I closed my eyes after she did and tried my hardest to keep our kisses pure and my hands still. I wanted to move them all over her as she had run hers along my back, but I couldn’t trust myself. And after several minutes it was impossible to ignore that trembling of my feet, which had amped up to a percussive rumbling under my boots.
We broke apart and jumped up as one.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know.”
I moved us closer to the hole that was letting in the light from above, but this time I looked down. There were strands of that hay stuff covering most of an identical porthole in the ground. I squatted down, Selina did too, and we brushed away all but a few strands that were stuck in the edges of that watery glass. We bumped our heads trying to spy out what, if anything, was beneath us. The rumbling grew louder, something streaked past beneath us, and then the hum and the vibrations decreased.
“Maybe we can slip through and escape,” Selina said. She moved her fingers over the top then plunged her hand through up to her wrist. “This planet is so cool.” She whipped her arm back up and drew her fingers out, wiggled them and patted the surface which had resumed its rigid state.
“You’d fit through there, but I’d get stuck,” I said. “They probably make these this size for a reason: to keep people out.”
“Maybe Pauro wanted us to discover this. I’ll bet you could squeeze through.”
“And then where do we go? What do we do? As much as I’m not a fan of Marcum I think we should wait for him.”
The hole above us darkened then and we both looked up and moved back at the same time. Boot after boot stepped over the glass, a wave of troops sent to find us, no doubt.
♫ ♫ ♫
WHAT THE FEMALES had begun to think of as statues instantly turned to life when Marcum released his hold on time. He had chosen to do so while they were all in the hangar. He personally knew—and had beaten in bridge battles—each of the Fifth Commanders who stood in various frozen poses, mouths in mid-sentence, legs in mid-lift either to climb into ships or to haul cans of galactic lard. The looks on their faces the moment time began again showed how stunned they were to suddenly realize the hangar had been invaded by dozens of colorfully clothed females. Then their reactions changed, one flailed his arms to shoo the girls away, one bellowed orders to leave, another shoved two girls toward the exit, but Marcum was ready for this.
“Fifth Commanders! Stop. Stand and listen.” He yelled at them from the service platform. “These females are all Special Commanders, trained secretly in weapons, flight, and tactics. I am leading them in a covert operation. I have been promoted and commissioned by First Commander Cotay.” At that he removed his thumb ring, twisted it and held it out. A distinctive chirp echoed in the hangar. The Fifth Commanders visibly relaxed; the Fourths looked around, a few punched at bio-metals, annoyance clear on their faces. “Ready six transport ships. We will collect reinforcements from the banishment camps.”
During the confusion of activity that followed, Marcum made his way to five of the young men he knew best and gave each one more specific orders, including tasking them with untying the guards and persuading them to help. Then he took Renzen and six other females into a supply room off the hangar, outfitted them with boots, uniforms, and weapons and crowded them into the Fighter Five for a quick flight into the farming region of Klaqin.
♫ ♫ ♫
I STARTED SINGING under my breath and Selina gave me a look.
“Take it easy with the eye rolls,” I whispered, “they might not have eye doctors here.” She was freaking out about the soldiers or whoever was above us. At least my comment got a small smile for reward. I coaxed her back to the hay. “We should stay calm and quiet and not move or anything. I’m sure they won’t find us down here.”
“Maybe it’s Marcum,” she said.
An awfully long wait stretched even longer until Selina hiccupped and someone threw open the trap door above.
A flurry of musical notes preceded an announcement by a definitely masculine voice. The words were meaningless and while I assumed there was only one language spoken on this planet, the sounds made by this dude could not have begun here. I’d heard similar vocals when we battled Gleezhians on Azoss.
Selina clutched my hand and we rose. We had no time for more than an inexpert fluttering kiss before I pushed her toward that porthole in the ground planning to push her down through the glassy stuff. At least one of us might escape.
But the next thing out of the mouth of a huge and very hairy Gleezhian was the Klaqin word for stop which I responded to. He leaped down the stairs and stood aiming a wicked-looking spiky thing at us.
We both put our hands up. Wrong gesture for his liking, I guess. Two humpy Gleezhians who’d followed him sprang around him to tackle us, pushed us down and knelt on our backs. I struggled to lift my head and saw a dozen more like them all crowded into our underground hideout. Almost like we’d been set up by Pauro. I’d punched out his son Marcum for kissing Selina, now it looked like nobody in that family could be trusted.
I twisted my head to check on Selina. Thankfully they had already let her up and with their malformed hands they brushed dirt and straw from her clothes and hair. I was next though they didn’t groom me as vigorously.
The leader stuttered Klaqin words informing us of their intentions: we were prisoners and Selina was the more important prisoner. They hustled us up and through the barn. Out in the light I knew what time of Klaqin day it was by the mist rising everywhere. That didn’t make any sense. Another full double-moon day couldn’t have passed since I arrived here with Coreg, but who knew, maybe my perception of time was off. I looked toward Pauro’s house and saw him and Krimar, tiny figures in the distance. Pauro was on the roof doing repairs and Krimar stood on the ground shaking her arms. Faint words of encouragement reached my ears and I thought I must be imagining it. If Pauro really was saying to Krimar “Don’t worry, Marcum is on his way” then my hearing had become sharper on this planet and maybe Pauro was playing both sides of a complicated conspiracy.
The Gleezhians prodded us toward them. When we reached the house Krimar rushed to hold the door and bowed as the troop of Gleezhians pushed us into the home. Through the debris and into the roofless room we marched. I swore softly under my breath and, surprisingly, Selina did the same. I didn’t pick up any of her about-to-freak-out vibes though, so that was good. I caught a glimpse of Pauro peering over the opening above, no expression on his face. I kept my face blank too, my thoughts humming a single F sharp note. The walls that before had seemed to sag now shimmered and stretched upward toward Pauro. I scanned the room for my ring and saw it on the tray. So did one of the guards. He snatched it up with a laugh like a drain gurgle.
Three of the well-armed aliens went down the chute first, then Selina, me, and the rest. At the bottom there were no apples or shy creatures. They sent us through the door we couldn’t find before and out into the strangest underground area I’d ever seen. I started to ask Selina if this was the way she had come, but I was silenced by a sharp poke in the back.
We were forced to swim in a river of that glass-like material until we came to a clear door into a cave-like room that held an astounding surprise.
Coreg lay on the ground in the middle of an equipment room—pretty sure it was the same one I was in before—but it appeared to have been destroyed with a vengeance. I counted five bodies piled in the corner, wisps of smoke or steam rose from them, like I’d seen when I’d used an arc-gun on our enemies on Azoss. A single Gleezhian sat behind Coreg, his weapon touching Coreg’s spine above where his hands were bound. He lifted his head enough to glare at me. Holy crap. We were in some deep trouble. I guess Marcum’s big plan to steal a couple of ships and time-pace around the universe correcting all the evil was out the window now.
It wasn’t hard to interpret the Gleezhians’ words and gestures at finding their comrades toasted and Coreg captured—again. It had happened to all three of us
: captured, escaped, captured again.
“Coreg, I know you learned the Gleezhian words for surrendering. Tell them we surrender.”
He spit on the ground as his answer.
CHAPTER 18
♫ … don’t let me down, down, down … ♫
THE GLEEZHIANS BURNED the dead bodies to keep the members of the selco from appropriating them for their machines. These particular refugees who belonged to the nansa were well aware of how corpses were disposed of on this planet and although they were working hand in hand with the selco for a revolution they had their reasons for keeping Gleezhian DNA out of the galactic lard.
Selina’s supposed uncle, Esko, was brought into the destroyed equipment room once the prisoners were incapacitated. Bound, gagged and positioned on their stomachs, Coreg, Alex and Selina lay helpless and, in Coreg’s case, fuming. But all three could understand the shocking conversation spoken in harsh Klaqin between Esko and the lead Gleezhian.
Esko spoke first. “We are in possession of their rings. My contact at the furthest banishment allegedly used the procedure on the girl. The harvest is in the ring so there’s no need to isolate them together and hope for a conception. The time-pacers’ blood will be enough to start the bio-matching and with those two using their gifts in space it will take no time at all.”
“But the girl is ours. We claim her for Gleezhe. The wars will not end unless she is ours.” The large Gleezhian turned to assess the two time-pacers and the time-bender. He spoke blunt words to the guards who roughly brought all three to their feet and pushed them out of the room.
♫ ♫ ♫
MY HEAD REELED from the staggering information we heard. A guard shoved Selina in front of me and pressed her to follow Coreg. She stumbled forward, her hands trussed behind her back with vines. She caught herself and did a skipping step to keep her balance. I strained against my own bonds. Fighting while my hands were tied was never practiced in my martial arts class.
The passageway darkened and we passed several turnoffs, but the guards slapped us onward, hitting us on our butts like we were cattle. We came to steps that led deeper into the core of Klaqin. The guards held us up by both elbows and manhandled us down the wide stairs. The air got warmer the deeper we went, but the light never varied. There were lighting disks every dozen steps at landings that turned right and spiraled deeper. I tried to pace, but of course we were too deep. Time was different the farther we went underground.
At the bottom, about ten stories down, the air was humid and smelled gross. A transparent wall ran along our left side and through it I could see rows of tables with Klaqins and Gleezhians working side by side. I could tell the difference by their varied skin colors and the amount of hair on their faces, and of course some had humps, but I couldn’t see their hands. Every one of them had their hands submerged up to their elbows in troughs that held the carcasses of those small animals, like from Pauro’s barn. They were processing them into food. I wondered why it had to be done so far beneath the surface of the planet. A fragment of a story my father told me long ago popped into my head: the plants sing and the animals sway in the breeze, but men hide from the moons to make their sustenance pure.
“Crap,” I said out loud. Both guards squeezed my biceps and hurried me on.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said to encourage Selina. Speaking meant enduring tighter squeezes from the guards and a jab to my ribs. Coreg could understand English, but he didn’t react.
We walked further. There were light disks on the walls, spreading round pools of amber along the hard surfaces, each glow ebbing into darkness at its edges before the pool of the next disk leached into light again. We were pushed and prodded into a passageway that had fewer disks and then into a dark room with one large light disk. The door slammed and locked. The floor was gummy with ancient dirt, covered with a thick layer of loose dust.
Food production. Underground. Dad told me his parents worked in government run food production near where the earliest Klaqin cities had been built. Underground. My father’s bedtime stories played out in my imagination. If there was any chance of escape now it might rely on my being able to recall perfectly the story of how my dad and his brothers got lost down here. And how they found their way out. Little munchkin voices started singing in my head you’re out of the woods, you’re out of the dark, you’re out of the night…
Coreg spit at the light disk on the wall and it grew brighter. There was nowhere to sit so we stood there like idiots until Selina spoke up. “Cue the hero,” she said. “Get us untied and kick the door down.”
She turned her back to me and wiggled her fingers. The golden vines they used to tie her hands had trailing ends of tiny flowers. I turned too and backed up to her thinking we could untie each other but our height difference made that awkward.
“Those are pechan vines,” Coreg said. “Is that what they used on me?” He turned sideways to show his hands, tightly rimmed in green vines, with no little flowers on them like on Selina’s.
“No, yours are green.”
Coreg frowned and mumbled something about pechan vines and plickkens.
“Anybody got a knife?” Selina said. She bent forward and pushed her hands down her backside. “Wait. I think I can … yeah … call me a contortionist.”
“You’re a contortionist,” I said as she succeeded in bringing her arms under her knees and stepping back through the ring her tied arms made. With her hands now in front of her she wiggled her fingers and moved toward me.
“Untie me first,” Coreg said. His ears kinked tight against his head.
“Don’t think so.”
She worked at my vines, but judging by the not so cute words she muttered she couldn’t get the knots out.
“Hashtag Plan B,” she said. She lifted her hands to her mouth and chomped on the vine.
“No! If they’re pechan vines … Marcum told me they’re poisonous.” Coreg’s outcry didn’t stop her.
A couple bites and tugs and the vines slipped away. She spit and smiled.
“I’m okay.” She knelt behind me and bit through my bonds almost as quickly. “There. Now for the door. Kick away.”
We totally ignored Coreg’s protests as I did some martial arts kicks. I succeeded in sending a shooting pain all the way up to my groin.
“Untie me and I’ll show you what these boots can do.” Coreg’s face was changing colors. It wasn’t pretty even though the light was dimming.
“Fine, dude, but—” I couldn’t think of a decent threat for the circumstance we were in. I grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.
“Let me,” Selina said. She squatted down and bit between his wrists. The vines fell off and Coreg rushed the door. I hated to admit it, but his moves were triple anything I’d ever done. The door burst away and there was a huge indentation where his boot hit. I almost gave him a high five, something I did with him at basketball practice.
The next instant we heard an explosion back the way we’d come from. Great. Tying us up and locking us in wasn’t enough; the guards had sealed us down here for good.
“Alex.” Selina’s voice sounded like a child choking. Her eyes went wide and purple drool slid down her chin. The next thing I knew she flopped backwards on the ground. For once I wasn’t fast enough to catch her. A horseshoe cloud of colorless dust puffed up and framed her head then settled down with ominous finality.
♫ ♫ ♫
NOT THE END.
The story continues in the third book: THE TIME STOPPER, Marcum’s journey.
Secret powers. Deadly enemies. A love trap.
Marcum is plucked from his easy farm life on Klaqin to serve in the Interstellar Combat Academy where he is schooled in galactic warfare. He forms a reluctant alliance with an incorrigible recruit named Coreg. Together they risk banishment, prison and death to exceed the space travel limits in a search of a time-bender.
They find Selina on the out-of-bounds planet Earth. Her ability to slow the passage of time will be i
nvaluable in fighting other aliens. But Marcum loses his heart to her and when Coreg takes her back to Klaqin Marcum remains on Earth in order to develop a far greater talent than time-bending. Now he’s ready to return home and get the girl. But Coreg isn’t his only obstacle.
If you enjoyed this book please leave a review at Amazon. And be sure to order your copy of THE TIME STOPPER now.
Other books by Debra Chapoton
THE GIRL IN THE TIME MACHINE
EXODIA
OUT OF EXODIA
A SOUL’S KISS
THE GUARDIAN’S DIARY
SHELTERED
CROSSING THE SCRIPTURES
EDGE OF ESCAPE
THE TIME BENDER
THE TIME PACER
THE TIME STOPPER
THE TIME ENDER
The Time Pacer: An Alien Teen Fantasy Adventure (The Time Bender Book 2) Page 17