by Linda Mooney
There was no response on the emergency call, yet the buzzing continued. Belatedly, Deceiver realized it wasn’t the Command board summoning him. It was the little comm link he’d set beside it. The comm connecting them to Hunter. Suddenly, sleep was beyond him. “Yeah, Hunter! I copy!”
White static played over the tiny but powerful speaker. It would take several seconds for their communication to travel over the vast distance separating them.
“Deceiver. I got him. Coming in.” The man’s words were harsh and direct. The Guardian leader shivered unconsciously. If the dark part of Hunter was terrifying to behold, an exhausted one would be even more dangerous.
“Copy, Hunter. We’ll be waiting for you.”
What was it Hunter had said a few days ago? I can move at hyper light speed.
Was it just a few days ago? Heavens … Deceiver ran a hand over his face. It felt more like all of this had taken place months ago. Or years ago.
Crawling out of bed, he went over to the main communications panel and fed in a wake-up call to everyone, rousing them out their beds and ordering them to the meeting room to await Hunter’s arrival.
Ten minutes later they had gathered back into the main hall. The chronometer read a little after three in the morning. On their way from their quarters, everyone was reminded of the destruction brought about by the Ombitra mothership. The normally clean night air was still thick with smoke and the burnt stench of death. The stars above their world no longer twinkled like pieces of broken glass.
As they waited for Hunter, Deceiver put a call in to Devorah to check on Star’s condition. “Yes?” the woman’s voice came back, answering his buzz. She sounded very weary, but awake.
“Hunter is returning. I thought I could give him an update when he got here,” Deceiver said.
There were a few moments of silence, then came Devorah’s cautious pronouncement. “Don’t put any hope in this, but the sunlight has changed her skin tone. It’s no longer that muddy brown color, but resuming its natural shade.”
“Anything else? Any sign she’s resuming breathing on her own?” A glance around those seated at the table showed they were as hungry for some good news as he was.
“No. Is Commander there?”
“I’m here,” the man spoke up loud enough to be heard over the link.
“Is there any way to increase the exposure?”
“You mean, add more sunlight?” He paused to think. “The exposure she’s getting now is as much as the mirror can hold.”
“But what if you added another mirror?” the physician inquired.
“She’s not wearing her suit. We don’t want to fry her,” Sender spoke out.
“Then put some kind of gauge on it so the amount of exposure can be lowered and raised when needed,” Deceiver said. “Commander, it’s all yours.”
“Copy. Mirror number two will be launched as soon as we’re dismissed from here,” Commander promised.
Another fifteen minutes went by as they patiently waited. It was Challenger who asked, “Any idea where Hunter was calling from? How far out he was?”
Deceiver shook his head. “No idea. I just know there was at least an eight-second lag between us.”
Blender did a quick mental calculation. “At hyper light speed, that could be as far as forty parsecs away.”
“Don’t forget he’s bringing another body back with him,” Time Merchant said. “That could slow him down.”
“Actually, it was forty-three parsecs,” a hollow voice announced.
Everyone turned to see Hunter standing in the same place they had last seen him. This time, there was another staring in glassy-eyed shock at their sudden entrance.
Serien Tark fell to the floor as Hunter released his grasp on the man. From the man’s appearance, they could see he’d been jerked out of his own bed from wherever Hunter had found him.
Once he knew he was free from Hunter’s grasp, Tark scrambled over to the meeting table to plead for their protection. “I c-claim right of Guardian law!” he stammered. “Protect me from that lunatic. He’s going to kill me!”
“It’s no more than you deserve,” Hunter’s voice echoed in the room like black thunder. He lifted his face to the others. “Seeker, strip the man of everything you can get.”
It was taking every ounce of willpower for him not to squash the man’s psyche like an overripe fruit between his mental hands. They needed the information locked inside the HandFast Committee Chairman. But once they obtained it…
“N-n-no! I claim—”
“You have no claim to Guardian law,” Disaster said, heatedly. “Guardian law does not protect murderers on the run from prosecution.”
“Then I give myself up!” Tark screamed, glancing over his shoulder in nothing less than absolute terror.
Leaning over the table, Time Merchant softly promised, “Oh, you can be sure you’re giving yourself up. And as soon as we get some answers from you, you’ll be handed over to the Stellar Police.”
“Give us any lies, and we can’t guarantee what Hunter will do,” Provoker grinned. “After all, it was his woman you tried to have killed.”
“And it was his unborn child you managed to slaughter,” Morning Fire breathed heavily. Her face was dark red with anger.
“Wha—What do you mean ‘his woman’? The moment StarLight was declared pregnant, the HandFast was over. Hunter has no right under HandFast law to continue to claim right over her,” Tark tried to argue.
“Terrin and I were committed to each other,” Hunter announced slowly, menacingly. “We were going to exchange vows, and raise our child as a family.” He narrowed eyes the color of burnt stars at the cringing man by the meeting table. “What was in the cylinder you gave to the Ombitra?”
“Wha—what cylinder?”
“Wrong answer,” Corona murmured. At that same moment, Tark’s eyes bugged out in sheer terror. The man gasped for breath, his face turning blue as his lungs fought for air.
Then it was over. Tark fell onto the floor, choking and coughing, fingers clawing at his throat as he tried to draw air into his tortured windpipe. “Screw you, Hunter!”
“Answer the question,” Condemner continued. “What was in the cylinder?”
“Go ahead and try to fight us,” Animator grinned without humor. Her normally liquid brown eyes had become as hard as the look of determination on her face.
Seeker laid a hand on the man’s back. Tark was unaware of her until she let out a small cry. “Nimboid cloud. Something called the Nimboid cloud,” she told them.
“Did you deliver the Nimboid cloud to the Ombitra?” Disaster asked.
Tark opened his mouth, then abruptly shut it with an audible sound. It was clear he believed that if he didn’t answer the question, he couldn’t be accused of giving a false answer.
“Wrong choice,” Corona murmured again as Tark let out a shriek that made them all flinch. The man whirled about, breaking contact with Seeker, and struggled to crawl away. Throwing his head up, the man shrieked again and dropped to the floor with a thump. Incredibly, he was still awake. Whatever nightmares Hunter had planted into him had not caused him to pass out. Tark lay quivering on the polished floor. Little mewling sounds came from his throat as the man struggled, eyes closed, with the inevitable.
Determined to find the answers for herself, Seeker got down on her knees and planted both hands on the man’s body. Taking a deep breath, she sank far into the inner recesses of the man’s mind. Seconds ticked by. Then, quietly, the Guardian began to reel off the bits and pieces she managed to read as they dislodged from Tark’s grasp and floated up to where she could reach them.
“Corin Sassidy. Ombitra want the outer ring of planets from our system. Guardians in the way. Remove Guardians. Remove threat.”
She swallowed hard and readjusted her hands. “Two prime. Prime Guardians. Prime. Not born on this world. S-StarLight. Master Hunter. Serien Tark put names on HandFast list. N-not in … not in lottery.” She shivered. “Star
Light. Dangerous. Dangerous. StarLight could ruin the whole thing. Magnetic. Mag—”
“She could ruin it for all of us,” a weak voice beneath her said. Tark remained curled in a ball near the table. “The Ombitra wanted the outer planets.”
“Why?” Disaster asked.
“They’re almost solid pelsium. They need the pelsium. I don’t know why they need it. They just do. They … they could come in and just take it by force, like they do with other planets, but they feared StarLight.” The man’s voice was low. Defeated. He had been broken.
“Because of her powers with magnetism?” Condemner questioned.
“Yes.” Tark blinked. His body was no longer his to command. “That’s why they hadn’t attacked in this region of the galaxy before. They had seen what StarLight could do. They … they sent a contact to Sassidy. Offered him … offered him more wealth than he could ever imagine. Than we’d ever seen. All we had to do was help kill the Guardians, help remove StarLight, and they would let him, let us have it. It was … so much wealth.”
Sender leaned over the table. “Why put StarLight, and Master Hunter, for that matter, in the HandFast?”
“What did you mean by prime?” Provoker prodded.
Tark tried to lick his dry lips, but his mouth was devoid of all moisture. “They were the only Guardians not from this world. They were most likely able to reproduce quickly. That’s why they were HandFasted.”
“Why?” hissed Morning Fire. “Why did you want Star to have a baby?”
“N-not have a baby. Just … just get pregnant. Clearlian said—”
“Clearlian?” Deceiver repeated. “Doctor Syman Clearlian?”
“It was Clearlian’s responsibility to place the restrictive edicts on StarLight once she got pregnant. H-he promised us that she would place the safety of her child over…” Tark closed his eyes and shuddered.
“Go on,” Animator ordered. “Or else Seeker will drag it out of you. Unless you’d rather Hunter reasserts his control over you.”
A moment passed for the man to collect himself. “She wasn’t supposed to sacrifice the child. She … she was supposed to die under the onslaught. Under the nimboid cloud.”
The soft sound of weeping told them that Morning Fire had succumbed to the horror the man was revealing to them. Turning a hateful look on the man, Disaster growled, “You … and Clearlian … and Sassidy … you plotted with the Ombitra to destroy this planet? You deliberately placed Star and Hunter on the HandFast list so she would get pregnant and sacrifice herself and the baby, because you thought she wouldn’t fight the Ombitra to save this world instead? Because you thought she wouldn’t deliberately kill her own child to save others? Have we got that right?”
“You monster!” Corona screamed and started for him. Three pairs of hands stopped her from using her powers as she leaned into Time Merchant’s warm embrace and sobbed loudly.
“But you didn’t count on her pulsing the Ombitra ships beforehand, did you?” Deceiver half-smiled in sorrow. “You didn’t know we had already found a way to stop them, or at least slow them down.”
“Or that Hunter would have the fleets from Abernath show up when the Ombitra had their ships trick us into going to Tor Sigura. They thought that by dividing us and luring us over there, they could conquer us. By drawing us away from here, and away from Star, it would be the end of everyone and everything on this planet.” Challenger crossed his arms over his stomach and bent over in his chair. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
A minute of relative silence stretched into two. Morning Fire managed to calm down enough to take her seat, but Corona remained clutched in Time Merchant’s arms. It was Sender who resumed the interrogation.
“Where is Clearlian and this, this Sassidy person?”
“I don’t know,” Tark admitted. Seeker raised her tear-stained face and nodded. The man honestly didn’t know. “I told them to be off-planet before one o’clock, because that was when the mothership was scheduled to appear.”
This news jolted all of them. Shaking, Animator asked, “One o’clock? Didn’t Bruiser keep repeating one o’clock?”
Giving the man beneath her a rough shake, Seeker loudly demanded, “Tell us how Bruiser knew about the one o’clock deadline, damn you! Let me see!”
“He was our contact inside Guardian Command,” Tark feebly replied. “He was the one who told us StarLight and Master Hunter were from other worlds. He was the one who kept us informed on how the HandFasted couple was complying with the edicts. But he … he didn’t tell us they had committed to each other.”
“Don’t fret about that point,” Provoker smirked. “They didn’t exactly come out and tell us, either.”
“But she … she sacrificed the child anyway,” Tark said, more to himself than to the others. “She wasn’t supposed to, but she did. She killed the baby.”
“The child’s blood will be on your head,” Hunter intoned for the first time since the questioning began. “As will the blood of thousands who died from the nimboid cloud.” Lifting his face to Deceiver, he said, “I’ll find Clearlian and Sassidy, and bring them back to face charges of genocide. I’ll—”
The man started, turning his head away as if hearing something he couldn’t identify. Suddenly, the swirling mists of darkness dissipated. At the same instant, Hunter’s eyes lightened to their normal color, and all traces of his dark power vanished. “Terrin?” he managed to croak in a soft voice before he disappeared from sight.
“Deceiver!” It was Doctor Perlakian, calling over her handheld comm link. Deceiver hit the relay switch.
“Yeah, Devorah!”
She couldn’t contain the joy in her voice as she told them, “We have visible brainwaves! Star’s breathing on her own now!”
This time there was no holding back their tears.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter 34
Awakening
It was the barest movement of the woman’s eyelids that first alerted her. Then the fingers spread apart a fraction of an inch. But the trembling was there—in breath, in muscle.
Devorah’s eyes flew to the monitors as she mentally began to tick off the seconds.
Heart rate up. Breathing increasing. Her blood pressure is stabilizing. Brain activity is spiking. Dearest heavens, thank you!
StarLight was waking up.
Jerking the comm link from her coat pocket, the physician was talking into it before she realized she’d forgotten to thumb it on first. “Deceiver! She’s waking up! Deceiver!”
“We copy!” came the man’s voice. In the background, she could hear cheering. Unable to keep her own happiness contained, Devorah went over to the rejuvenation tank to wait.
From the corner of her eye she could see the air shimmering in front of the wall. Slowly, the figure of Morning Fire appeared into the room. Four days ago, when definite brain activity had come back to Star, the others had realized they all couldn’t gather in the small unit. It was decided that Hunter would be called first. But in the event he was gone, or unable to show, Morning Fire would take his place.
As the petite woman shook off the effects of Sender’s power, she gave the physician the news. “Hunter’s still under the sedation you gave him to sleep. But Commander’s gone to check on him to see if he can be roused.”
Doctor Perlakian nodded. The man had gone on a three-day hunt to find the missing Doctor Clearlian, and the man known as Corin Sassidy. He had found the physician on a resort planet on the other end of the FonDasi Jetty, nearly eighty parsecs from home. Corin Sassidy had been detained on the third moon of Erath Six by the Stellar Police, after being identified by several citizens from the bulletins the Guardians had released. Although Deceiver had ordered Hunter to rest, that he would send Transport Two to bring the man back, Hunter had defied orders and gone to retrieve the suspect himself. No one doubted that Sassidy’s mental health would suffer on the trip back.
When he had returned, Hunter had been a walking shell of his forme
r self. He was beyond exhaustion. His body was about to give out completely, having gone without food or drink for almost three days, and pushed beyond all normal endurance. Although he had kept in contact with Guardian Command, Hunter had been driven to find everyone responsible for the Ombitra attack on their world. For Star lying comatose in a rejuvenation tank. And for the death of his unborn child.
Devorah had told Deceiver, the last time the man had come by to check on StarLight personally, that Hunter called her at least twice a day to see what the latest news was. He knew he wasn’t of any use just standing around the hospital, which was why he was determined to seek out and find those responsible as soon as possible. While the prey was still under the assumption they were safe while the planet grappled with survival and clean up after the attack.
Because once Star work up, he swore he would never leave her side.
Which was why Devorah had given him two shots when he had returned. One shot to put him to sleep, and keep him asleep, until his body was able to awake on its own. The second shot was to give him enough energy to sustain himself, until he could start eating on his own again.
There was another movement in the tank, causing Morning Fire to hiccup through her tears.
“There’s no time for that,” Devorah told her, fighting her own tears. “Help me get her up and out of there.” Normally she would have called upon an intern or nurse to help her, but this was StarLight. And as the Guardian’s official physician, Perlakian was damned and determined to care for her charge without any outside interference, if she could help it.
Together, they braced themselves against both sides of the rejuvenation tank and reached inside the clear gel, each hooking one arm under a knee, and weaving their other arm together beneath Star’s shoulders and neck. Slowly, they pulled the figure free of the life-sustaining substance and carried her over to the transport bed Devorah had brought in the day before.
Laying her down, the physician withdrew a pan and several soft, dry cloths from under the bed, and placed them on the padding between Star’s legs. “Help me wipe the gel off of her, so we can get her dressed in something that’ll keep her warm.”