The Battle for the Ringed Planet

by Richard Edmond Johnson

  “It’s your call, priest. They’re already scouting the crash sight with fighters. Call your off your thugs or die.”

  “Very well, she can stay the night, but you must take her with you or we will kill her in the morning. I cannot promise her protection and you don’t know the full extent of her abilities. Guard her constantly. I suppose her family will be glad to have her back, even if it is just for a short while.” A movement from the crowd caught Torian’s eye and he spied an older man step forward and Siiri watch the figure.

  The man in robes continued, “You may soon regret having sympathy for the witch.”

  Growling out the words, Torian aimed his pistol at Lexor, “If she is harmed, I will hunt you down and kill you.” Lexor lowered his shotgun and slowly backed off to stand with the others while the off-worlder held his Con up higher, “Any threat, and I’ll send out a signal.”

  Narrowing his eyes, the old priest put away his silver laser pistol, “We will talk again in the morning, Sky Demon.”

  “I’m sure it will be pleasant.” He watched the old man turn to leave.

  The man Siiri had been watching stepped forward and she ran toward him and exclaiming, “Pa!”

  Chapter 6: Nightmare

  As father and daughter embraced, Torian waved his pistol threateningly at a few others who lingered motioning for them to move off. Siiri’s father was a stoic proud man, wiry with graying hair on the sides and dark brown roof. He brandished a dark thick moustache and limped using a cane, giving Torian a wary glance.

  “Thank you for saving my daughter, I’m Davin Lauronen.” He half mouthed while she turned him around to face the tall young man wearing a navy blue flight suit.

  “Anyone would have done the same.” Torian replied casually.

  “But not a Sky Demon.”

  “Sky Demons are not all what you think they are.”

  “It’s getting late, Pa, can we go home?”

  “Certainly, Siiri.” Then he extended his hand to shake Torian’s, “My home is yours, of course.”

  Word spread about the Sky Demon that was not going to fry them all and that he had returned Siiri, not entirely welcomed in the village. The homes were tunnels or natural caves built into the sloping walls of the wide rolling valley, with entrances concealed by screens of thick brush and trees. The path to Siiri’s home wound through pines and deciduous oak and birch trees to a vertical log door with an iron ring pull handle.

  Inside Torian stood back while her tearful mother and younger brother embraced the blonde girl, though her sister was hesitant. Glancing around it was hard for Torian to believe that the home was a tunnel. It had wooden panel walls, excellent lighting from stylish lamps, and comfortable manufactured furniture, obviously salvaged from the city.

  Then Siiri took his hand, “Torian McCallum, sky warrior, this is my family … my mother Krystin, younger sister Serina and my brother Daniel.” Siiri’s mother held her age well, with youthful eyes and smooth skin and only a few stands of grey in her white blonde hair. Serina was a younger slightly prettier version of Siiri, though it was hard to compare the two when the older girl had lived through Hell for the past few days. Her curly blond-haired brother stared with his bright blue eyes at the soldier, in either awe or fear; Torian was not sure. In fact, there was an awkward silence over the family; they were meeting their first Sky Demon while still in their flesh.

  Finally, Torian’s rumbling stomach broke the uncomfortable quiet and Siiri spoke up, “Sky Demon’s need to eat like everyone else!”

  Lowering his backpack, he frowned, “What happened to sky warrior? I kinda liked that one.”

  The tunnel home resembled more of an apartment than a house and had two large stone fireplaces, one in the living room and another in the kitchen. Torian had a hundred questions for Davin as the man limped along explaining how the smoke was first filtered, then dispersed in small ducts that cancelled out the heat signature. Pipes with hand pumps brought water from the river into the home, filtered for drinking or bathing, and for human waste disposal. Torian knew that the power generator under the waterfall they had seen earlier supplied the electricity. Every few months, teams of salvagers would venture into the city for supplies they could not manufacture on their own, but generally, the village was self-sufficient. Travelling into the city was sometimes dangerous and Davin received an injury years earlier when a building wall fell and crushed his leg.

  Grondalle, designed to be invisible from Sky Demons, boasting an advanced network of tunnels that ran in every direction underneath the valley and the Norstrom River connecting both sides of the village. Siiri’s home had a door to the outside and another door to enter the vast underground tunnels. There were large meeting rooms underneath built for wood shops, metal smiths, food processing, and the typical tasks found in any farming village. Each tunnel apartment had skylights; round perforated transteel plates on the surface with trapdoor shutters that opened and closed, and allowed the sunlight and fresh air inside. Children regularly cleared them of brush and debris as they ran up and played in the valley hills.

  Siiri excused herself to wash up and change while Davin invited Torian to sit in their main family room. The newcomer noted pictures of family on the wall, older flat screen versions, and a large gold crucifix as the centerpiece above the mantle of the fireplace. The room had a warm, lived-in feel with carved reddish rosewood furniture and padded leather coverings.

  “Daniel, bring the Sky … Torian a tankard of beer from the keg.”

  Torian sat up, “Beer? You have beer? Real beer?”

  Davin grinned, “Of course. You don’t have beer in the Sky ships?” Torian glanced at the elder, then at his daughter Serina who sat across from him quietly observing him with what he perceived as angry green eyes.

  “We’re dry in fleet, because conscripts like me would get drunk every night.”

  “Conscripts? You were forced into the Sky ships?” Davin frowned.

  The young curly haired teenager brought the soldier a tall silver tankard carved with woodland creatures and another for his father and Torian took a deep swallow, “Oh thank the gods of drink; this is damn good!” With foam on his upper lip and a grin from ear to ear, “I’ll take the keg!” and he gulped again. Daniel sat beside his sister and they both leaned forward watching the off-worlder while he enjoyed the drink.

  “Each world is assigned a quota for the number of recruits it must provide to the Confederation fleets,” he continued with a wry smile, “unfortunately for me I met all the requirements and passed the medical and aptitude tests. Then they had a lottery and I won.”

  Nervously clearing his throat, Daniel spoke up, “In school the teacher says the Sky Demons … I mean, people from the night stars, want to come down and kill us.”

  Putting down the tankard, Torian replied, “Actually as far as I know, no one knew you were here. We thought everyone was dead.”

  “But you’re not a real Sky Demon? I mean, you rescued Siiri…” Serina piped up quickly.

  “I’m not a demon. I’m just a human.”

  “Are there others like you?” Serina leaned forward.

  “Yeah, there are billions. More than you can even imagine, on dozens of worlds.”

  “Women and children, too?”

  “Men, women, children, white, black, yellow, and those are the natural pigmentations. People can have their skin changed to any color they want, blue, green, and bright pink though it is a little expensive. In some worlds, depending on the size and gravity of the planet, people are taller, shorter, and wider. There’s lots of variety in the human species.” Torian hesitated for a second, “A good friend of mine, Tristan, pigmented himself a shade of blue. Girls used to love it.”

  “That sounds so strange.”

  “In the big cities, especially on earth, people look very different, more than you can imagine.”

  The smell of spicy lamb distracted Torian as he glanced to the kitchen. Soon Siiri emerged from the hallway clean and
fresh from a bath. Her long ash blonde hair was now brushed and shiny, and she wore a light green knee length dress with gold earrings. She sat down next to Torian on the sofa across from her sister and brother. Torian had thought Serina the prettier sibling, but changed his mind after seeing Siiri bathed and changed.

  Pointing to his flight suit, Daniel shyly inquired, “What do all those symbols mean on your blue outfit?”

  The handsome off-worlder leaned back as Siiri glanced over his uniform, “She can tell you.” He grinned.

  “What is the wing with the eye?” Daniel stared.

  Siiri cleared her throat, “That means he is a scout, but not a very good one because he couldn’t find our village.” Smiling mischievously at soldier she continued, “That one on the shoulder means he is from the big Sky ship that crashed. Sadly, he lost all his friends on it. The one on the other shoulder is the scout vessel he flies, that also crashed.”

  “You make me sound like an incompetent Sky Demon.”

  “And the red and gold one means Torian has been in too many fights, and the purple one with the heart shows that he got hurt bad,” her voice slowly turned melancholy.

  Then Krystin called out that dinner was ready, and they all stood. As Davin, Daniel, and Serina made their way into the dinning room, Siiri held Torian back with her palm on his chest, “How do I smell now, Torian McCallum?”

  The soldier leaned closer, “Like lilacs, nice … reminds me of a girl back home.”

  She shot him an annoyed look and he laughed quietly to himself, striding to the large dining table, carved with oak leaves and set with fancy light blue dishes and sparkling silverware.

  “We’ve never had a …” Krystin refrained from saying Sky Demon, “… off-worlder for dinner. I hope this meal resembles something you’ve had before.”

  Torian surveyed the plates as his stomach gnawed, “Lamb chops … just like home.”

  “Do you say grace where you’re from?” Krystin glanced at Torian.

  “Only when mom is around,” he grinned, and they all smiled. Davin said a grace Torian had heard before and they began to pass the plates of meat and vegetables around.

  “You’re very … unexpected, Torian.” Krystin commented, “Who would have known people from the sky were like us, eating the same food, speaking the same language, though with a little bit of an accent.”

  “We all came from earth. In fact your ancestors were probably mine too.”

  That caused a bit of an awkward silence, until Daniel could not contain himself any longer, “What are the sky ships like? Do people travel between the stars?”

  Finishing a mouthful of lamb and washing it down with some beer, “There are all kinds of sky ships; small ones, huge ones, from space liners to one shot colony ships. You can take a cruise through the rings of Saturn … Tristan and I, we flew in the tail of a comet, through the outer layers of gas giants, and between binary stars …”

  Davin raised his fork, “But you said there is a war in the stars?”

  “That’s why you all have to hide, marines may be landing here, this time real Sky Demons.” Then he added, “But there are good ones like me, who will want to protect you. If there is a battle, you could be caught in the middle of the fighting.”

  Sirena leaned a little forward, “How many fights have you been in?”

  “Children, let the man eat.” Krystin gave him an apologetic look.

  “No, it’s Ok …” Torian wiped his mouth with a serviette, “I’ve been in a few battles in space.”

  Across from him blue-eyed Siiri watched him coyly, “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  “You folks remind me so much of my own family at home, even Daniel and Sirena are like my own brother and sister. I’ve been away for so long I tend to forget what it’s like to eat a home cooked meal in the company of a real family.”

  “We’re glad you brought Siiri back to us, even if it’s only for a night.” Krystin smiled warmly, but he noted that Sirena glanced away.

  Eagerly Daniel washed down his food with water, “What was the sky ship like that you flew?”

  “I didn’t fly it … ok, well I did at times. The R-26 Hawkeye is a two-man scout vessel built to fly long-range missions and the smallest ship capable of creating a wormhole. My pilot was Tristan Alpha from earth, California actually. It was funny, but we were exact opposites. I wanted to fly and he wanted to play with the computers, but he was the pilot. Anyway, we were a team for two years and would go on these missions for a week at a time searching for enemy activity in far off star systems. We would launch a probe into a star system, then wait, wait, and wait. To pass the time, he taught me how to fly, and how to land and maneuver between moons and asteroid belts. He was crazy; he hacked the logs so that I could switch places with him. Tristan said I was a natural pilot and after a while he just let me do all the flying.”

  He gazed into Siiri’s azurite eyes, finding it hard to look away while she remarked, “You must have been great friends.”

  “Yeah …”

  “So you didn’t have any fights?” Daniel sounded a little disappointed.

  “No, we had battles. The Rebels had a ship like a Hawkeye called a Starseeker, but it was bigger with a 10-man crew and a heavy gun turret. We encountered one near a red giant star, with thousands of asteroids and these gas giant planets. There were also hundreds of moons.” Torian drank some beer and then continued, “One of our probes spotted them first. Now, they outgunned us, but our ion engines were faster. It was cat and mouse for three days and we got no sleep. Tristan flew while I searched everywhere. To make a worm hole to escape, we need lots of room and time to come to a full stop, so neither one of us could attempt escape without the other finding out.”

  All eyes watched Torian as he leaned back, “They finally spotted us, and I’m telling you, if it hadn’t been for Tristan’s flying ability I would not be here … they blasted the asteroid we hid behind and he twisted and turned to elude them. Blasting the asteroids worked to our advantage because all the debris and dust gave us a screen …”

  “Then what happened?” Daniel was at the edge of his seat.

  “We got behind then, and I had the guns … they didn’t see it coming and I turned them into dust.” Then he glanced around, “Tristan and I fought a couple more times. We took out a couple of Solvair fighters once, both green pilots …”

  There was a silence for a few minutes as Torian leaned forward again and dug into his potatoes, but then suddenly changed the subject, “I got a farm where I come from, we grow barley, fields of gold.”

  “We have wheat and 3 growing seasons before the snow …” the elder man grinned.

  “Aye, we have 4, and some cattle.”

  “You sound like you’d be right at home at harvesting time, just a green moon away.”

  The young man in the navy blue flight suit smiled, “Could you use a hand? I was going home after this mission.”

  Daniel joined in, “Are you going home when the other sky ships get here?”

  Glancing at Siiri and without taking his eyes from her, Torian answered, “That’s what I hope.”

  “I’ll bet you’re anxious to see your family …” the long blonde haired girl in the high-necked green dress stared back.

  Serina interrupted, “You’re taking Siiri with you, right?”

  The young man flushed slightly in response and Siiri looked down while he took his time answering, “We haven’t talked about it. My world is Kanata, one of the few real agriculture colonies. It has vast farms … it might work out for her …”

  Suddenly Serina blurted, “You shouldn’t have brought her back, why couldn’t you just stay in the city with her!”

  “Serina!” her mother glared.

  “It’s going to happen again, Ma! Just like when they exiled her the first time! Now the Sky Demon made them allow her to stay.”

  “She is my daughter and your sister …”

  “But she is marked, Ma! And look what it’s done
to us? No decent boy will look at me ever since she had those eyes! They think it will happen to me, too!”

  Wading in to it, the off-worlder shrugged, “I thought Alvarr was your boyfriend?”

  “He takes pity on me …even though he is pitiful.”

  “Well, I happen to know there are a couple thousand lonely marines in fleet, almost all male, probably in orbit right now, big, muscular, even the ones that aren’t enhanced …”

  She looked up, a little hopeful, “And they’re coming here?”

  “If you give me a holo of yourself …”

  “Torian!” Siiri shot him a look of annoyance.

  “This affliction she bears … the voices …” Davin leaned towards Torian, “Have you seen it before in other worlds you’ve visited?”

  “No, but when I did a medical scan something odd came up. It might be related, and if so, someone knows about it.”

  Siiri peered at Torian and in a hopeful voice asked, “There might be a cure?”

  “I don’t know, Siiri, but there are all sorts of cures … they could fix your leg Davin …”

  The elder man interrupted, “My daughter, if they can cure her, maybe she can come back …”

  Torian nodded pensively.

  Once dinner was over and the plates cleared, Torian, Davin and Daniel retired to the living room while the younger boy brought them more beer. The two older men talked about all things farming. Most of the conversation was serious; the best way to grow crops, what types of crops, soil quality, comparisons between farm animals. Torian was interested in comparing notes, but Daniel wanted to steer the conversation towards space battles. The flight specialist politely deflected most of his questions while Davin sent him for more beers.

  The girls watched from the kitchen, mother, daughter and sister re-united for only a short time, naturally curious about Torian, “I never thought a Sky Demon could be so human, and so real.” Krystin whispered to her daughters watching the young man joking with her husband.

  “He’s cute, too. I hope all the good Sky Demons are like him.” Serina quipped.

  Krystin grew serious, “I’m grateful to have this little time with you, my daughter. I suppose they’ll take you away in a Sky ship.”