Thunder Moon: Book 2 of the Chatterre Trilogy (Chatterre Triology)

by Jeanne Foguth

  She verified that Nambaba had locked onto a safe course, then looked away from the simple structures, grateful that she didn’t have to labor in the soggy marshes all day. Nambaba’s hull groaned. Raine glanced at the sagging section of hull and hoped it could survive the stress and heat of reentry into the atmosphere.

  Raine confirmed that Nambaba's speed was correct, then adjusted the trajectory to port, with the hope it would ease the pressure on the starboard side. The hexagonal shape of the Black Morass came into view. Toxic fumes from the confined sludge in the chemical dump created a hole in the ionosphere, which pilots had been quick to take advantage of. Though Raine hated the evil feel of the place and disliked how it seemed to alter communications, all shepherd and CRU ships made use of it to enter Kalamar's atmosphere rather than suffer buffeting for an extra 50 kilometers, which a direct entry demanded.

  Dusk had settled over the Sea of Sorrows by the time Nambaba's tentacles fanned out across the gently rolling water outside Raine's isolated home. Raine exited the ship and jogged along the tentacle, which came closest to the docking platform attached to the front of her house. With the skill earned by decades of practice, she snatched the mooring rope and secured Nambaba. Only then did she acknowledge that Preston had ignored her plea and that if she wanted to save the warrior’s life, she’d have to find a way to help him, herself.

  ooo

  Tem-aki studied the holographic image of Kalamar. She tapped the likeness. “Recenter and enlarge.” The area rippled, then rearranged into a closer view, which showed rolling water and two round areas. Bubbles? Tem-aki tapped the largest one. “Again.” The spaceship she’d followed splayed like a starburst on top of the undulating waters, but the steam rising from it's hull was quickly obscuring everything in a private cloud of fog. Only the heat-warped section of its spherical center looked familiar, but it was the first thing to vanish in the steam. “I’ve never heard of floating spaceships.”

  “Command does not compute.”

  “I was thinking out loud.” She apologized to Dasya Voltain. The cloud shifted slightly and she saw the pilot emerge from the core and dash along one of the weird stringy bits that lay closest to the other roundish object. Tem-aki leaned forward as she tried to see better. The agile figure grabbed something out of the water, then leaped to a semi-circular area attached to the smaller sphere, leaned over and did something, then went back into the cloud of steam.

  Tem-aki massaged her temples, wondering if the queasy feeling and headache, which reminded her of the motion sickness she’d been plagued by as a child could be caused by looking at water.

  Tem-aki sat back and looked at the hologram as a whole. “Everything is moving,” she muttered. How could anyone live on such a horrible place? And to think, she’d always imagined that finding something as incredibly valuable as a water world would be wonderful.

  It wasn’t.

  Just looking at it made her feel awful.

  Poor Larwin not only had to look at things going every which way, he had to feel it, too. She gritted her teeth and glared at the water.

  For a long time, nothing changed, then a small craft approached, leaping from wave to wave. A thin green-haired entity emerged from the vehicle, its orangish-pink robes fluttered and sparkled as the person leaned over and did something similar to what the pilot had done with the spacecraft. Tem-aki squinted, but couldn’t determine exactly what they had done, but suspected that they had somehow bound the structure – assuming it was a structure – to their vehicles. She tapped the holographic images of the people. “Enlarge.”

  The green-haired one, who was flamboyantly garbed, talked with its hands, its harsh gestures opposed the fluid elegance of its attire, which looked worthy of an emperor. The smaller blond wore a black servant-style jumpsuit and didn’t look very happy.

  If only she knew how to operate the computer program for verbal observation.

  “Proximity alert.”

  The view changed to display another of the old ctenophore class ships. What had the planet lord done – bought all the old surplus ships? “Compensate.”

  ooo

  By the time Raine secured Nambaba’s tether to her home's dock, she heard the roar of an approaching boat. Preston had come. Relief flooded her.

  As her brother docked his craft, he hollered, "This had better be good."

  "I need your medical expertise." Raine stripped off her hydro suit, tied it to its tether, and then tossed it into the water to regenerate.

  "You're sick?" Concern replaced Preston’s exasperation.

  "Not me. Someone I picked up." She gestured toward Nambaba’s open hatch. "They're in -"

  "They?"

  "You'll have to see to understand." She leaped onto the tentacle and agilely moved over its rounded, water-slick surface. The tentacle's angle dipped. Good, he was following her. Raine didn’t look back or say another word. But her bravado nearly failed her, when she stood in front of the warped door. Preston raised an aristocratic emerald brow at the sight and turned to her, as if expecting an explanation, but she knew him and his love of debating too well, so silently yanked open the storage locker and turned up the lights.

  Blood and gore were illuminated in harsh reality. She winced and for the first time in her life, the up and down motion of Nambaba floating atop the waves made her grit her teeth at the need to vomit. Preston didn’t even raise a sculpted green brow. “Rough party?”

  She shook her head and looked at the stained ceiling.

  He squinted at Colonel Atano’s rugged face. “He doesn’t look like your type. Too normal.” Preston fluidly knelt and lifted a strand of long black hair. Why hadn’t she noticed the small braid and embedded feathers before? “Okay, so he's odd, but he really doesn’t look like your type. I’m amazed that you’d pick him out.”

  She swallowed and bit her tongue. Preston narrowed his eyes at her, then looked back down at the Colonel. Raine sighed and traced a dent in the damaged wall with her finger, but studied the warrior out of the corner of her eye.

  Preston glanced at the bird-like emblem embossed on the uniform, then did a double take. He hunkered down for a closer look. "Spirit, Raine!" Preston sat back on his heels. Lips flat, he looked up from the warrior and studied the damaged surfaces in the storage locker. Heartbeat by heartbeat, his expression kept getting angrier. Raine stood straighter and straighter. Posture tense, Preston looked back at the warrior. "This is a Shadow Warrior." She nodded. His voice cracked and for the first time in at least two decades, her brother lost his composure. "How- When- Where- What were you thinking to bring him here?" Preston sputtered, as he glared up at her. His pupils were surrounded with a wide halo of white.

  "Can you heal him?"

  "Why would I want to?"

  She looked her brother in the eye. "Because I heard we had a peace treaty with Guerreterre and I don't want to violate it any more than I already have."

  "You can't be suggesting that you inflicted those injuries."

  She winced. "If it wasn't for me, I doubt if he would have gotten hurt. I was only trying to do my job." She raised her chin a notch and hoped he didn't see her desperation.

  Preston sputtered, then took a calming breath. "You should have told me your 'sick friend' murdered innocents." Preston's long, tapered fingers were so tight around the handle of his emergency medical kit that the skin had a bluish tinge. "What were you thinking?”

  “That he had a mother out there somewhere who was worried about him.”

  Preston looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Don't you know how many of our people were killed by the monsters?" The storage closet seemed to shrink as her brother's rage escalated. "And you think we're at peace with them? Where did you get such an insane idea?”

  "A transmiss-"

  Preston threw his medical kit out the storage closet door. It sailed across the main corridor and hit the concave ivory-toned wall. The sound of breaking glass resonated through the ship.

  Disgusted with her
brother's needless destruction, Raine's patience snapped. "That did a lot of good.”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t throw you.”

  Raine glared at Preston. “You could have tried. In fact, you still can.” He opened his mouth to make a retort, then obviously thought better of it. “He's hurt, help him," she shrieked.

  "I noticed." Preston snarled.

  Raine put her hands on her hips, leaned slightly forward and lowered her voice. "And he's lost so much blood it's a wonder he isn't dead."

  Preston's mouth flattened. "Blood always spreads out so it looks worse than it is."

  Raine looked at the warrior. Had he noticed that the warrior's blood was red? "So he's not seriously hurt?"

  "I didn't say that."

  Preston tried to push past her to get out of the storage locker. She ignored the fact that her younger sibling was a half head taller and grabbed his upper arm, pulling him off balance. "Help him." She enunciated every word carefully and dug her nails into his biceps.

  "For Spirit's sake, why?"

  Raine kept her grip on him. While, she couldn’t tell him about another warrior spying on her, she had to tell him something and make it believable enough for him to want to heal the warrior. "Before I answer that, can you at least tell me if you know how to treat his physiology or if you're angry because you don't know how?"

  "How dare you question my ability!” Rage broke through the fear, which had dominated Preston’s cultured facade. If circumstances had been different, Raine would have gloated over the crack in his phony nobility mask. Her brother’s finger shook, as he pointed at the colonel. “He's a murderer."

  "That fact was never in doubt,” Raine hissed. “One look at the uniform told me that Colonel Atano was a heartless butcher." She pulled her brother’s arm until he looked her straight in the eye. "Some could say the same about you since you stopped treating illness and started designing germ warfare for Zar Vole d'Laire." She steeled her resolve. "And you will confirm it to me if you just stand there and let him die."

  Preston looked ready to explode. Motions stiff, he yanked free from her grasp. Back rigid and movements stiff with anger, he plucked a lifting ball and levitation pin from a hidden fold in his ornate salmon and silver robe.

  “Where were you going when I called? Dinner with The Zar?”

  Preston sniffed. “I did that yesterday.” She looked pointedly at his elegant robe. He raised a brow and touched the fabric. “This is normal attire.”

  Sure it was. He’d probably been miffed when she didn’t comment upon his attire when he’d first arrived. “I’ll get you some of Gornt’s clothing. It may be normal for you, but it’s way too good to get bloody.”

  Preston leaned over and fastened the levitation pin to the warrior then deftly manipulated the ball's red and black hexagons. The warrior rose from the storage locker's floor and hovered.

  "Don’t want to bend over, huh?”

  "Surely you don't expect me to use this as a surgery." He touched more surfaces of the ball. The warrior floated out the door and began floating toward her home.

  Raine gritted her teeth and wished she'd thought her request through to its logical conclusion: enemy blood in her home.

  Preston maneuvered the warrior through the open hatch. If he was suddenly willing to help, he'd thought of an angle. "How do I know this Guerreterran warrior isn't here to spy on my tox experiments because of your loose tongue?"

  "My loose tongue!" she exclaimed. "I have never said a word to anyone.” To avoid another full-fledged argument, Raine began collecting the scattered items and broken bits from the battered medical kit. “If you knew everything that led up to this moment, you’d realize that theory is totally paranoid and impossible."

  "That phial of tox is cracked," Preston said. "Don't touch it." Raine snatched her hand away from the innocent-looking tube. He handed her the lifting ball's control. “Hold this.” She stared at the vial of liquid death while he chose a cubic plastique bottle and poured its contents over the iridescent tox-tube. Her nose wrinkled at the bitter aroma.

  "You carry your bio-chemical warfare stuff in your med kit?"

  "Yep." He took the lifting ball out of her hands.

  "You brought something like that to my home?" As her voice rose, a frigid sensation wrapped Raine's queasy stomach in aching coils. She felt her body suddenly incline backward and a moment later she sat down hard. As darkness rolled over her senses, she put her head between her knees and gasped for breath.

  "Relax, it's not that dangerous." He seemed to be shouting from a great distance. "Otherwise I wouldn't be carrying it around."

  She wished the spinning darkness would stop.

  "Well? Aren't you coming?" he called.

  "Yes." Despite outward appearances of getting what she wanted, she knew nothing was ever simple with her brother. With an effort, she crawled toward the hatch. The sea air revived her enough to struggle to her feet, using the wall for support. She leaned against the hatch, eyes narrowed on her brother, as he sauntered along Nambaba’s trailing tentacle.

  The tranquil water glowed burgundy from the overhead moon. Once her head cleared, Raine thoughtfully followed Preston and the warrior. Was he going so slowly because he thought that there was no way to revive the warrior or because he was hoping to push the warrior past the revival point? Involuntarily, Raine looked up at the night sky and imagined a battalion of Shadow Warriors massing for an invasion.

  She shook her head. He’s probably just trying to keep his robe clean.

  ooo

  Tem-aki stared at the trio maneuvering over the ship’s long, strange stringy part. A quick check confirmed that the identity code belonged to her brother, but his life signs were not promising. Worse, Dasya Voltain’s angle made it nearly impossible to get a good look because the gaudy green-headed one kept fluttering to block her view. “Did they hurt you?” She whispered to her brother. Heart pounding, she tapped the screen, but it was impossible to determine why the two aliens were transporting Larwin with a hoverball. Perhaps he’s ill from the water movement. Tem-aki’s stomach constricted with sympathy. Looking at the stuff is bad enough, actually being next to it must be awful.

  She closed her eyes, blocking out the nauseating hologram, for a moment, but then, fearing she would miss a clue, opened them and stared.

  As they maneuvered her brother onto the flat, semi-circular surface, she got a grainy look at his face. Strange how the moonlight made him look so much darker than she remembered and how the shadows made it look like he had long black hair. A moment later, he disappeared inside the other sphere. Tem-aki bit her lower lip and stared at the closed door.

  Surely they wouldn’t have taken him into that place if they intended evil.

  She frowned, recalling the low vital signs.

  That place didn’t look like any sort of medical facility, that she had ever been to.

  What was that odd pair up to?

  Was Larwin in danger?

  The black-clad one stepped back onto the flat area and turned back toward the ctenophore class ship, then tapped its fingers at on its throat. Abruptly, the water around the circular core began bubbling, then the entire ship began sinking beneath the dark waves. Tem-aki nearly fell into the hologram. “I don’t believe what I just saw.”

  “It was a precise representation,” Dasya Voltain said.

  “Have you ever heard of spaceships sinking?”

  “Negative. However, sensors indicate that one was programmed to fill with water.”

  How bizarre. Tem-aki looked from the hologram of shifting water to the exterior window, which displayed the molten-red surface of Kalamar’s magma moon. Dasya Voltain had shadowed the movement of one of their ships, until she realized it seemed to be patrolling the molten moon, Vilecom and the resident madrox, in a militaristic pattern.

  Kalamar had vast wealth in water and was the only planet which sold eepyllihg, so should have appeared amazingly prosperous, yet most of the structures seemed near-povert
y. The pilot she had followed, chased madrox instead of run from the energy-devouring beasts, and she wasn't the only one. In fact, since arriving, every space ship that she had seen, seemed to have something to do with the care of madrox.

  Kalamar was the strangest place she’d ever heard of and she hoped they were taking good care of her brother.

  Chapter 8

  By the time Preston moved the pale, comatose warrior into her eating room and settled him onto her table, Raine expected a battalion of murderous Shadow Warriors to burst into her home, vaporize her and her brother, then rescue their comrade. Heart slamming against her ribs, she gazed out the open door, trying to see and hear everything. Something splashed. She shivered and held her breath. In the distance, a frog rasped a guttural serenade. Or perhaps the warriors were imitating the frog, and massing to attack.

  "Guerreterran physiology is more resilient than I gave them credit for," her brother said from behind her. Raine swallowed and eased out of the doorway, where she must make a good target, then swiftly closed it and leaned against it. Preston looked over his tablecloth-clad shoulder and arched an aristocratic brow at her before turning back to his patient. His haughty behavior looked particularly ridiculous while wearing cheap plastoid cloth over his elegant robes, but Raine managed not to laugh.

  Beyond him, the warrior looked white as death as he lay on his back with his feet extending several inches beyond the end of her table. Preston peeled back the warrior's environmental suit, exposing all the carnage. Spirit, but the colonel must have been a handsome man. Even in near-death, his male magnetism and raw sexual attraction amazed her.

  Raine looked away from the warrior’s face. Preston took his time mending the external lacerations and in the process, helped himself to several vials of tissue.

  Blood and gore splattered her beige tabletop and the tablecloth her brother wore. As soon as Preston moved the warrior out of this room, she was going to throw out the cheap cloth, drench the table and floor with sanitizer and scrub the finish off everything, and then … Raine swallowed in a hopeless attempt to calm her churning stomach. No matter what, she would never eat in this chamber again. Ever. Once she got a decent night’s rest, she’d talk to the fellow who had helped her find the out-of-date eepyllihg containers she had constructed her home out of and ask him to help her find a replacement for this section.