Berta's Choice (The Soul-Linked Saga)

by Phillips, Laura Jo

  He hurried around the ground-car, got into the driver’s seat and backed out of the garage. Then he turned down the gravel road, relieved that there was no one around to see him. He would be so glad when this was over. That damn Xanti madman, Xi-Kung, had promised him that this would satisfy all of his gambling debts, and he meant to hold him to it. He was an interior designer, for stars sake, not a laser blasted espionage agent!

  He reached the bottom of the first turn on the gravel road and instead of following it down toward the garrison, he turned off the road and headed north. The ground-car was not meant to be driven over rough terrain and it immediately began bouncing him around. He glanced over the seat behind him and saw that Berta Simms was being bounced around as well, though she was still unconscious. He didn’t really have anything against the woman. In fact, he respected her. She was different from the usual run of young, pretty females. She was sharp, this one. Xi-Kung had sworn that she would not be harmed, which was the only reason he’d agreed to this. Not that he really had much of a choice. He gritted his teeth and kept driving.

  Berta opened her eyes in shock when her body flew up, then slammed down onto the leather seat. For a moment she had no idea where she was, but it quickly came back to her. She glanced up and saw the back of Sergio’s head, as she reached up with one hand to her earring. She pulled the back off just as she saw Sergio’s head begin to turn.

  She closed her eyes at once and lowered her hand just as the ground-car tossed her up, then back down again. She waited a few seconds, then opened her eyes carefully, relieved to see the back of Sergio’s head once more. She reached for the earring, nearly sighing aloud with relief to find the post still in her ear. She slipped it out, felt for the tiny disk on the back, and tapped it sharply with her fingernail three times.

  She glanced back up at Sergio, who seemed to be focusing on his driving now, and put the earring back into her ear. It took a few moments of feeling around on the seat before she found the tiny earring backing caught in her hair. She used both hands to put it back into place, her eyes never leaving Sergio’s head. Then she slid herself forward along the seat and tried to open the door. From the feel of things, Sergio was not driving on a road, but cross country. And he was going as fast as he could. She figured that jumping out of the ground-car would probably cause her injury, but it was better than letting herself be abducted without trying to prevent it.

  She pulled the handle on the door, but it refused to budge. She looked up, noting that the lock was engaged. She was directly behind Sergio now, but he hadn’t turned around to check on her again. Yet. She reached up to unlock the door, but the switch refused to budge. He had it locked from the front.

  She thought frantically, trying to think of some way out of her current predicament. She considered leaping over the seat and attacking Sergio, but there was the small complication that he was driving. She didn’t want to die because he ran them over a cliff or into a tree when she kicked him upside the head. It was escape she was after. Not death. She had a future to look forward to now and, she suddenly realized, she wanted that future very much.

  It seemed she had only one option. Working with Sergio over the past ten days had not made her like the man. He was rude, self-centered and obnoxious. But she didn’t think he was evil. She took a deep breath and made up her mind.

  Sergio drove until he came to a distinctive rock formation sticking out of the side of a small hill. He turned and kept driving, looking for a group of tall trees with blue-gray leaves.

  “Where are you taking me?” Berta asked, causing him to jump so hard that his head hit the ceiling of the ground-car.

  “You’re supposed to be unconscious,” he said, realizing as he said it how stupid it sounded.

  “Gee, I’ll just lay back down, shall I?” Berta said, sitting up and folding her arms against the top of the seat. “You know the Dracons are going to kill you for this, don’t you?”

  “Kill me?” Sergio squeaked, his whole body jerking with surprise. The car swerved dangerously and he fought to regain control. “Why would they kill me?”

  “You can’t be so stupid as to think they won’t know you’re the one who’s kidnapped me. They’ll smell you.”

  “I know they won’t be happy about it, but I don’t see why they should kill me,” Sergio said. “You’re not going to be hurt, and I’ll take you right back to where I found you.”

  “Then why are you taking me at all?” Berta asked.

  “I have some debts,” Sergio said. “With the Xanti. I do this one favor for them, they call the debts even and release my mother.”

  “They have your mother?” Berta asked, her mind racing. Why would the Xanti want to talk to her? Sure, the Xanti wanted to take over the galaxy and enslave every being in it, but what did that have to do with her? She knew that the Brethren dealt with the Xanti, but she had been found and abducted on Earth. There was no reason for the Xanti to even be aware of her existence. Could the Brethren have found her and decided to get her back? If so, why? She was a used up old woman, as far as they knew. And why involve the Xanti?

  “Yes, they have my mother,” Sergio replied. “They had me too up until just before I came here. That’s why I was two months late.” Sergio spoke quickly as he drove, realizing that it felt strangely good to get this off his chest. He wasn’t the nicest person in the Thousand Worlds, but he wasn’t a criminal either.

  “Why did they release you?” Berta asked, noting that Sergio was driving slower now that he was talking.

  “They learned that Arima House was being built on the Dracons’ ranch,” Sergio said. “They sent me to find out if it was true, and to find out who was running it. All they want to do is try to enlist your help. They will pay you more money than you can imagine.”

  “To do what?” Berta asked, though she already knew.

  “To tell them who the berezi are,” Sergio replied. “That’s it. You won’t have to do anything else.”

  “I hope it makes you feel better to believe that,” Berta said. “I can promise you though, there is far more to this than you think. The Xanti are not to be trusted.”

  “I agree they aren’t to be trusted,” Sergio said as he spotted the clump of trees that was his destination. “But why would they want to kill you? It doesn’t make sense. All you have to do is agree to whatever they ask. Then I take you back, and my part is done. The Xanti release my mother, my debts are cleared, and you can do whatever you want.”

  Berta shook her head. Apparently Sergio believed what he wanted to believe. “Unlock the doors, Sergio. Let me out before we get there.”

  “If I do that, my mother dies,” Sergio said.

  “If you don’t, you and I both die,” Berta argued.

  Sergio shook his head. He couldn’t let himself believe that. She was wrong. She had to be. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and kept on driving.

  A few moments later he parked the ground-car next to the group of trees and got out. He unlocked the back door, grabbed Berta firmly by the wrist and pulled her from the car. She wavered on her feet a bit, still dizzy from the drug he’d given her. As much as she wanted to pull free of Sergio’s grip, her body would not obey her mind.

  Sergio half walked and half-dragged Berta away from the ground-car and in between the trees. Just beyond the first few trees he saw a short round figure with blue skin standing just beyond an unfamiliar Xanti. Unlike the Xanti he was familiar with, this one had white skin that didn’t glitter or sparkle. It had long black hair and dark blue eyes, and it was far shorter than any Xanti he’d ever seen before. It looked oddly like Berta Simms, in a weird, garish way.

  “Ah, just on time, Sergio,” the Xanti said in a high pitched voice.

  “Are you a Xanti?” Berta demanded, blinking rapidly as she tried to focus her eyes on the beings before her. She wished the drug would hurry up and wear off. She felt almost as though she were underwater.

  “I am,” the Xanti said. “I take it that you are
the one called Berta Simms. The overseer of Arima House.”

  “How is it that you are here?” Berta demanded. “The Dracons’ ranch is guarded against your kind.”

  “My little friend here is a Damosion,” the Xanti replied with a smirk. “They’re not good for much, but they do have the handy ability to nullify magic in their immediate vicinity. Actually, it’s not an ability so much as a function of their physiology. Other than that, they are useless beings.”

  Berta glanced at the blue figure standing nearby and hid a smile at the expression of anger on its face. He...or she, obviously had enough intelligence to understand what the Xanti was saying. And didn’t like it.

  “That’s interesting,” Berta said. “Sergio tells me that you want to make a deal with me. So let’s get to it. I’m not feeling so well from that drug he gave me.”

  “I would think not,” the Xanti said. “I’m afraid that Sergio was misinformed though. I do not seek to make a deal with you.”

  As the Xanti spoke he reached into a pocket and removed a small square box. He thumbed a switch on it, then held it sideways, pointed at Berta. A beam of blue light shone from the box and the Xanti scanned Berta’s body from head to toe with it.

  When he was finished he put the box back into his pocket, then stood motionlessly for several long seconds. As Berta and Sergio watched, the Xanti began to morph. It shrank in height and build, becoming smaller and more petite. His facial features took on a distinct feminine cast and within seconds Berta knew that when the Xanti was done, it would be an identical copy of herself. Since the Xanti was distracted during the transformation, she thought it was a good time to leave.

  She was still dizzy, but she didn’t care. She yanked her hand from Sergio’s grip, which wasn’t all that hard since he was busy gawking at the Xanti. Then she turned and tried to run. She took a couple of steps, stumbled, straightened up and kept on going. She felt as though she should be moving very quickly, but she could see that she wasn’t. Within seconds a cold, hard hand came down on her shoulder and spun her around.

  She wasn’t as surprised as she wanted to be when she saw a duplicate of herself, down to the clothes she was wearing, standing before her. She shook her head in denial, but she knew that the vision before her had nothing to do with the drug.

  “So you’re going to take my place,” she guessed.

  “Of course,” the Xanti said, using her voice. “What could be easier? You have no family, no connections, and are clearly not a berezi yourself, otherwise you wouldn’t be in charge of the Arima House. At the same time, you have access to every Arima known to the Jasani. It will be child’s play to remove them from the reach of the Jasani.”

  “How do you expect to explain your friend?” she asked, trying to buy time. There was always the chance that the Falcorans would realize she’d set off the alarm and show up.

  “I don’t have to,” the Xanti replied with a wave of his hand. “The magic that prevents us from crossing onto the ranch is just a barrier. Now that I’m through the barrier, I have no need of him.”

  “Unless you want to leave the ranch,” Berta said.

  “True, but why would I wish to do that? I am inside the stronghold of the Jasani Princes, and there are none who know of it.”

  “Except for me, Sergio, and your little friend,” Berta pointed out.

  “Yes, that’s true,” the Xanti said. “The drug Sergio gave you was meant to keep you disoriented until I could record your voice, mannerisms, and speech patterns, and map your body. Not that I’ve done that, I have no further need of you. You would only live another hour at most, and your death from the drug would be painful, so you should thank me for putting you out of your misery now instead.”

  “You’re going to kill her?” Sergio demanded.

  “Of course I’m going to kill her,” the Xanti replied, rolling its eyes.

  “I was told she wouldn’t be harmed,” Sergio said, his voice shaking with a mixture of anger and fear.

  “You were lied to then, weren’t you?” the Xanti said. “But I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you, since I’m going to kill you as well.”

  ***

  Merrick, Tor and Jerri left Granite Falls with a basket of sugar peaches. They’d gotten the sales lady to tie a yellow ribbon around the basket for them, which took a few minutes longer than they expected. By the time she was finished they were pleased with how pretty the basket looked, but they were also in a hurry.

  Merrick transformed into his falcoran, retaining his humanoid arms and hands. Jerri handed him the basket, then transformed himself and they all took off, flying back toward the ranch as quickly as they could. Being falcorans, they moved very quickly even without benefit of the ability to speed travel.

  Before long they sighted the Arima House below them. The circled overhead, but, like the morning before, the garden was empty. They landed where they had the day before and shifted back into their humanoid forms. Merrick set the peaches down on a table and checked his watch. It was exactly six-thirty. Berta would be there any moment, he was sure. While they waited, Tor unzipped his protective pocket and removed his hand terminal.

  “Squilik shit!” he exclaimed. “Berta’s transponder has been activated.”

  “What?” Merrick asked, stunned. “When?”

  “Thirty minutes ago,” Tor replied as he rapidly pressed buttons on the device. “The signal’s coming from the north, about eight miles away, on ranch property.” Tor shoved the terminal back in his pocket and shifted a moment behind Jerri and Merrick. He raced forward until he was in the lead since he was the one who knew where they were going. The entire time he flew he berated himself ceaselessly for not checking the hand terminal while they were in Granite Falls.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered,” Merrick said, obviously catching some of Tor’s stray thoughts. “I doubt that the signal would have transmitted beyond the ranch barrier.”

  “Whether it would have or not is not the point,” Tor replied. “I should have checked anyway. If anything happens to Berta, I will never forgive myself.”

  “Then lets get there before anything happens to her,” Merrick replied.

  ***

  Berta looked into the Xanti’s eyes, eyes that were a mirror image of her own, and felt her new, young body fail her. She slumped to her knees on the grass, thinking of the Falcorans and the future she might have had if she hadn’t waited so long to summon them from Berria. She lost her balance and fell sideways, her eyes still on the Xanti, and forced herself to think. There had to be a way out of this. There just had to be. She had lived through everything else, she would live through this. Somehow.

  The Xanti looked down at her, then dismissed her. It turned instead to face Sergio and cocked its head. “I think I shall break your neck,” it said. “That way there will be less suspicion about your death. I’ll put your body into the ground-car, and run it into a tree. Yes, that should work fine.”

  As the Xanti spoke, Berta felt a strange tickling sensation in her mind and her eyes widened in surprise. They’re coming, she thought. She tried to speak, wanting to tell Sergio to run, hoping to make the Xanti hesitate for just a moment with the news that help was on the way, but she found that she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even open her mouth.

  She watched helplessly as the Xanti wearing a Berta suit stalked Sergio. Finally Sergio began to realize he either had to move or accept death, and he began backing away. The Xanti laughed, a gay, lighthearted, cold sound that she was certain had never come from her own throat, no matter how much it sounded like her. It was a sound that made Berta’s flesh pebble.

  The tickling sensation grew stronger, and she thought she heard a soft whooshing sound, as though the wind had picked up. And then, suddenly, wonderfully, happily, three gigantic black falcorans landed between herself and the Xanti that looked like her.

  ***

  Merrick, Tor and Jerri circled high over the small copse of trees, their sharp falcoran eyes and ears having no
trouble seeing or hearing the figures far below them. Jerri opened his beak wide and tilted it toward the sky as he flew, screaming silently with fear and fury at the sight below them.

  “We will save her, Jerri,” Merrick said when the echoes of Jerri’s silent scream faded from his mind. He wanted to scream his fury to the heavens too, but he was holding onto his control by a thread as it was. Giving vent to his anger might very well push him over the edge into a full blood-rage and if that happened, Berta would surely die. She was their Arima, and she needed them. Her needs came first.

  “Berta is the one lying on the ground,” Tor said.

  “You are sure?” Merrick asked. They could all see that the two Berta figures looked identical to one another, but they were too far away to scent them. They knew that one of the figures was a Xanti, and that it was in a bio-suit called a makina. They’d studied the captured makina, as had all Clan Jasani warriors, and were all too aware of its strengths. It was next to impossible to discern a Xanti makina from the being it duplicated. Even their infra-red vision wouldn’t help as the makina gave off the same heat as a living body, in the same spectrum. Nor would sound help. The only true test would be scent. For that they would need to get a lot closer.

  “There is no reason for a Xanti to be lying on the ground unless Berta was able to disable it, which is extremely doubtful,” Tor said. “Also, I cannot picture Berta calmly informing anyone that she is about to break their neck, then laugh about it. Even if she would, why is that man backing away from her? He is twice her size.”

  “Agreed,” Merrick said, instantly making his decision. “Land now, between Berta and the Xanti.”.”

  Using all of the Air Magic that they could muster, the three falcorans shot toward the ground at high speed. As soon as they touched the ground they all scented the real Berta lying on the ground behind them, and knew they’d been correct.