Spears of the Sun (Star Sojourner Book 3) (5 page)

My head felt foggy. I breathed dank air mixed with a bitter residue in my mouth as the Altairian, his body still encased in an Interstel atmospheric military uniform, the traitorous crotefucker, and the Vegan, gripped my arms and led me down a passageway. Their claws clicked on the wet stone floor. Water dripped down rock walls and splashed into dark puddles. The Shayl padded behind me, blocking any possible escape. The Vegan kept glancing up at the rotted timbers of the ceiling. That got me looking up too, but there was nothing to see.

The Altairian opened an iron door that grated with rust and we entered a vast, log-paneled room. A huge stone fireplace threw heat that comforted me in spite of my situation. I think the love of wood fires is stamped into our DNA since our ancestors sat around them to keep away the saber-toothed cats.

What sort of cat would I face, I wondered as I was led to the great room's center where a large Vermakt, General Ki Rowdinth, from Joe's photos, scratched the gray folds of skin and the bristly hairs on his neck when he saw me. This was the slimy bastard who was responsible for Willa's death! His whiskered snout, long and narrow, twitched as though smelling me. Perhaps he was, with that bulbous, pink nose. His ears, also round and pink, raised up as I approached. He sat wrapped in a woolen blanket, reclining in a leather chair that came close to enveloping him. Holos of the inhabited star systems hung above a long conference table. Above that, set on a Greek column, a large bronze bust of Rowdinth in his general's uniform stared down haughtily while a holo of Fartherland's flag waved behind it.

I lowered my head and pictured my hands around his lumpy throat, squeezing, finding the windpipe between gray layers, and crushing, until those beady eyes burst from his head.

Four bulky Vermakts in black and silver uniforms crouched around the chair.

“So, Zorga,” he said in stelspeak to the Altairian, “I suppose those three empty pedestals will have to remain empty.” His voice was high and grating, like the proverbial chalk on board, and I wondered if this were a female. No matter. Given the opportunity, I would kill her.

Zorga's hand, still on my arm, relaxed and he let go. “Thank ye, General.”

The Vegan sighed and his hand also dropped away. “Yes. Me too.”

I watched the Shayl limp to the fireplace and lie down heavily on a rug. I hoped the limp was the result of my kicks. They are an aloof, winged race, these Shayls, that nobody in the known star systems would call a friend. Cold-blooded in mind and body, loners by evolution and by choice, they didn't need to eat often. But when they did, everybody ran for cover.

General Ki Rowdinth flipped off one side of his blanket and fingered a unit with a flashing red button held in his long claws. The Vegan gasped and blinked at me, his golden eyes wide. I thought it was because the general's pear-shaped body, all gray folds and bristly hairs, was naked except for the gold jewelry around his neck, wrists and ankles. He was a hermaphrodite, although his male genitals were the more prominent.

“You have a problem, Huff?” the general asked the Vegan.

Huff quickly shook his head. “No! Sorry, no, General Rowdinth. I…” He glanced at Zorga. “I had a sudden cramp. The result of gas.”

I sidled away from Huff.

“General Rowdinth?” I asked evenly, as though I hadn't known it was him, and also to take command of the conversation.

He didn't answer.

“I came to Fartherland to contact you.”

“And so you have,” he said.

“You could have just
asked
.”

“I could have. I'm told you're a powerful telepath.”

“That's the service I came to offer.” I looked around. There were a few empty chairs. “May I sit down?”

“Are you having trouble standing before me?”

“It doesn't matter. Can we get down to business? The gravity on this planet is stronger than what I'm used to.” That part was true.

I told him my trumped-up story about how I could return to planet Alpha and relay my mind probes from senators and other high government officials on plans to counteract his demands and his threats to Earth. “Isn't that worth a slight cut of the booty?” I finished.

He scratched his crotch. “And what is a slight cut in your estimation?”

I nodded pensively. “I'm thinking ten percent of the depository bouillon.” That sounded greedy enough. I began to spin a red coil within my head.

He shattered my concentration as he slammed the armrest with a fist. “You greedy Terran rat-eater!” he shouted. “You are all the slime at the bottom of the cesspool.”

I managed to stay in control, though his four bodyguards raised up to their full height on hind legs, about seven feet.

Rowdinth's thumb covered the blinking red light on the unit in his claws and he rubbed it.

I heard Huff squeeze in a hard breath.

What the hell was really going on here?

My heart began to pound and I couldn't control a shiver of intuition that screamed
You're in some real trouble, tag.

“OK!” I said with a confidence I didn't feel. “Then
you
name my share.”

“The bouillon is slated to pay for an army of Vermakts,” he said. “Not to indulge your obscene earthly pleasures! I never met a Terran who had any sense of honor or duty!”

Honor?
I thought bitterly. What did this bloated bag of garbage know of honor? I glanced toward the door and shrugged. “Then I guess we can't do business?”

He jumped out of his chair. “Did I say we cannot do business? Did I?” I thought he was going to attack me. I slowed my breathing and tensed my body. If he attacked I would snap his neck like a twig. Then the chips could fall wherever the hell they wanted to.

Perhaps it was the look in my eyes that stopped him. “Don't defy me!” he screeched and waved his fists like an impotent child. “I could have you executed right now for high crimes!”

Zorga moved further away from me, but Huff came closer to my side.

“I will tell you if we can do business!” Rowdinth continued.

“So tell me, General,” I answered coolly through a tight throat, “do you want to buy my services? I'm still willing to come in on this deal.”

And just like that, he relaxed his fists and slumped back into the chair and stared at me, a raging child who had been brought into line. But a savage child with a lot of backup. “How do I know you're not W-CIA?” he asked.

“I told you, General, after all my humanitarian work on Syl' Terria and Halcyon, they threw a few piddling creds my way and it was 'Thank you, Mister Rammis. Goodbye, Mister Rammis. Don't call us. We'll call you'.”

I'd played my last card. It felt like trying to fill an inside straight. I attempted to work some moisture into my mouth and appear confident before this madman.

“Do you always have lunch with former W-CIA agents?”

“Oh, that. He's my former father in law. We're still good friends and we were both on planet Alpha.” I shook my head as though I were annoyed. “Is there anything else you would like to know?”

He tapped the armrest. A slot opened and a gold holder with a goblet of red wine, I presumed, rose out of the slot. He sipped it. “And if I'm forced to destroy your homeworld to convince Alpha to give me the gold? Where do you stand, Terran?”

The slimy crotefucker! I shook my head. “There's nobody on Earth who cares about me. My parents didn't want me. My foster parents used me for slave labor! My wife divorced me to marry some rich tag.” I shrugged.

“And your daughter?”

Honor indeed. He'd love to use Lisa to make me do his bidding. “You did your homework, General Rowdinth. But she's been off-planet since your threats to Earth.” I swayed and caught myself. The heavy gravity, the fight in the parking lot, whatever they had used to put me to sleep, had worn me out. But I had to do a mindprobe. “I told the Child-Proponent volunteers who took her, along with a bunch of other kids, that I didn't want to know which planet they were heading for.”

I rubbed my eyes as though I were weary, and gathered a coil within my mind. I forced it to spin stronger against the fatigue within me, threw it at him and probed.

I touched his mind for about ten seconds when I recoiled. Here was a darkness beyond the void between stars. A coldness beyond an ice planet. I felt his desire to suffer, to be nailed to a cross, like the Christ figure. But it fought with a call for revenge. I maintained the link, though I was afraid I'd be drawn into this bleak, psychopathic mindscape. I had to report to Joe Hatch that the W-CIA was dealing with a mind so twisted by obsession for reprisal, that life meant nothing, not even his own. His threat to destroy Earth, given the means, was no bluff!

A vision of bloody wrists with nails protruding mixed with graphics of Earth implanted within Rowdinth's brain, probably with a microchip. An image of incredible volcanoes rose up from Earth into space itself and spewed magna that was quenched by tidal waves that reared out of deep-sea beds and left subterranean canyons exposed. The planet bulged and ripped open like a crushed egg that bled its hot core as it spun away into space.

I realized I was breathing hard as I withdrew the probe. Could a crazed mind affect my own psyche? I wasn't certain. But it left me feeling frightened at this touch with his brain's primal core, a place that the normal psyche doesn't usually tap.

“Did you enjoy your trespass into my mind?” he asked and sipped his drink.

Christ and Buddha! He was a sensitive!

“Can you blame me?” I managed. “You, uh, you haven't offered me a shred of information and…” I looked around, giving myself a moment to catch my breath. “And I'm at your mercy here.”

“More than you think.” He picked up the unit with the blinking light again.

“I'm tired, General.” I glared at the Shayl. “It's been a difficult day.”

The Shayl lifted his lips and hissed back.

“And you were expecting a better welcome than you received,” Rowdinth stated.

“Something like that. Now can we either do business or will you let me leave, with a blindfold, this time?”

“Tell me in your words, Terran. In what way will I benefit from your services?”

“I thought I just told you.”

“Tell me again!” he shrieked and pounded the armrest. “Don't defy me.”

I was prepared for his sudden outbursts and I just sighed. “OK. I'll be able to relay information not only from W-CIA and government officials, but from the Worlds Alliance's military leaders on proposed counter-attacks on Fartherland. Suppose they discover the location of your hideout? They could – “

“That's Citadel.” He reclined into the chair's embrace.

I nodded. “The Alliance could launch A.I. missiles that would travel through space to hit your Citadel. I can influence the programmers' minds. The way I influenced the five tags you sent to capture me, and they'd direct the missiles at some other planet. That's just one of the possible ways I can help you.”

“Why didn't you accompany the five Terrans I sent to bring you here?”

“How did I know what those tags were up to? I figured they wanted me dead.”

The general scratched his muzzle pensively. I think he was deciding my fate. I bit my lip.

Huff, still standing beside me, stroked my arm. I pushed it away.

“I am also weary of the day,” Rowdinth said distractedly. “And night brings me no comfort from my pain.” He stood up slowly, as though a great weight lay on his shoulders. The four Guards jumped to their feet and supported him. “The burden of Providence gives me no rest.” He walked toward the iron door. “I am the slave of my mission, and it tortures my days and my nights.”

“Sorry,” I said.
Too bad it doesn't fucking kill you!
I thought.

He waved pathetically at Huff and Zorga. “Take him to a cell for tonight. I am too weary. Oh. And give him a tour of the museum. You know the displays I refer to. Tomorrow, Terran, I will give you my decision.” He shook his narrow head as he shuffled out. “My struggle.”

He took the blinking unit with him and I wondered again just what in hell it had to do with me.

The guided tour by Huff and Zorga through the museum's chosen displays gave new meaning to the word
nightmare.
Zorga took my arm and forced me to stand before five glass showcases with stuffed Terran bodies. If I'd had anything in my stomach, I would have lost it.
And those are marbles that were his eyes.
Three of the five naked corpses, with faces that stared out from death, were the tags in the restaurant who had chased us. The other two must be the ones who entered the tunnel from the far entrance. They stood side by side, a brotherhood of cadavers, all with burn holes in their chests. Their blue-gray wrinkled skin bulged where the stuffing had gathered beneath it, their lips were pulled back in grins that were more grimaces. An empty case with a pedestal stood waiting beside them. I began to shake and couldn't stop.

A burly arm suddenly rose from one body. A finger swung and pointed at me. I screamed and fell back. From somewhere came a chuckle.

Huff steadied me and I clung to him and kept my feet. “It's General Rowdinth,” he whispered. “He likes to make them move and speak. It's all right, Jules Terran. They are really dead.” He wagged his head. “Sometimes he makes them dance.”

It was then I saw the thin transparent lines attached to the bodies.

“Can we go now?” I said hoarsely. “I think I've had all the fun I can take for one day.”

Zorga nodded.

Huff steadied me as we left the House of Horrors.

* * *

A cell with a view. More a dungeon. I stood on the cot and looked through bars. A dark scape, with the blazing arms of the Milky Way overhead. Fartherland was above the galaxy's plane. A skeletal tree, its branches just bare winter bones, embraced a pale moon that bore the arms of the galaxy in a spectacular halo of star systems unexplored, and from what we knew, teeming with boundless life. The universe was more sublime and mysterious than we could have ever imagined.

But right now I needed landmarks. Landmarks for a missile strike. And where was the laboratory?

“Do you play checkers?” a voice behind me asked.

I almost fell off the cot.

Huff the Vegan stood on the other side of the barred door with a small wooden box, a folded board, and a covered tray.

I jumped down from the cot. “Sure, open the door, Huff. I'll play you a game.”

“Oh. I was hoping you could pull that small table and the chair up to the bars and we could play through them.” He grinned. “I know Terrans like to sit on chairs.” He sat back on his haunches.

Dammit! “Well, it would be easier if we sat together at the board.” I grinned back. “Where'd you learn to play Earth checkers, Huff?” I said it casually, to lower his guard, and dragged the table and chair up to the food slot in the bars.

He slid the tray, the board and the small box onto the table. “Oh. A traveling salesman from Earth visited my home planet many years ago with checker sets and beads. Our chief bought the checker sets with furs from our kills. It became our national game.

Lucky he didn't sell you the Brooklyn Bridge,
I thought. “And the beads?”

“Oh, the beads were red, so the legend goes.”

“Aren't they supposed to be red?” I opened the box and studied the onyx and blue wooden pieces. They were beautiful, with swirls of cobalt and black. “What's wrong with traditional red?”

“It is the harbinger of death, Jules Terran, the blood color…among my people. Not yours.”

“Well, sometimes mine too. So your people didn't trade for them?”

“My people threw them into the sea, and threw in the salesman, the legend goes, to keep away Death.”

“They killed him?”

“Oh. One cannot kill Death!” He chuckled. “No. But he floated away between glaciers, the legend goes, and pretended to be dead.”

I sat back. “He must've been a good actor.”

“Death is the end of all acts,” my Terran friend.”

Yeah,
I thought.
Fade out. That's a wrap!

I looked down at my black turtleneck sweater and black pants. I discreetly lifted a pants leg to check my socks. Blue. My jacket, too, was blue. No red here. Guess I was safe from Fartherland's winter ocean.

I uncovered the tray. A strong pungent odor hit me and I gagged. I slammed the cover back down. “What the hell is that?”

“Uh, that hell is pig meat.”

“It's rotten!” I pushed the tray back through the slot.

“Yes. Good, and rotten. I went into Gorestail to buy you food, and the Cleocean in Alien Health: We Serve the Stars, said Terrans eat some pretty rotten food.

“So he sold you his rotten leftovers.
And the Brooklyn Bridge,
I thought again.

“No.”

“Oh. He gave it to you.”

“She.”

“She gave it to you.”

“No. She sold it to me.”

I began to feel sorry for his friend, Zorga. “Get it away from me, Huff. I can't stand the smell.”

“I'm sorry, Jules.” He got up, looking sheepish, and carried the tray to a corner.

I sighed and laid out the checker pieces. “Did the general send you here for a game and possibly whatever information you could garner?” I took the black checkers, to match my mood. Blue would've been good too.

Huff sat down and sighed. “I cannot blame you for your suspicions, considering what we did to you. I was hoping you might find it in your spleen to forgive me.”

I didn't correct his choice of body organs. “You want absolution from me?” I moved a black checker onto a diagonal square.

“I wish to return to my home and my people in Kresthaven. I do not relish this job.” He shook his snout. “But I am afraid it is too late.”

“Too late in the day for quitting?”

“I was thinking more like tomorrow morning.” He moved a piece deftly with a claw. “I thought General Rowdinth would just implore Interstel to give him this gold element that he covets. Just to add to his cache of gold from Fartherland's mines.” He shook his head and stared at the board. “But he has ordered frightening things done.” He flicked me a glance. “Things I have no power to reverse.”

“You mean that little thing you did to
me
in the parking lot?”

He nodded. “And now I fear that he truly intends to destroy Earth.” He scratched his furry cheek.

Gee, ya think?
I thought. “I'll make you a deal, Huff. You unlock the cell door and show me where the laboratory is located, and all is forgiven.” I glanced around. The cell was probably bugged.

Huff furrowed his furry brow. “The laboratory?”

“The laboratory. I'm an astrophysicist by trade,” I lied. “I don't think the general is interested in hiring me as a telepath.” I slid a checker piece at an angle on the board, jumped one of his, and took it off the board. “In fact, I'm really afraid that he intends to have me executed tomorrow morning, you know?”

“That is possible, or sometime during the day. How do you feel about facing death?”

“How – “I rubbed my eyes and sighed.
'tis a consummation. Devoutly to be wished. To die,
to sleep.
“Of the two choices,” I said, “I'd prefer to go to the laboratory and work with the scientists on their dark-energy weapon.” I jumped another blue piece and scooped it off the board. “My last project at the Los Alamos National Lab was experimenting with dark energy,” I lied to Huff, and probably Rowdinth too, as I pictured him watching us from some rat hole. I was walking a tightrope. “General Rowdinth would benefit greatly from my knowledge and experience with dark energy. But I'm not certain he'd give me the opportunity to prove it to him.”

Even if I could locate the slimetroll's lab, could I report back to Joe Hatch on my hovair's star positioning system to tell him where the Alliance should aim its space missiles? Even if I escaped and made it back to the parking lot, would my hovair still be there, and would Rowdinth's rats be waiting for me?

Huff jumped two of my pieces and took them off the board. “You should have seen that move, my friend. It was apparent three moves back.”

“Yeah, I guess. I haven't played games in quite a while. So will you show me where the lab is located? You know, Huff, if the scientists are willing to take me on, the general would very probably agree, too.” I jumped one of his pieces, and tapped the table. “What do you say? Are you willing to save my life?”

He shook his head sadly. “I wish I could, my Jules Terran friend, but I have no control over whether you will live or die.”

“You give up pretty damn easily! All I'm asking you to do is unlock this cell and point me toward the lab.”

“I'm afraid that would not save your life.”

I stood up and leaned my hands on the board, spreading pieces, to distract him, while I imaged a red coil spinning behind my eyes. “Can't you do that much, considering that you helped to get me into this mess?”

I threw the coil at him.
You want to save the Terran's life. You want to guide him toward the laboratory.

He looked around and rubbed his forehead. “The laboratory,” he said and scratched his head.

“The laboratory.”
Unlock the cell door and take your Terran friend Jules to the laboratory
.

“I would like to unlock the cell door and take you to the laboratory, my Terran friend, Jules, but the location of the laboratory is the general's well-kept secret. He does not share it with his employees. I-I am truly sorry, but it would make no difference as to whether you live or die.”

“Then why did you come here? For a fucking game of checkers?”

He lowered his head. “To ask for your forgiveness,” he purred.

“Rot in hell, Vegan!” I knocked the board aside and sent pieces flying into the bars.

He stood up and collected the scattered pieces on his side. He nodded toward the ones in my cell. “May I have those?”

“Sure.” I gathered them and threw them into the toilet, then I flushed it.

“That wasn't necessary.” He wiped tears from his eyes.

“Fuck you!” I went to the cot and laid down. “Now get out of here. Go kiss your general's hairy ass!”

I heard him shuffle away.

I stared at the food slot. It was pretty wide. The Vermakts were much thicker-bodied than I was. I sat up. It was worth a try. I went to the slot, pushed my jacket through, and checked my pants pockets. Empty. Well, we come into this life with nothing and I was about to be born again.

It was a difficult passage. But once I got my head through, minus my ears, it felt like, the rest of me was a bit collapsible. I squeezed through on my back, so that when I flopped onto the floor, I wouldn't arrive with two broken legs. When I reached my genitals, it was bite the bullet time. Well, cold-turkey castration was still better than death. I slid to the outside floor with all my parts intact, though some were a bit worse for wear.

Were the general's security guards already on their way? Could be! I grabbed my jacket and ran to the hall door.

An alarm sounded from somewhere. I threw open the door, thankful that it was unlocked, and ran up the tunnel that led to the outside. I passed the iron door to Rowdinth's great room and raced for the outside.

The scrape of claws. The shouts of guards.

Behind me!

I threw open the door. Darkness there.

The whoosh of wings as I ran toward a glow of lights like a dome below the galaxy's arms. Gorestail!

The Shayl swooped down and tried to rake me with outstretched talons. I swung my jacket at him, caught a claw and attempted to flip him. I almost brought him down but he managed to shake off the jacket and flap heavily back into the sky. He was an ambush predator, and I had blown his ambush.

A hovair bounced behind me through gritty sand. Its speaker blared: “Stop, Terran! No harm will come to you. General Rowdinth wants to negotiate on a position at the lab.” It was Zorga.

He wouldn't like my resume,
I sent.

“Jules,” Huff's voice came through. “Please surrender and come back. The general is threatening to execute you if you don't come back.”

Execute me if I don't come back?
I thought. That's a trick even the messiah of the Vermakt people couldn't bring off!

I raced across the dark beach on packed wet sand near the water's edge, and headed for the far lights of the town.

I came up short, though, breathing heavily. A rock jetty jutted into the sea like a jagged fence between me and the town. I threw on my jacket and quickly zippered it. Waves sloshed over my boots and hissed back through pebbles. The sand slowed me as in a bad dream where you can't run and some monster is breathing down your neck. Here there were monsters, all right, and it was my mind they were after. My calves burned with the effort of running through sand, and Fartherland's heavier gravity was slowing me.

I made it to the shadows of the jetty and crouched below the line of piled rocks. On the other side, the inlet to a harbor funneled the tidal flow between two jetties. I gasped as a small black shape darted past my boots. Just a rodent-like creature of the night. I felt like a creature of the night myself as I climbed the bare rocks to the jetty's flat surface and trotted toward the harbor in the light of pale moons. If I could make my way around the harbor, I might be able to lose myself in Gorestail.

I heard the hovair's doors slam open, then shut, and the shouts of voices.

“Watch the hovair in case he doubles back!” That was Zorga. My two pursuers ran across the beach, light beams waving as they searched for me. If they caught me in their light, I'd go into the water past the jetty and swim across the inlet toward the town. I doubted they would follow.

A dog barked.

“What is it, Amigo?” I heard a Terran woman call.

A Chihuahua scrambled up the rocks and barked as he chased me.

“Shut up, damn you!” I whispered.

He continued to bark and to run after me.

Zorga and Huff's lights swung in my direction.

“He's over there!” I heard Zorga yell. I ducked as their lights swept the top of the jetty. I was grateful that they missed me. Until the woman snapped on a flashlight and pinned me in it.

“Shut it off!” I yelled.

“This is a private beach,” she called back. “You're trespassing!”