by L M Lacee
No one could mistake the many voices, some weak, some strong and some young, but all were resolved as they answered. YES!
With that confirmation, Peyton walked across the cave until she faced the outside wall. Placing her hands on the smooth rock face. She closed her eyes as her hands searched over the surface. In a voice that was soft and dreamy, she advised Hawk and Melody. ‘Move everyone back, Commanders. I am going to be naughty and cheat.’
‘Yes Star Daughter.’ Hawk made signals to his Warriors and everyone including the Turqualls hurriedly moved back and away from the wall and Peyton.
Hawk shook his head as he stood with Melody on one side and Darby on the other. Rage and his people ranged around them. Hawk muttered. ‘I had hoped she would not do this. I am thinking it was a fool’s hope.’
‘Of course it was, you should know her well enough by now to know she will do this her way.’ Darby commiserated with him.
Melody stated. ‘It is who she is, what more can we expect. Her heart is as big as our Universe.’
‘This is true.’ Heather agreed.
Trina was fascinated, and she asked. ‘So do you think things like this will happen, each time we go off world?’
‘Yes.’ They all replied together.
They watched Peyton stand perfectly still and just when Rage was about to ask what she was doing. There was a small explosion where she had been touching the wall and a massive opening appeared, leading onto a flat plateau.
Rage stated. Amazing.
Peyton swayed on her feet as Hawk rushed and scooped her up. He whispered for her ears only. ‘I have you Peyton.’
‘Kay.’ She whispered. ‘A little more juice than I thought.’
Heather hurried over encircling her wrist with her fingers refusing to show her concern, she growled. ‘You will be fine. Trina, my pack, please. Place her on that ledge there please Hawk.’
He carried her to where Heather pointed as Trina passed an air blanket to Willian, who hurried over and unfolded it. Trina brought Heather’s med pack over, followed closely by the rest of her people, Rage and his brother moved with them.
Standing next to Heather he asked. Healer, is the Star Daughter unwell?
Rave asked. Has the heat stroke returned?
Heather smiled at their concern as she reassured them both and Willian, who seemed just as concerned. ‘No, the Star Daughter just over extended herself. This is all still very new for her.’ She muttered under her breath, ‘and us.’
Hawk looked around. ‘Madam Peyton, Commander Melody and I will continue with the extraction.’
She nodded. ‘Okay Hawk, make sure Citri goes in the first shuttle and notify Kate please. Darby, tell her what she is getting. Heather, go with the first shuttle you will be needed there. We will cope down here.’ She promised. ‘I swear I will not do that again.’
‘Okay, but if you do I will not be held responsible for the ass kicking you will receive, understood sister?’
Lying on the air blanket as her body started to settle again, Peyton held Heather’s hand in hers. ‘Heather, I am fine. It was silly of me not to prepare. I will do better in the future, I am learning all the time. Now give me something to drink and get everyone gone from here.’
Heather harrumphed and then looked at Trina. ‘You are with her, do not let her do anything else stupid.’ She passed Trina two tubes of dark green liquid, telling Peyton. ‘Drink them both, they have the stuff in them and you will be better in no time. Stay here until you feel you can move by yourself.’ She kissed her forehead and got up.
Peyton closed her eyes as tiredness swept over her. She listened to her family as she felt her body relax.
‘Stuff? Is that one of those fancy medical terms?’ Melody asked Heather, who was looking in her pack.
‘Shut it, Armee girl,’ Heather retaliated, ‘and no smarty pants. She will not drink it if I tell her what is in it. I made that mistake only once. Now it’s green, orange or blue. She drinks it without asking and we all get what we need.’
‘What is that?’ Lukkas asked Heather, who smiled at the young Warrior and replied. ‘Madam, drinks my medicine. And I know I have healed her without an argument. This makes us both happy.’
He looked at each of the females, then sighed before saying. ‘You are all very strange. Healer Heather, I sometimes wonder if I will ever really understand you.’
‘Lukkas, you will. Soon it will be like we have always known each other. It is still early days, and I think most of the time you understand us just fine. We have a long time to get to know each other, just remember our hearts like yours are pure.’
He nodded as he told her. ‘I will remember that Healer Heather.’
Heather smiled and gave his arm a pat, not acknowledging the almost instinctive tightening of his body at her touch. She like all the females knew it would take time for that to stop being the Warrior’s first reaction to physical contact. With a smile to Trina, Heather said. ‘So, Trina, who is not Netta, make sure she has one drink now and then one after she wakes.’
‘Will do.’ Trina said as she tapped her forehead with a finger. Before holding the tube of green liquid to Peyton’s lips and watching her eyes flick open, then close as she started drinking.
‘Now, what to do?’ Heather mumbled as she moved off with Lukkas and Melody walking next to her, both listening intently as she issued instructions.
That left Peyton, Darby, and Trina sitting by themselves out of the way. Peyton finished her drink, laid back down and almost laughed out loud when Trina asked Darby. ‘How am I to know, what is considered stupid? My stupid could be quiet different to hers or Heathers.’ She looked at Darby who sat wide-eyed looking back at her and felt like she should explain further. ‘Heather’s order was very vague, with no parameters.’
Darby’s reply made Peyton want to growl, but she had no energy to even rise a decent word of annoyance.
‘My advice is, consider everything she does, if not stupid, then dangerous.’
‘Oh, so how do you stop her doing it?’
‘You don’t.’ Darby grimaced as she sat beside Peyton and held her hand. ‘You stay close and hold her hand afterwards, so she knows we still love her, even though she is dumb.’
‘Okay, I can do that.’ Trina grinned.
Peyton croaked. ‘You know I am still awake.’
‘Hush, mindless Star girl, who blows out walls. We are talking about you, not to you.’
‘Oh, well then, I will just take a nap.’
‘Yes, you do that, we have you.’ Darby told her softly as she squeezed her hand. They started talking again, but everything went hazy and Peyton felt herself floating away as the darkness of sleep swallowed her.
THIRTY-THREE:
‘It is alright Darby, she is fine.’
Darby nodded and found her voice after clearing her throat once or twice. ‘I know Trina, I really do but she is all I have.’ She held her hand up. ‘I know what you are going to say, and you would be right, I have my other sisters and friends now. I don’t feel this way just because she is the Star Daughter. When I first met her, I knew she was my friend, sister, mother and father, all rolled up in one and placed in the body of Peyton.’ She looked at the thoughtful female sitting quietly beside her and said with a small laugh. ‘Believe me, I realize how weird that sounds. She is so young.’
Trina smiled as she softly agreed. ‘She is and yet I constantly have to remind myself how young she is.’
Darby sighed as she agreed. ‘I know, it’s like that for all of us, I think.’ She looked down at Peyton and wondered for the millionth time, how she coped with who she was now and the life she was walking into. Without thinking, she said. ‘Up until recently I lived my life in a state of terror. It is hard to change the attitude of a lifetime, but through her I manage to keep the fear at bay and every day with her help, I am gaining ground against it.’
Trina asked. ‘So what made you like that?’
‘What didn’t? I probably can b
oil it all down to when I was six and my parents were killed, and not as you would assume by the virus. They were doing experiments beneath the sea off the coast of Fiji. When something went wrong, what it was no one knows.’ She shrugged. ‘Just you know, the sea took them and never gave them back.’
‘I am sorry, did you have other family?’
Darby shook her head. ‘No, the government took me and put me to work. The most terrifying, traumatic experience of my life, just swept away like it never happened, like my parents never mattered. To them it changed nothing and yet to me, my entire world changed with one comm.’
She smiled sadly. ‘After that, I think I spent most of my life fighting to be normal. Because every waking min of every day, my care givers and instructors reminded me I was anything but normal. Once when I was around eight or nine, I heard one of my instructors say that it must be a blessing and a curse to be as intelligent as I was. She was right, sometimes I walk a very narrow line between crazy and…’
Trina cut in on what she was going to say. ‘Darby, I know, I really do, we all do but your kind of crazy got us out here, and keeps all of us safe. We know that, so never think we are not on your team. All of us have our scars and fears. Some of us just manage them better, or maybe we are better at hiding them. Just like you do, honestly no one would know to look at you that fear rides you hard. I did not. So yeah, I get it.’
What she did not say was she now understood why Heather’s leaving was hard for her. In truth, it was hard for all of them to know when a loved one left they may never come back, fear was such a bitch.
Darby shrugged and ducked her head. ‘Well, that is me. So what about you?’
Trina shrugged. ‘Me, I guess, I am just like most others. I grew up in Australia, my mother unfortunately was too young or did not want to be a parent. Either way, she dumped me at the hospital when I was days old and fled, never to be seen again. I was fostered in lots and lots of homes until I reached thirteen. Then I had enough, so I took off and made my own way in life. I taught myself to operate a comp, then finished my schooling on line, by then the virus had ravaged most of my country. So I smuggled myself to America, where I found a small town untouched by the virus and worked in a shop while I tried to get into law enforcement. To be honest Darby, I am here because of Penny and Jean, it’s funny really, I don’t think they understand how close to dying I was.’
‘How close were you?’
‘Too close.’ Trina screwed her face up as she remembered the terror filled days before Jean rescued her. ‘I was one of Penny and Jean’s first rescues. When some officials came to the town I was living in, they called a meeting and told us we had been selected to help populate a new world. Apparently it was small and in desperate need of females. It sounded good.’ She gave Darby a crooked smile as she said. ‘You know what they say, if it sounds…’
Darby finished the saying for her. ‘Too good to be true, then it probably is.’
‘Exactly, this sounded real good. So a few of us did a little snooping and found out there was a planet alright, and they were in desperate need of females but not to populate their world. We were slated to be sent to a pleasure planet called Ediean.’
Darby drew in a sharp breath as her mind shuddered at Trina being sent to one of those planets.
Trina smirked as she told her. ‘As you can imagine, we were not on board with that idea, so we ran. Believe me, I am good at getting lost, the foster system and living on the streets teaches you how to do that. We did really well for wekens, we managed to stay hidden and evade them. Unfortunately, they were better than us or we had a traitor. I really believe we did.’ She became lost in thought for a few mins, then came back to herself and said. ‘Anyway, when they caught us, I fought hard, but it was not a fight I was going to win. They stunned me so many times I was worried I was going to get brain damage. Those of us who resisted were beaten and placed in a jail until we received attitude adjustment, whatever that was. They kept us there for three wekens until Penny and Jean came and released us. There were eighty in the cells with me, and I have to tell you, Darby. In all the years I was on my own, fighting for food and a safe place to sleep at night. I was never as scared as I was for those wekens I was in that jail. Knowing where I was going, with no hope of escape.’ She shivered as she said. ‘It is something I never ever want to repeat.’ She shook her head as she chased those memories away, quietly saying. ‘When I was released, I stayed with Penny and Jean and helped them release others that were held. I helped confiscate the buses that we used when we hijacked Peyton. She told us we could leave Earth, and we had worth and could be anything we wanted. That we would have a whole new start. I cried bucket loads of tears for days. Stupid, huh?’
Darby took her hand. ‘Never… never stupid, brave… so very brave. Trina, they would have been sorry if they had succeeded in taking you to that planet.’
‘You think?’
‘Oh, I know, you would have made them pay, as we will. I will search until I find where that planet is. Then we will take them down and any that think human females are only worth lying on their backs.’
‘So, do you think we can find this planet and stop them?’
Darby said and her voice was cold. ‘Trina, I will not only find them. I will make sure they are sorry they even thought to take you.’
Trina wiped tears from her eyes with her free hand as she whispered. ‘Good... good, maybe the guilt and nightmares will go away.’
Darby looked at the peacefully sleeping Peyton and said. ‘We will make that happen.’
She grabbed at the first thought that came to her, anything to change the subject, and stop the feelings of revulsion and anger coursing through her. And take the haunted look from Trina. ‘Sometimes I worry what happens if she does not come back, if they keep her.’
Trina looked over at Peyton as well and knew Darby was talking about the Star Child. Grinning, she squeezed her hand. ‘Darby, they cannot and they do not want to keep her. They chose her for who she is and how strong a person she is. That is not to say they do not have an agenda, because logic will tell you they do. Logic also says that agenda concerns the future, way into the future. These are Entities that are immeasurable in age and they know Peyton is going to be around for many yentas, way pass, when we are ash.’
Darby looked at her with raised eyebrows. ‘Cheerful thought.’
‘Darby, think it all the way through from the beginning to what you perceive the end to be and tell me if you see her leaving us anytime soon. I feel she would not make it easy for them, anyway.’ She shrugged. ‘Of course that is only my opinion.’
Darby stilled as she looked at Trina, her mind then zipped and zapped along lines of thought. Searching and reasoning at speeds no computer could ever keep up with. Finally, she shook her head. ‘No, they will not keep her for now. You are right, they have an agenda what it is, we will probably never find out.’ Her voice sounded firmer than it had for a long time when speaking of her worry. ‘How did you know?’
Trina shrugged as she looked down at their joined hands, saying softly. ‘She holds as tightly to us as we do to her, she is a fighter. No one can ever believe otherwise. She fights every day for us, for the Warriors, and will fight for this Universe.’
‘She fights to remain normal, to remain Peyton.’ Darby whispered, remembering Peyton’s promise to her.
Trina nodded. ‘That too, what you have to remember is she went into this on her terms and we have to hope the Star Child are honorable, and there is never a reason they decide to change the agreement. Whatever that really was.’
‘Oh yeah, I am going to go with that, it makes sense.’ Darby agreed as she thought on Trina’s words, eventually giving her one of her rare smiles. ‘Thank you Trina. I will hold what you have said close.’
Trina replied with a smile as there seemed no more to say. They sat together with Peyton sleeping between them and watched the activity in the cave. They saw the elderly Turquall, Citri, being escorted to t
he shuttle and smiled to see that Heather had made sure she was one of the first to leave. They watched as ten shuttles one after the other landed. It appeared they were allowing only around twenty Turqualls to go on each shuttle.
When Melody came by to check on them and Peyton. Darby asked her why they were only taking twenty at a time. She told them Kate and Heather decided that the small number spaced apart gave the medical team time to triage and care for the individual Turquall.
Twenty minutes later, Peyton shifted and groaned a little as she woke. She levered herself up and look around at the mayhem. Turqualls and Warriors, air floaters and medical personnel were everywhere in the cavern.
In a husky voice, she asked. ‘Is it my imagination or are there more now than when I went to sleep?’
‘No.’ Darby answered as she passed her the other tube of green liquid. ‘It is not, they are coming out of the woodwork or cave system, it seems.’
‘How do you feel?’ Trina asked her as she helped her to sit all the way up.
‘Better, thank you for staying with me.’
‘Where would I go, I am your Netta, remember?’
Darby’s eyes twinkled, her face serious as she looked over at her. ‘You make a good Netta, minus the knives of course.’
‘I choose to take that as a compliment.’
‘It was meant.’ Peyton and Darby assured her seriously.
Smiling smugly, Trina looked toward the cave entrance and whispered, barely moving her lips. ‘Peyton, we have company and they look unhappy.’
Peyton looked over to where Trina indicated with her chin and as she did Rage, Rave and Fanharr moved toward them with Melody and Hawk following. Peyton leaned back against the stone wall, refusing to stand and finished the tube of liquid. Afterward she took the tube of water offered by Trina, whose eyes never left the Turqualls as she murmured. ‘They are big but not as large as ours.’
The three Turqualls near her turned to stare at her, she blushed and apologized. ‘Sorry.’
Fanharr nodded her head and told her. Do not apologize, we are not used to being owned, in the sense you intended.