Nightmare Kingdom: A Romance of the Future (8 page)

Having sent word to the cruiser crew to come and pick them up, Claire set out to keep her daughters alive in the meantime. Remembering how Karen had maintained power through lieutenants in the early days on Sanctuary, she allied herself with half a dozen of the strongest and most influential individuals encountered and prepared to take over command of the immediate environs.

All she had going for her was her own dominant personality, the fact that she had been empress, and, most importantly, two far speaking daughters.

Nobody had publicly challenged Adaeze and Lillianne by claiming that girls couldn’t be speakers.
A whistling girl and a crowing hen
, she recalled from somewhere in her increasingly dim past on Earth, females that took on supposedly male roles didn’t come to a good end.

So much for that, she and her girls would prove the old adage wrong. Power was mostly a combination of bluff and tradition, she decided, and on Capron they were mighty short of tradition.

“They are returning,” Adaeze told her over a breakfast that was almost as revolting as the dinner the night before. Lillianne nibbled at a mouthful that looked like grain straight from the field, than spat it out.

Claire didn’t bother to scold her for her bad manners. She felt a little like spitting herself, but instead chewed at the grain, knowing she would need the strength it could give her. “If the people here can eat this stuff,” she said, “so can we.”

Adaeze ate. Lillianne sipped at a heavily sweetened hot drink made from some native plant and frowned her distaste.

“He is coming with them,” Adaeze said once she’d swallowed her mouthful of grain.

“My friend?” she asked. “Jamie Ward.”

Adaeze nodded. “He is not nearly as handsome as my father,” she said with open disapproval.

Claire wanted to argue, drawing up an instant picture of the boy in western garments who had befriended her during the journey to Sanctuary and in the few hours that followed before her capture by Mathiah’s guards. He’d even fought to get her back and protested ardently when she’d made the decision to remain with Mathiah and the Aremians to protect the little community of New London.

Of course he wasn’t seven feet tall with a gleaming hairless head and the ability to communicate across worlds, so to Adaeze he would seem weak and ineffectual. Besides both girls had looked up to their father as the epitome of masculinity. And Mathiah had been a good guy, she had come to love and depend on him, but still there in the back of their relationship had been the fact that he’d given her no  choice. He’d traded the good of New London and its people for
her relationship with him, a relationship that inevitably left her at risk for pain and even death.

She was certainly not glad Mathiah was dead. She missed him terribly, but more and more these days she was going back to her real life as a human being from the planet Earth.

She was not an Aremian and never would be. But where did that leave her girls with their heritage from both worlds?

That was something they’d have to work out for themselves. Life threw the unexpected at you and you made the best of it. They were her daughters; they would manage.

“Eat your breakfast, Lillianne,” she said. “We’ve got a lot to do before our ship gets here.”

Lillianne complied by picking up a tiny amount of the grain and transferring it slowly to her mouth. That was one of the differences between the girls: Adaeze would just say ‘no,’ if she didn’t like what she was being told to do. Outright challenge was her way.

But Lillianne would make a show of obedience and then weasel her way around it. She’d inherited some of her father’s subtlety.

“I’m going to sit right here and watch you until you eat a reasonable amount,” Claire told her firmly. “We can’t afford to have you get sick on us.”

“This
food
will make me sick,” Lillianne retorted.

Claire had not stood at her husband’s side while he commanded millions for nothing. One eleven-year-old girl, no matter how talented, was not going to intimidate her. She fixed the fuzzy-haired girl who was already
taller than her with her best mother look and, to her secret relief, Lillianne began to eat, though still scowling.

Adaeze had finished eating, having consumed her food with seemingly little regard for its lack of taste.  “What do we do next, Mom? What do you have in mind other than managing to stay alive until your Jamie and the crew gets back here?”

“Not my Jamie,” Claire denied hastily. “We were no more than friends, just as were Isaiah and Mack. You’ll like all of them, Adaeze, Isaiah is so bright and Mack is an engineer, or at least his father was, and he is resourceful in any situation.”

“Didn’t you have any friends who were girls, Mom?” Adaeze asked pointedly.

Claire wasn’t surprised that her daughter was jealous for her late father’s sake, but Adaeze would just have to learn that her mother would have to go on and lead her life without Mathiah. Not that she didn’t mourn him, they had been the closest of companions these past years and even when he was dying, he’d done his best to spare her. It was his mother who had insisted she be submitted to torture in what was so obviously a futile attempt to save Mathiah.

She didn’t blame him for that and she was grateful for all the years of protection he’d given New  London, but now she and the New Londoners would have to find ways to keep themselves safe.

As for Jamie, she had no idea what he would be like now. She’d been attracted to him in the first place because he had been so self-confident, a strong male figure, when everybody else was running around in a kind of panic. He’d been a natural leader, who listened to the counsel of those he trusted, and then made his own decisions and acted on them.

She supposed she’d
been attracted by the way he looked, a tall, lean fifteen-year-old in boots and jeans with a southwestern drawl. Even at that young age, he’d been his own man. She’d appreciated that and had found some security in an uncertain world in his company.

No telling what he would be like now.

“What are your plans?” Adaeze asked insistently.

“Yeah, Mom?” Lillianne’s insistent tone and choice of words sounded more like Earth than Aremia, Claire thought, grinning in spite of herself.

“Serve you right if you get hungry,” she told her younger daughter, getting to her feet. “First thing we’re going to do is a little raid. We’re going to get our valuables back. We may need those jewels.”

The Capronians had, of course, stripped them of their personal property within the first minutes after taking them captive. Claire didn’t feel that she could just let a fortune in jewels go. Her daughters in their hopefully long future ahead deserved to have at least that much left of the heritage their father had given them.

“Are you out of your mind, Mom? We don’t have even a knife or gun and certainly not any modern weapons. How can we get the jewels back?”

“Don’t be such a pessimist, Lillianne,” Claire said, frowning at her daughter. She saw Adaeze straighten to her full height, which was already about three inches taller than her mother.

“Come on,” she said.

Claire looked with amazement at the older girl. Adaeze was the rational, cautious one of the two and she was urging action.

“Mom, I hear them talking and I know who has the jewels and where they are hidden. All we have to do is take them back.”

“I thought most of them weren’t speakers.”

“Most,”’ Adaeze sounded only slightly smug. “But not all. Let’s do it.”

It wasn’t quite that easy, of course.

Adaeze led them through small clusters of chatting conspirators, some of whom looked at them with bitterness not unmixed with awe. The three of them, while observing everything and everyone, pretended to be totally self-absorbed and completely fearless.

These people were dirty and they smelled bad, but this second look allowed Claire to feel a certain
sympathy for them. They had been rejected by their own kind, cast off onto this abysmal planet with its cold winds and sparse vegetation. They stared now with open envy at the three obviously privileged individuals.

If she hadn’t been so terrified, Claire would have felt sorry for them. She knew that most of them, the ones who were truly guilty of the crimes for which they’d been transported, probably deserved this punishment. It was, maybe, a slightly better fate than the certain death that would have been their destiny back on their home world.

She remembered reading that criminals had been sent from Europe to the new world of the Americas or to Australia back in the old days. It had been a harsh life, but in the long run, they’d built new lives and had the last laugh.

She wished the same for these unpleasant people, but before that could happen they would have to learn to work together.

She would have stopped to give a talk on the subject, but only hesitated as Adaeze turned to glare fiercely at her. Not perhaps the best time for a Patrick Henry rabble raising speech, especially not considering that many of these people from distant worlds most likely wouldn’t understand her version of Aremian speech anyway.

Maybe this wasn’t the time for
the ‘liberty or death’ talk. She became more convinced of that as one after another, people, mostly men, fell into place behind them until a small army of perhaps two dozen followed.

She glanced at Adaeze, walking to her right, and was rewarded with a brief nod. This was by intent, her daughter was drawing supporters.

She followed the older girl’s direction until they stopped before a make-shift building, even smaller and shabbier than the one where they currently resided.

Adaeze didn’t hesitate, but pushed
open a door and stepped inside. Claire scampered to follow her, anxious to stand between the girl and danger.

Four very grubby looking men sat around a wooden table, playing some sort of game with small stones. The glistening jewels given to her by her late husband lay in piles between them.

They were gambling for possession of her property! Claire darted past Adaeze to reach for a particularly lovely ruby medallion that Mathiah had given her on their most recent anniversary.

She grabbed it and held it tight against her chest. “How dare you?” she sputtered angrily.

The closest man jumped up and seized hold of the arm holding the valuable ornament. His grip squeezed her arm painfully.

He stared at her with eyes that seemed lost in deep evil and for just an instant she actually felt afraid. Maybe she’d acted a little prematurely in seizing the medallion.

But then she saw that his gaze had slid past her to regard Adaeze. Aha! This had to be one of the telepaths her daughter had been tracking. All unknowing, he had led them here.

In spite of the stoicism of her daughter’s features, her mother could still read much from her expression. Adaeze was communicating in strong terms just what could happen to bandits who stole from the
empress.

The man’s lined face showed defiance, quickly melted away by fear. Claire just hoped Adaeze didn’t push hard enough to put them all in danger. These guys might just decide that their only safely lay in obliterating the three of them.

Barely aware of the other three men at the table or even of their supporters now crowding into the small room, she watched the silent test of wills between the girl and the hardened barbarian.

Jamie Ward had never felt so lost in his life, not even when he was fifteen years old and torn away from the little farm in  Oklahoma where he lived with his grandparents and sister.

Then he’d been accompanied by others like him, teen boys and girls from across the country, each one feeling as lonely and disoriented as he did. Now he was the only one among a crew of silent aliens who only spoke aloud when they talked to him.

The quiet of the ship and the size of everything
was disconcerting. Each piece of furniture was huge and made of fabrics and metals he found completely unfamiliar.

Even when he was in the company of the crew, he was left out. Every once in a while the captain would think to address him in textbook English and he knew a few words
of the Aremian tongue that he’d learned from his friends from Terrainaine, but silence was natural to these people.

Oh, he knew they were really descended from the same root. Otherwise they’d never have been able to use human blood. And yeah, he knew that what he was thinking was socially incorrect. Isaiah said they were as human as he was. He called them distant cousins who had left Earth during a time lost to current memory.

He stared down at the western boots, handcrafted for him in New London by a self-trained artisan to replace the original ones he’d gotten back home and which had worn out long ago and thought about the farm.

He supposed Gran and Grandpa were gone by now. They’re been fairly old when he’d
last left and the thought that he might never see them again still haunted him.

No doubt his sister
Marti was still alive. With her skills, she was probably running a small country or a big company by now. He wondered if she’d ever regretted giving him away to the Feds when he tried to hide out and avoid being taken away.

He supposed he’d never know, not any more than he had a chance of seeing Earth’s s
un or hearing the frogs croaking on the pond on a moonlit night.

It had been years since he’d felt so damned homesick. He tried to remind himself that New London and his friends there stood for what was home now.
Poor Claire, who had spent half her lifetime playing a prominent role in an alien culture.

No wonder she wanted to be rescued and brought back to Sanctuary. She’d probably kiss the ground when she got there.

He wondered if they were getting close to the prison planet. Inside the ship, he lost track of time and when he asked the captain about how long the trip would take, the only answer he got was, “It depends on circumstances.”

He never got a clear explanation of what was meant by that
because as he was walking back to his cabin, which was luxurious beyond anything he had ever known, a sharp-pointed thruster popped out from behind him and if something in the swishing sound of movement through the air hadn’t alerted him, he would have been skewered like a roasting hen.

Instead he dodged with the instinctive reaction of the experience
d fighter and took the wound in his right shoulder instead of direct to the heart as his attacker intended.

He wasn’t aware of making any sound other than the thud as he fell back against the wall, but suddenly he was surrounded by three members of the crew, two of them women, who took down the would-be assassin who was one of their own.

Apparently he’d been struck in a significant spot because when he touched his hand to where the thruster emerged, he felt blood seeming to pour forth from his damaged form and decided that he was most likely going to die from bleeding to death instead of being stabbed in the heart.

And what would happen to Claire if he died right here on this little ship on his way to rescue her?

Before the thought barely flitted through his mazed brain, the Aremians were kneeling over him, doing things that hurt like removing the thruster, a weapon that was not only sharp, but large enough to do major damage and then they were working to stop the blood flow.

He had time only to think that at this point he was grateful theirs was an advanced civilization because he wouldn’t have had a chance if being treated by Isaiah and the medics he’d trained back at New London.

But then back home nobody would have stuck a thruster into him.

And then he blacked out.

Claire wasn’t surprised when the barbarian not only looked away from Adaeze’s commanding gaze, but actually backed up a couple of steps. She spotted various primitive weapons, mostly knives or even fist-sized stones and wooden clubs within reach of the gamblers, but with the Gare princess staring them down, nobody seemed to want to act on that temptation.

For the first time she realized what she had in her daughters and their abilities. Adaeze and Lillianne really didn’t even need her; they were a formidable force in themselves.

Then Lillianne whined, “Mom, it smells so bad in here,” and she was reminded how young they were. The years counted differently in the Aremian Empire, but she had always figured her children’s ages by Earth time. Adaeze was thirteen and Lillianne eleven. They might
seem able to look after themselves, but that didn’t mean they didn’t need her.

“Go on out, baby,” she soothed. “Your sister and I will collect our belongings and be right behind you.”

Adaeze did not deign to pick up valuables herself, but directed their followers to collect them, but as the girl led the way from the dreary little room, Claire frowned at the suddenly quicker motion of her long legs and at something in the set of her mouth.

“What is it, Adaeze?” she whispered as they thankfully emerged into the cold open air. “What’s wrong?”

Her daughter motioned her aside for a private conference. Lillianne joined them, but the rest of the party remained at a polite distance.

“Someone has attempted to assassinate him,” she said.

“Assassinate who or whom or whatever?” Claire stumbled in sharp alarm, afraid of the answer.

“Your friend. Jamie Lewis
Ward. One of the crew members stabbed him with a thruster. They are working over him now and the captain is very alarmed.”

Claire never fainted without good cause, but she came close at this moment. The bright winter day turned abruptly dark and her head whirled.

“Mom!” Adaeze said.

Claire straightened and willed herself to strength. She had survived Mathiah’s death. If she had to, she would survive Jamie’s.

But life would seem much colder and more lonely without the thought that Jamie was out there someplace. She shivered in the wind and picked up her pace to lead the way back to their living quarters, refusing to listen to whatever it was her daughter was trying to tell her.

She didn’t want to hear that her old friend was dying or already dead.

When they got to their shack, she sank down into a chair. It wasn’t warm even in here, but at least the cold wind wasn’t sucking out the last bit of her energy. “We really need to see that the people here get some decent housing. It isn’t humane to leave even the worst offenders living like this.”

“Mom?” Adaeze said again, making it a question this time.

Claire envisioned Jamie dying somewhere far away and without knowing that his death would even matter to her. She couldn’t cry anymore; she’d cried too much over Mathiah, though always in private where nobody could see her.

She dashed tears from her face with an angry hand. “I know you probably think they’re lucky just to be alive considering the crimes of which they were convicted.

“I agree with you, Mother,” Adaeze retorted angrily, “but what can we do about it? We’ll be fortunate if we don’t end up living like this ourselves.”

Lillianne knelt at her mother’s side and took one of her hands in both of her own.
“I can’t reach as far as Adaeze, Mom, but let her tell you what’s happening. Maybe it’s not as bad as we think.”

“He can’t mean that much to you, Mom
.” Adaeze remained at a distance, not an ounce of sympathy in her tone. “You haven’t even seen him since before I was born.”

“He was my first friend,” Claire flared defensively. “The first true friend I ever had. My father wasn’t like yours. He beat me and so did my stepmother. Jamie, Isaiah and Mack were my friends.”

Her daughter held the info she needed and feared to hear and she didn’t want to help because she felt her mother was being disloyal to her dad.

“He’s still alive, though badly wounded,” Adaeze reported stiffly. “But we do have a first class medic and the best equipment on board the cruiser.”

Hope.
She was almost afraid to let herself feel it. Nothing was worse than when hope faded away.

“Who would want to kill Jamie?” she asked. “Especially on board our cruiser?”

Still feeling the reassuring clasp of her younger daughter, she turned in her chair to look up at the older one.

Adaeze’s usually stoic face had turned to stone, her gaze straight ahead and staring in shock at a scene neither of the other two could see.

“His name is Maron,” she said in a flat, almost electronic sounding voice. “He is the second engineer, the latest addition to the crew. The captain is questioning him.”

“One of our own? A member of the imperial guard?” Lillianne asked with obvious shock.

Adaeze didn’t seem to hear her. “Maron says he is loyal to the emperor, not to the Earth woman. He says the princesses are forbidden, that they are the dust of the ground.”

“A fanatic,” Claire commented grimly. “But why kill Jamie?”

“The Earth people are not human. They are like animals. They need to learn a lesson.”

Lillianne spat out a couple of words from old Earth that she could have learned from only one person. And Claire had thought she’d been so careful about her language around the girls.

Adaeze’s face turned ashen gray and she fell silent while her mother and sister waited in growing suspense.

“The captain pronounced him renegade and traitor against the rightful government of Aremia. They cast him out the air locks. He is adrift in space.”

“What an awful way to die,” Lillianne whispered. “It must be like drowning, trying to breathe when there is no air . . .”

Claire seeing the look on Adaeze’s face knew how terrible it must have been to see the execution through the captain’s eyes. She
motioned Lillianne to silence and got up to push Adaeze into a chair.

Lillianne hurried to get a cup of water for her sister and Adaeze gulped the liquid down and then started to shake. “Oh, Mommy,” she said, using their baby name for her. “It was awful.”

She’s only thirteen, Claire reminded herself. For all she seems so intimidatingly grownup at times, she’s only a little girl. She hugged her daughter and Adaeze rested her face against her mother’s breasts.

Claire longed to know if Jamie remained in the land of the living, but she couldn’t ask anymore of her daughter. Not right now.

Adaeze seemed to sense her feelings. She managed to choke out a few words. “They’re fighting to save him, Mom, but he’s lost a lot of blood.”