Nightmare Kingdom: A Romance of the Future (11 page)

He and ninety nine other fifteen-year-olds had been chosen for their blood type and sent to the planet called both Sanctuary and Blood to serve the Aremians.

“Have the people all left, Jamie?” Lillianne said in a scared voice. For the first time she sounded to him like the little girl she was and he remembered that in short order she’d lost dad and home.

“More likely they’ve gone into hiding. You see some of us have worked for years to make the old city hall as secure as possible and I figure that’s where they’ve gone for the night.”

“Shouldn’t we go find them?”

Jamie considered how to answer. Isaiah, Mack, Karen and George had seen to it that there was a considerable stockpile of weapons and supplies stored within the old building. If they tried to approach it at night, they’d most likely be met with firepower, especially considering they were accompanied by two full-fledged Gare guardsmen from the Princess Adaeze’s crew. The rest of the crew members had remained on board to safeguard the little ship.

“It might be best to rest up tonight and greet everybody by daylight. My friends have some kids about your age and I’m anxious for you to meet them.”

He didn’t say that an awful lot of the youngsters in New London would be about their age since all the parents were the same age, the original fifteen-year-olds now being in their thirtieth year, just as were he and Claire.

It was an odd population. He supposed that sociologists back on old Earth would have had a field day doing a study of them and their relationships.

Well, they’d done the best they could and, God willing, they’d keep on doing the same.

Claire insisted on taking her turn at guard duty that night, splitting with Jamie and the two crewmen while her daughters slept in Jamie’s bedroom in the only actual bed in the house.

She took the last duty, which meant she got up in the dark early morning hours to relieve Jamie, accepting the la
ser gun he handed her, and walking a patrol throughout the house, checking both front and back doors each time she went by.

Jamie slept on the floor of the living room, Captain Thereon and
the other guardsman on makeshift cots nearby. She tiptoed past them as she cut through the room, thinking that she shouldn’t have allowed Jamie guard duty.

He still was a long way from well and though he wouldn’t admit it, tired easily. They needed him strong and well for the days that lay ahead.

Though not a habitual worrier, she couldn’t help but think about what direction danger might come from. She wasn’t kidding herself that by now most everybody on the planet  knew that the imperial cruiser had landed in the open plain near New London.

Trouble could come from over the mountains in Terrainaine or from within New London itself. If she’d been one of those people hiding out in the old city hall, she’d already have hightailed it over here to check things out.
That the town seemed so sleepily unaware seemed beyond belief.

Kevin Hartley might be stupid as a dead rabbit, but Mack and Isaiah had brains enough. Where were they and what were they waiting for?

Jamie was wakened with startling abruptness by the nearly simultaneous sounds of feet racing past him and the high-pitched screaming of young girls.

He jumped up, paying no attention to the painful jarring the motion gave his damaged body. The girls—Adaeze and Lillianne—must be in danger. He quickly noticed that the racing feet must have been the two guardsmen running past him since they were no longer prone on the floor.

He dashed down the hall to his own bedroom, only to have Princess Adaeze push him aside as she ran in the opposite direction yelling, “Mom! Mom!”

Lillianne, looking rumpled as though she’d just emerged from bed, stopped to stare at him. “They’ve taken our ship!” she said a shrill whisper.

“Who has? How do you know?”

She didn’t get a chance to answer because Claire came running back, her older daughter trailing her. “Adaeze heard them,” she spoke urgently. “They’re
high jacking the cruiser. We must stop them or we’ll be stranded here.”

He was hardly in condition to run and had trouble keeping up with Claire and her daughters as they darted out of the house and rushed to the edge of town. It seemed to take forever to get back to the ship and he cursed his slowness. He was too out of breath to question the others as to who was trying to steal the cruiser.

Once they’d cleared the residences on the edge of town, he felt a sharp edge of relief when he saw that the ship still sat in place, only minimally lighted. Nobody had taken off with it yet, but he wished for the rocket gun he’d carried when he’d last faced a confrontation on this spot.

Though
she was smaller and with shorter legs than anyone else present, including both her daughters, Claire raced furiously ahead of them, the little laser gun he’d given her waving wildly in the air as she charged up to the ship, which opened automatically as its electronic guards recognized her.

“Claire! Wait!” He gasped out the words, but was hardly surprised when she ignored him.

She was mad, really mad, that someone would dare to try to take her ship.

In spite of his physical limitations, sheer
adrenalin drove him fast enough to be the first to follow her to the ship’s entrance. Humiliatingly he was left to pound at the doorway which refused to admit him and had to step aside as Captain Thereon entered first, allowing him to follow. He supposed the girls and the other guardsman were behind him.

They dashed for the ship’s control room on the upper deck and when they entered that open
area, Jamie stopped short with sudden relief. Claire was trying to hug both Isaiah and Mack at the same time while Karen, Charlie and David, all armed to the teeth, held four crew members at gun point.

Jamie started laughing while Adaeze exclaimed
in a distinctly annoyed tone, “Mom!”

Karen gave him a scornful glance, keeping her attention primarily focused on her
captives. “We thought you were dead for sure.”

Jamie gasped for breath, the mend
ing wound on his right side feeling like it would tear apart at any second now. He guessed racing across ground at the fastest pace he could manage hadn’t exactly been good therapy.

Claire turned to see him choking and gasping and ordered his friends, “He was badly hurt. Stabbed with a thruster only a few days ago. Somebody do something.”

The ship’s medic who had arrived late on the scene rushed to his side, pushing him to the floor and planting a breather over his face.

People circled around him and he lay, drawing in the good air from the breather, and hoping he didn’t suffer the humiliation of passing out while all his friends watched.

“Good Lord, Jamie, don’t go dying on us now.” He recognized Karen’s voice and her typical rather brusque form of concern.

Faces wavered above him. He focused on the long, slim face of Mack and Karen’s Charlie. “You weren’t one of the kids taken then,” he said, his gaze sliding on to the dusky, round-faced David who looked so much like Mack. “Either one of you,” he said with relief.

It was a matter of the first priority. “I heard two kids were stolen, a boy and a girl. We’ve got to get them back. Who are they?”

Isaiah knelt at his side, his face strained with emotion. “A boy named Jon Malone,” he said, “his parents work in the plant nurseries.”

“And?” He waited, knowing something even worse was coming.

“Alice,” Isaiah choked out the words. “My little Alice.”

He managed to grasp his friend’s hand, holding on tight. His daughter was all Isaiah had in the way of family. The girl he’d married had died giving birth to the child in a medical emergency beyond their abilities in those early days. “We’ll get her back.”

Isaiah nodded. “That’s why we took the ship. We thought it might help. Maybe they might trade the kids for the cruiser.”

“Hell, we’ll do better than that,” Mack said, slapping Isaiah on the shoulder. “We’ll use it to go and take them back.”

“Not my ship you want,” Claire snapped. Isaiah stood and Mack turned to look at her.

“Not your ship anymore, sweetie,” Karen informed the woman who was now the Gare empress in exile. Jamie grinned.

“We’re on the same side now. Claire and her daughters have brought the cruiser and its crew to us. We will make common cause against the empire.”

He thought Adaeze would stomp on him as she came running over. “Mother!” she said.

The imperial guard, including Captain Thereon remained in the background, obviously feeling there was no eminent threat to either Claire or her daughters, but Jamie managed to raise himself slightly with Charlie’s help.

“Meet the princesses Adaeze and Lillianne. The Gare want them even more badly than they want us.”

The people of New London didn’t exactly welcome them back with open arms. Claire had never entirely been one of them; she’d been kidnapped shortly after landing, but somehow she’d thought she might be something of a heroine having sacrificed herself as wife to the emperor to save their skins.

Now she watched as her daughters sat alone at a table near the end of the communal dining room where most of the residents ate their meals.

She had come in ahead of them and seated herself with Isaiah, Mack, Karen, George and Jamie. The two boys, Charlie and David, were at a table with their friends, close to the one occupied by her girls. At least they could have invited Adaeze and Lillianne to join them.

This was not a good start for the princesses in adapting to their new life.

The Princess Adaeze crew had chosen to remain on board their ship now that their royal charges were among friends.

Friends
! Claire thought glumly. It wasn’t as if she’d expected trumpets to blow and a red carpet to be rolled out for her to walk on, but a few friendly greetings here and there would have been nice.

She dipped a spoon into her porridge, the first she’d tasted in years, and found that the food she’d once disliked didn’t taste so bad. But Adaeze and Lillianne would
hate it. Hot cereal wasn’t what they expected for breakfast.

They’d entered after she was already seated and ignored Jamie’s invitation to join the table. She had no doubt that if she could overhear the conversation between them, her ears would burn.

Without appearing to do so, she surveyed the room and its people. There were faces she recognized. Through the years she’d retained the images of the of young people. They could have been one large sophomore class back in Chicago. And now they were all prematurely grown up. The ones who looked like the kids she’d left behind were their kids; the oldest of which were approaching the age they’d all been when she had been taken away.

She didn’t have to be a telepath to know that most of them were casting long glances at her and at the princesses. She expected no less. They had to be the most interesting people in the room.

“Good to have you back,” Isaiah who looked tragic but was trying his best to assume a cheerful aspect, told her. “It must be quite an adjustment.”

“I can do without the pomp and circumstance,” she told him. “I’m really sorry about your daughter and will do what I can to help get her back.”

She hadn’t meant to say that, not out loud. The others went silent around her and she felt she’d spoken the wrong words. It was as though she’d told a funny story about the recently deceased.

Mack nodded solemn agreement. “We can’t let them keep our little Alice,” he agreed grimly. “So what’s the plan?”

“We have to talk privately,” Karen told them, her eyes on Claire.

This had to be confronted directly. “I was part of this group before you were
,” she told the other woman. “And I’m included in.”

“And me. I’m in
too.” They’d all been so focused on what went on among them that they hadn’t noticed Kevin Hartley approaching. He reached past Karen to grab Claire’s hand and give it a hearty shake. “Welcome back, pretty girl. Nobody’s probably told you, but I’m the elected mayor here and the one you should be talking to.”

Jamie stiffened and Mack frowned. Karen was more direct. “Get lost, Kevin.”

A lot of time had passed since anyone dared to approach her so directly. Claire had become accustomed to adoring crowds kept at a distance from her. Certainly nobody would have been rash enough to even lightly touch her person or shake her hand.

They bowed low before the empress of Aremia and felt
privileged just to be in her presence. And now this chubby little man who held an unimportant job was acting like she was his personal guest.

Before she could put him in his place, she saw Mack’s wink and knew this was a new world, a new life. She was back to being Claire from Chicago again. She managed a smile and said, “Good to see you again, Kevin.”

“I thought you would remember me,” he said with considerable satisfaction. “Now I hear you and your lovely daughters are planning on making your home with us.”

She wondered that he had so little sense of danger. Couldn’t he see that he was like a mouse playing with a cat? If she chose, she could flash her claws and squash him flat. She was used to playing political games at a level he couldn’t possible imagine.

“That’s what she seems to have in mind, Kevin,” Karen, who was too bright to be unaware of the danger in the other woman, said. “Hell, she might even challenge you at the next election.”

Kevin’s round face turned slightly pale, th
an he seemed to decide Karen was joking and managed a little laugh. “I’ve already given orders that one of our best houses be restored for your use. In the meantime, you and the princesses will be welcome guests in my home. My wife has already gone to arrange for your accommodation.”

Claire allowed her dark lashes to hood her eyes as she thought how best to answer him. She had absolutely no intention of allowing herself to be cut off from her friends this way, nor could she imagine spending more than a few minutes in the honorable Kevin’s company without barfing.

Jamie came to the rescue. “Claire and the girls will be staying with me,” he announced, as if there was no more to be said.

Kevin protested, saying something about how things weren’t the way they used to be and Jamie needn’t think he could speak for the rest of them. Claire barely heard him because she had noticed that Adaeze and Lillianne, as well as the two Russell boys had disappeared.

Ignoring the others, she searched the room visually. The princesses were well trained in security; they wouldn’t have just taken off without saying something to her.

Rising to her feet, she demanded, “My daughters aren’t here. What’s become of them?”

“Come on, Claire,” Mack protested lazily, grinning at her. “They’re not two-year-olds. They deserve a little freedom.”

“You
r boys are gone as well.”

“I’m not surprised. They’re probably out showing two pretty girls the town. You should be flattered.”

“I’m not. Adaeze and Lillianne are Gare princesses under the threat of violence and you think they’ve gone for a little stroll with two boys they just met? And in a town where two youngsters are already missing?” She sounded assured, not hysterical, but it wasn’t what she was feeling right now.

She grabbed the so-called mayor by the arm. “Find my daughters immediately,” she commanded.

Kevin began to give orders and assemble volunteers for a search while Claire rushed from the building, too impatient to wait.