Time Raiders: The Seeker
Page 23
“That’s right,” Jake said. “And can a Centaurian Navigator take over a woman’s body?”
Athena shook her head. “From now on, we’re going to have to brief our Time Raiders about all this at the beginning of each mission. It’s the best we can do.”
“One thing for sure,” the general muttered, “if the Centaurians get hold of any piece of that stamp, we’re screwed. We need all the pieces in order to make this work.”
Delia looked around the table at the grim faces. “I wonder if the Centaurians can track us here?”
“No. I’ve set up a special protection energy grid with the headband.” Athena smiled grimly. “As you know, the headband crystals work with the electrical energy of my brain. When we first built this lab, after the Pentagon booted us out of their military program because of so many time-jump failures, I set up the grid protection. If they try to find us or the fragment, their energy will rebound back to them. They won’t be able to pinpoint us unless they follow us physically to this lab here at the university. Energetically, we’re safe. We just have to watch out for spies among us. We can’t assume Centaurians aren’t in our time right now.”
With a shiver, Delia said, “That’s a scary thought. That alien was mean.”
“Well,” Ashton said, opening her hands, “put yourself in their position. The Centaurians know if we collect all twelve pieces of the seal, we’re automatically accepted into the Galactic Council. That means they lose their power and control over the galaxy, and their trade will suffer badly as a result. They don’t want that and will make every effort to protect what they have.”
“Just like down here on Earth,” Delia muttered. “They remind me of a megacorporation that will stop at nothing, including murder, to hold on to power.”
“I think that about sums it up,” Athena said. “By the way, our next Time Raider to be sent back is Tess Marconi.” She gave them a slight smile. “I was working with the fragment and discovered that the Pleiadians put in the coordinates and time period for where the next piece is located.”
Gasping, Delia said, “That’s great! Where will the next specialist be sent?”
“Greece, in 480 B.C., at Thermopylae, where the Spartans stopped the Persian army from advancing.”
“The Battle of Thermopylae?” Jake asked.
“Yes, the fragment pinpointed Greece, that time and date,” Athena said. “We’ve decided to send Tess alone, because if the Centaurian is in touch with his home world, they may think we’re sending two people again. We’re going to send one and hope she evades them.”
“Good plan,” Jake murmured. “I’d give my right arm to know if Kapaneus found his headband.”
Torbar felt rage rolling through him, painfully tightening his gut as he stood beside the Tiber River. It was the Ides of March, and Julius Caesar had just been assassinated that morning. With the city in turmoil over his death, Torbar had come in search of his headband once more.
Over and over, he replayed that night when that Greek mercenary had thrown his headband into the muddy river. Looking at the lazily swirling water, he felt panic eating at him. Without the headband, he was marooned. Unable to leave this time or place.
He also knew that within a certain amount of time, if he didn’t check in with the officials who kept track of his mission, they would send someone to find out why he wasn’t in contact. Humiliation plunged through him and he wrapped the thick wool cloak more tightly around his body. When that Centaurian Navigator came to locate him and find out what had happened, Torbar would have to tell the truth.
Cursing softly in his own language, Torbar walked restlessly along the bank of the Tiber. The March day was cold and rain threatened. Rome rose up the hills behind the mighty walls that surrounded the ancient city. How badly Torbar wanted to get out of this body and go home to his own, which remained in repose at the military installation where all time jumps were conducted. So long as he was alive in this miserable scribe’s body, his own would remain healthy in his home world.
Hating this time frame and Rome’s backward people, Torbar looked up at the churning gray-and-white clouds that moved slowly across the seven hills of the city. The odors of garbage, fecal matter and blood released from the recent slaughter of a sheep or goat filled his nostrils. Turning away, he longed for the refined civilization of his own people.
Along with that thought came terror. He had failed. The headband was gone. Torbar had lost count of how many times he’d waded into the muddy water and thrust his hands through the slimy mud to try to find it. Headbands were not foolproof. If a Navigator lost one, there was no way to energetically pick up on its location. Once it was off the person who owned it, the piece shut down.
It was a safety measure that had shortcomings, as far as Torbar was concerned. The Centaurian scientists had built automatic concealment into each devise so it couldn’t fall into enemy hands.
Scowling, Torbar glared at the smooth surface of the Tiber. The headband could have been swept away by the strong currents. Or could have been swallowed up by the soft mud at the bottom. Turning, he continued along the bank, through grasses yellowed and dry from winter.
One thing for sure, Torbar knew he would be stripped of his Navigator status. One never lost his headband. If he did, it meant automatic expulsion from the powerful Navigator society. Torbar’s family would be humiliated, tarred forever with a black mark against the Alhawa name. Sickened, Torbar again felt helpless rage. Who would have thought that an Earthling could repulse a mind blast, which would then knock him unconscious? Torbar had never heard of that happening. Maybe he could use that as a defense to keep his Navigator status.
When they did come to find him, he knew he’d be taken back to his home world, where he’d have to recount everything in front of a board headed by Kentar himself. The leader did not suffer fools. And Torbar knew he’d be seen as just that: a fool. Fooled by a woman, no less. He would never live that down.
Rubbing his bearded face, he kept pacing along the bank. Up ahead, poor women were washing their clothes by slapping them on stones. How primitive these people were. Torbar longed for the fine comforts of his home world, the good wine, uplifting and informative talks with men, and a bed where he could truly relax and rest. Rome had none of those things, and he hated the place.
Torbar realized that at least discovering that “arrowhead” fragment would be in his favor. Centaurians had long been searching for the trail of pieces the Pleiadians had been allowed to place on Earth. This one discovery could save his career and family name. Curving his hand into a fist as he held the cloak close to his chest, he felt a trickle of hope. Kentar would be overjoyed to hear that one of the twelve fragments had been found. It gave them a path to follow.
Torbar’s mind spun with questions—the same questions Kentar would be demanding of the time-travel scientists in their home world. How had someone on Earth reached Navigator-quality status without any training? He knew a headband had been lost on that planet. Had someone found that headband? Had it not been destroyed in the crash? Headbands were not indestructible. And normally, in a crash landing on another world, they burned up in the explosion, just as everything else would. They were made to destruct, because Centaurians never wanted a headband to fall into the hands of another race. Ever.
Torbar knew that he’d have no real answers for Kentar. But he knew the leader well enough to be sure he’d send scientists scrambling to find answers now. Smiling briefly, Torbar felt his heart lift with hope. Yes, he had lost the headband, but he had discovered the first fragment of the stamp. That alone might save his name, career and family reputation. He hoped. Most of all, he badly wanted vengeance against that Earth woman who’d posed as a Greek mercenary. She was powerful. More powerful than he, if he was honest.
How could she have protected herself and her male partner against his mind blast? How had she deflected it and then sent the energy back to him? Staring at the Tiber, Torbar snorted. The shame of being knocked out with his
own mind blast was almost too much to bear. Kentar would not believe that any woman had such power over a male Centaurian Navigator. And yet it had happened.
Turning on his heel, Torbar walked to where his horse was tied to a nearby bush. He knew that soon another Navigator would be sent to locate him. It was a good thing Kentar knew he was inhabiting the body of the scribe of General Marcus Brutus; Torbar would be easy to find and contact. Rubbing his damp hands together, he mounted the small chestnut gelding. The horses of this world were pitiful in comparison to the breeds of horses kept in the worlds of Centaurians.
As he settled into the saddle and turned toward the gate into the walled city, Torbar smiled. The Centaurians had, long ago, peppered this world with different breeds of horses from their home world. It was one of the things that Centaurians did even though it was against the laws of the Galactic Council. They would not only steal a certain species from another world and bring it back to their own system, but also release their own animals, insects and reptiles on other worlds. It was a way of claiming them sometime in the future, when the time was right. The council did not have the technical expertise to catch them doing this—yet. That day would come, but until then, Centaurians continued to scatter DNA seeds of their home world into as many others as they could.
The laws of the Galactic Council mandated that if living organisms of one world were similar to a home world, that a claim could be placed upon it. And of course, the Centaurians, knowing that Earth women had Navigator genes, had set out to proliferate many different breeds of horses who took well to this world, to make it as similar to their home as they could. In the future, if there ever was a legal battle to claim Earth, Centaurians could claim that their horses were very similar, genetically, to their own. That would give them first claim to the planet.
Chuckling, Torbar knew that the craftiness of the Centaurians would eventually make this pitiful world their own. Their actions paved the way, someday, for them to land here and assume ownership. That time wasn’t yet, of course, but Centaurians were patient in one aspect: they set long-term goals with certain solar systems and planets, because it increased their strength in trade over time. If they had to wait a hundred thousand years, well, that didn’t bother them. It gave the many species they populated the world with time to evolve and make themselves at home.
Torbar felt relieved as he lifted his hand to the Roman guards at the gates, his horse clip-clopping across the cobblestones and into the walled city. Looking up, he saw a rainbow to the east of the mighty city. That was a good sign.
Intuitively, he felt his rescue would come shortly. And when it did, he was going to utilize all his innate confidence and bravado, and convince Kentar that he should remain a Navigator, his family maintain their honor. Realizing he’d discovered the first clue to the Karanovo stamp, Kentar would instantly hail him a hero, not the imbecile he really was.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3815-6
TIME RAIDERS: THE SEEKER
Copyright © 2009 by Lindsay McKenna and Merline Lovelace
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