so he was able to watch the area to his back without looking suspicious.

  The bartender made the two drinks then sat the glasses on the counter. “That will be eight credit, please.”

  Kharis handed the man his credit card. “It’ quiet in here today.” He wanted to get the bartender talking. Usually, the bartenders would know the latest information concerning major changes or occurrences in the surrounding areas.

  “All thanks to that damn storm out there,” the bartender replied dryly.

  “I’ve seen it worse.”

  “That storm out there has been blowing for over a week now. The last busy night I had was when those Lephusans came in right before it started.” The bartender leaned on the counter. “Strange group of people.”

  “Why do you say that? I don’t know much about them, but I hear they are a friendly lot.” He hated to lie, but it was the only way to the information he needed. This bartender obviously knew something and he was going to find out what.

  “Friendly! Those people are a bunch of nuts cases, if you ask me!” The bartender snorted as he laughed.

  “What’s wrong with them,” Kelly asked.

  The bartender looked her directly in the face. “You must not be from around here if you don’t know about the Lephusans.”

  “No, I’m from Earth,” Kelly said before Kharis could stop her.

  “Earth! You are a long way from home, little lady.” The bartender smiled at her. “I haven’t had someone from Earth in here in a longtime.”

  “You know about Earth?” Kelly asked.

  Kharis was going to kill her when he got her back to the ship. She was supposed to keep her mouth shut! But was she listening? No!

  “Of course, I know about Earth! I am from Earth myself. Seattle originally. How about yourself?”

  “I’m from New Orleans. I was supposed to go to Lephus, but my transport had an unfortunate accident on the way there. I ended up with this guy.” Kelly jerked her thumb in Kharis’ direction.

  “Well, that’s a good thing then. The Lephus just relocated to a new planet after the loss of their leader, Ruehar. I heard they got a new leader, though. I think his name is Zol’tsa or something like that. The group that was in here the other day was headed to their new home.”

  “And, where might that be,” Kharis asked. His anger was rising, but the information he wanted was flowing out of the bartender without him having to ask questions.

  “Napra,” the bartender stated.

  “Napra? Why there? It’s a lot smaller than Lephus.” Kharis said.

  “Sure it’s smaller, but from what I heard, there aren’t a lot of Lephusans left. Ruehar did a good job of seeing to the virtual extinction of his people. I went there once with a friend and I got to say the place was a shit-hole. I would be happy to get out of there if I were a Lephusan. Maybe, under their new leader, they might have a better life.” The bartender stood back up and eyed them suspiciously. “Why you want to know so much about them anyway?”

  Kharis’ senses went on full alert. “Just curious, that’s all. My lovely bride here was wanting to visit as many planets as we can while on our honeymoon. It’s her first time off Earth.” He sidled closer to Kelly then put his arm around her waist.

  “Just married you say,” the bartender asked.

  “Yep, two weeks now.” Kelly giggled then out her hand on his chest.

  “Congratulations. How about a drink on the house?” The bartender held up a green bottle with a dark liquid inside.

  Kharis hesitated. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

  The bartender waved him off. “We have to have a toast to the new couple. It’s not every day I get a newlywed couple in here. Especially, when one is from Earth!” The bartender poured two glasses from the green bottle then another for himself. “Cheers!”

  The bartender waited until Kharis and Kelly picked up their glass.

  “Down the hatch!” Kelly cheered then tipped her head back and downed the liquid.

  Kharis followed suit then slammed his glass down on the bar. “By the fires of hell! That stuff burns!”

  The bartender laughed. “It’s the good stuff!”

  “I think we need to be getting back to our ship. I want to get out of here before this storm gets any worse. Thank-you for the drinks.” Kharis tugged Kelly off the stool and behind him.

  “Yeah, thanks! It was great talking to another person from Earth!” Kelly waved at the bartender as Kharis pulled her towards the door.

  Once they were back outside, Kelly jerked her arm free from Kharis’ hand. “Stop pulling so hard!”

  “I told you to keep your mouth shut before we went in there and you didn’t listen.” He bent forward until his nose nearly touched her nose.

  “I didn’t say anything wrong!”

  “By the gods, Kelly! You told the man where you were from! I told you already, this is a dangerous place.”

  “I can take care of myself! I don’t need an overgrown oaf protecting me. I’ve been a cop for a longtime and know how things work!” Kelly poked him in the chest with one thin finger.

  Kharis grabbed her finger tightly. “And this is not Earth! Things work differently here and I don’t want to have to kill someone because you can’t keep that mouth of yours shut!” He glared down at her as he struggled to gain his composure. “Let’s go!”

  “Where are we going?” Kelly asked as she trotted alongside Kharis as he stormed down the street.

  “Back to the ship,” he replied curtly.

  They walked down the street in the direction of the ship in silence. Kelly knew Kharis was pissed with her and she regretted putting herself in any type of danger that might cause Kharis to have to defend her. It was hard to resist the cop instinct in her. Back on the streets on Earth, she knew how people could react and the chances she took every day she went out on patrol, but on another planet everything she knew didn’t matter anymore. The beings she came across played by a whole new set of rules, rules she didn’t understand for the most part.

  As they turned the corner to head to the ship, a large crowd blocked their path.

  “What’s happening,” she asked as she tried to look over the heads in front of her.

  “Looks like a fight,” Kharis said.

  “A fight?” Damn, she couldn’t see a dang thing. Numerous times while she had been on patrol she and her partner had to break up fights. Every so often they let one continue on for longer than they should have just for the fact it was a good fight. This fight had to be different considering they were on an alien planet.

  “Who’s fighting?” She jumped to try to get a glimpse at the figures surrounded by a growing crowd.

  Kharis pulled her closer to his body as he tried to guide them through the mass of people. “Looks like a Lephusan and a Goldmere.”

  “What’s a Goldmere?”

  Kharis didn’t bother to answer her. Instead he gripped her under her arms and lifted her above the crowd.

  “What the hell...,” she said as she stared at the short, fat, green blob that swung two of its four arms at its opponent who easily dodged the slow moving appendages.

  Kharis set her back down. “You don’t want to fool with a Goldmere no matter how big you are. They might be little, but their arms have small stingers on them that can paralyze its victim if stung enough times.” Just as he finished explaining about the strange looking creature, a sudden surge of people from behind them pressed forward. A large, one-eyed man pushed
between her and Kharis, separating them. It didn’t take long before several more bystanders pushed their way through to join the ever growing mob. Before she knew it, she was several feet away from Kharis.

  “Kharis!” she tried to shout above the noise of the crowd.

  “Kelly!”

  Kelly could see Kharis struggling to move through the crowd, but it was of no use. People streamed out of doorways and buildings in a massive herd, making the crowd outside grow to an incredible size in no time flat.

  “Get out of my way?” Kelly shouted up at the man who now blocked her view of Kharis. The man looked down at her and snorted then quickly looked back to the fight taking place.

  The more she fought to move in Kharis’ direction, the more she was pushed away. She was stuck in the movement of the crowd as it slowly moved down the street. As the mass moved, she saw her chance to escape the crowd. An alley opened up between two buildings offering her the chance of escape. It was either escaping down an alley or risk being crushed in the crowd.

  Kelly scanned the crowd for Kharis, but he was nowhere in sight. The force of the crowd had pushed them so far apart that it was hopeless for her to even try and find him. She needed to get out of the conflict and wait for Kharis to find her.

  It was easy for her to slip backwards through the crowd as it followed the fighters. As she stepped into the openness of the alley, she breathed a sigh of relief. It took several minutes for the crowd to move further down the street before she could see out the alley and find that Kharis was nowhere in sight. A surge of panic hit her when she realized she was alone on a strange planet she knew nothing about. Kharis’ words were coming back to haunt her as she stood rooted to the spot searching for him.

  “Well, well, well. What do we have here?”

  A deep male voice coming from behind her sent chills down her spine. She turned slowly around to find a mountain of a man towering over her. His one huge eye stared down at her while his lips curled into a cruel toothless smile.

  She took a couple of steps backwards until she felt her back hit a solid wall, or she thought it was a wall until she turned to face yet another one-eyed giant. She swallowed convulsively and knew at that moment she was in a world of trouble.

  Chapter 14

  The two men closed in quickly around her. She had a bad feeling that their intentions weren’t good so she would have to try and talk her way out of the situation.

  “Hi guys. Umm…I seem to be a little lost. Have you seen the big guy I was just with?” Her voice wavered as she tried to edge away from the encroaching pair.

  “Nope,” said the one she had seen first.

  “Oh well then he should be along any minute. I’ll just stand here and wait for him. His name is Kharis. Maybe you know him, he’s one of the leaders from Qetera.” She hoped by throwing Kharis’ name out there the men might know who he was and back away.

  “Don’t know any Kharis and don’t care.” The second giant resonated from the side of her.

  “Such a pretty little creature. I heard you were from Earth,” number one said.

  “Ummm…Earth?” How the hell did these guys know where she was from?

  “Yeah, Earth. We know all about Earth just never had the pleasure of meeting an earthling. At least she isn’t as ugly as I thought they would be.” Number two reached out to touch her face.

  “Hey, no touching guys!” She swatted his hand away which turned out to be a mistake. A mask of anger came over number two’s face which instantly made her turn and flee. Sad thing was, she didn’t get three steps away before she was jerked to an abrupt stop then hauled up over number two’s shoulder.

  “Put me down creep!” she shouted as she pounded on the giant’s back.

  “How much you think we can get for her?” Number one asked the other.

  “Not sure, but someone will be willing to pay the price for her. Let’s get to the ship before this Kharis comes looking for her.”

  “I don’t think so!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Kharis!” she screamed as loud as she could.

  “Shut her up for gods’ sake. Unless you want to get us both killed!” Number two said as he began to head down the alley in the opposite direction.

  “Yeah, yeah. I got it!” Number one came around the back of number two with a length of material. “Sorry, but you are making too much noise. Can’t have that!”

  Kelly used her hands to lift her upper body off the back of her captor. Number one came towards her with a black piece of material held out in front of him. “You are not about to put that in my mouth!” she shouted. If she allowed the gag to be shoved into her mouth, her hopes of Kharis hearing her were shot to hell. She began to struggle and kick her legs, praying the number two might drop her. Unfortunately, number two was extremely strong and was able to keep his grip on her flaying legs.

  “Keep your ass still or I will knock you out!”

  Number one quickly approached her. In one swift move, he shoved a ball of material into her mouth then quickly tied another piece around her mouth to her from pushing the foreign matter out of her mouth. She continued to scream even though the gag muffled her attempts. She was just about to reach up and pull the offending material off when number one grabbed both her arms.

  “Now, now. We can’t have you taking off your new piece of jewelry. It might attract too much attention.” One by one her second captor bent then secured her arms behind her back. Before she knew it, she was unable to lift her upper body up off the back of her carrier. She had to turn her face in order to avoid having her nose bounce into the hard body beneath her. Her heart hammered in her chest and sweat ran down her face into her eyes. She was in an extreme amount of danger not to mention the trouble she was going to be in with Kharis once he located her.

  ******

  The ship landed silently on their new home world. The dust settled slowly as the thrusters were turned off and the ship was shut down. The early morning light gave those on the bridge the first glimpse of the place they would call home for the rest of their lives.

  Zol’tsa stood at the helm with his hands behind his back and his chest puffed out. This was going to be his world, his reign of power. This was going to be the world he would create from the bottom up with his own people. On board the ship that had just landed, several thousand souls now depended upon him to provide a new home and new life for them all. Ruehar would have never done what he had accomplished so far in bringing what was left of the Lephusan population and the new arrivals to Napra. His former ruler would have rather let them all die from starvation or, worse, extinction.

  “We are ready to disembark, sir.”

  Zol’tsa jolted out of his thoughts to turn and find his pilot waiting for his orders. He took a few seconds to think before he said, “Excellent. Prepare the first wave. The women and elderly will be the last to leave the ship.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  He watched as his pilot ran off in the direction of the main elevator. On the journey back from Earth, he had carefully planned out everything he wanted to accomplish within the first week on Napra. Temporary housing needed to be setup first in order to get everyone off the ship in a timely manner. The journey to their new home had been hard on everyone on board and they had to stop numerous times in order to restock the ship’s supplies. Luckily, the last place they stopped had small, portable housing units for sale that could be setup quickly. He used almost half of the funds he had left to buy the units but in the long run he knew they would not be able to survive without them. Another portion of his funds went to buy enough food to see his people through the first several months on Napra. It would take some time for food to be grown, but with the genetically altered seeds, he purchased on Nimbus 3, the food supply on their new home would increase within the first two months.

  Two hours later, he was standing in the docking bay watching as the mobile housing units were off-loaded then moved to their new locations. People walked around the bay in a rush of activity. W
hether with the knowledge he was present or with the excitement they were all feeling at the prospect of having a new place to live that would be able to let them thrive.

  He stood off to the side watching in silence and smiling to himself. Yes, everything was going like he planned! He looked around the bay to find that most of the housing units were already off-loaded and the stock of food supplies was being off-loaded as he looked on. By the end of the week, he should have everyone off the ship and into their housing units, each with a ration of the food he would give them. The journey to bringing his race back was well under way!

  ******