The Sword Lord (31 page)

“No, Garl,” he ordered harshly. “Let her in.”

Garl shrugged and entered the airlock. Maryam followed him and Raven joined them. Maryam was looking all around her, her eyes filled with curiosity and wonder. She peered through the open doorway that led into the heart of the ship, took a tentative step toward it, and then looked back for Raven's approval. Raven was equally aware of Garl and Taron watching him with questioning faces.

Raven knew that he could make her understand that he wanted her to leave. He could push her back down the ladder. But he could not explain to her the danger she would be in if she did not move well clear of the ship's exhaust thrust. She would probably stand there with that stupid look on her face and wait to be incinerated.

“She comes with us,” he said flatly. “We will return to this planet and she may still prove to be of some political value.”

It was his decision and there was no argument. Whether they believed him or not, they did not let their opinions show. While Garl closed the airlock door, Raven ran through to the control deck where Landis waited with Caid.

“Immediate launch,” he ordered. “Earth escape trajectory and velocity. We return to Dooma. We have no time to waste.”

“The Alphan ship?” Landis asked uncertainty.

“We fought Alphans in the city. They will have given our position to their ship. But we do not know their position. We are at the disadvantage and could be hit at any time.”

They did not relish the thought of flight but events had turned against them and there was no future in inviting an Alphan attack. All of them could see that every second they now remained on the ground might well be their last. They strapped themselves into their flight chairs. Raven strapped Maryam in the seat that had been Thorn's and then Landis initiated the launch sequence.

The Solar Cruiser slowly lifted upward on its roaring pillar of fire, accelerated into the night- sky and vanished among the stars.

Chapter Fifteen

It was not until the following day that it finally became clear that Maryam had departed with the blue-skinned gods on their return into space. The palace and the city had been searched a dozen times, but there was no trace of the missing princess. Then reports began to filter through to Jahan and Kananda to say that she had last been seen running across the bridge with the retreating Gheddans. Other reports said that as they ran through the streets, one of the blue-skinned men had been pulling the princess by the arm.

Kananda's rage and grief knew no bounds. He was convinced that his sister had been taken by force, kidnapped and dragged to their ship by these loathsome rapists from another world. With five hundred men, he swam across the river to search every crack and rift and furrow of the far shore. They uprooted every bush and turned over every rock, but to no avail. There was no body. There was not a single jewel or a scrap of clothing. There was nothing but the blackened circle of burned earth where the Solar Cruiser had once stood. At the end of the day, Kananda wept and shook his fists at the sky. He cursed every god that had ever existed and then wept again.

Shortly after dawn on the next day, the Alphan Tri-Thruster appeared, landing on the same stretch of open plain. Soon after, Kyle and Zela began making their preparations to leave.

Kananda had mourned and suffered, but at last his spirit rallied. He dried his eyes and went in search of Zela, leading her down to the river's edge where they could be alone. They faced each other and Zela felt the anguish of unfulfilled love and the deep pain of parting. To leave Kananda so soon after losing Blair was almost more than her heart could bear.

But the Hindu prince had no thought of parting. He said slowly, “Your enemy—the one called Raven—he will return to your planet?”

Zela nodded uncertainly. She had expected a warm embrace, a fond exchange of tears and kisses, not this matter-of-fact questioning.

“And you will pursue him there?”

“Yes, I must return to Dooma—that is to Alpha, not Ghedda, they are different continents on the same planet.”

“But from Alpha it is possible to go to Ghedda?”

Again she nodded.

“Then take me with you. I know that if my sister is alive then she must be at this land you call Ghedda. I must go there and search for her.”

“Kananda, that is impossible.”

“Why? I am sorry for the death of your friend Blair. He was a good man—a very brave warrior. But he is with the gods. Without him, there can be a place for me on your starship.”

Zela stared at him, words faltering on her tongue and slowly she realized that he was making a kind of sense. Her mission was to learn about Earth and to establish friendly relations with its people. If she took Kananda back to Alpha, then he could answer all of Space Command's questions, and if they could help him to recover his sister, then they would earn the eternal friendship and loyalty of Karakhor. She could easily justify such an action. Some might say it was an opportunity not to be missed.

But was it right for him? She loved him too much too simply make use of him. She did not want him to make a hasty decision which he might later regret.

“What will happen here?” she asked. “Your people still face war with your enemies on this planet. Perhaps they will need you.”

Kananda shrugged. “It will still be many moons before Maghalla can marshal all her forces to attack Karakhor. Sardar is a coward. He knows that even with Kanju and the monkey tribes, he still cannot be certain of victory and so he will seek more allies. When the alliances are all made, they must then gather armies and move them over many days march. Provision wagons and war elephants move slowly. Perhaps the whole circle of seasons will pass.”

“It will take many days to travel to my planet,” Zela warned him. “And I cannot promise that we will go to Ghedda.”

“Take me to Alpha,” Kananda repeated. “And if need be I will go alone to Ghedda. Somehow I will find Maryam.”

Zela smiled at his naïveté, but then her arms were around him and she was kissing him and he was returning her kiss. There was strength and power in his hard-muscled arms that lifted her up from the earth and suddenly she could almost share in his simple certainty. Might not a man who defied the gods defeat the merely godless?

When she could speak again, she said breathlessly, “It is agreed. You will come with me. We will find Maryam.” And then her voice took on the cutting edge of an old anger and a new determination as she added grimly, “Where we find Maryam, we shall also find Raven.”

About the Author

Robert Leader has been a merchant seaman, a retained fire-fighter and a tireless traveler. Twice he has undertaken the overland trip to India and the Far East and has crossed Africa from Tunis to Capetown by Land Rover. He has also found time to run his own business and take a degree in philosophy, social anthropology and politics at the University of East Anglia. Under other pen names he has published thriller and adventure novels exploring the worlds of crime, terrorism and espionage. Robert Leader lives in Bury St Edmunds in England and regularly publishes photo feature magazine articles on the heritage, places and events of his home counties of East Anglia.
 

To learn more about Robert Leader please send an email to Robert Leader at
[email protected]
.

Where can a perpetual outsider find a home when he doesn't “belong” anywhere? Welcome to the Magitech Lounge.

 

Tales from the Magitech Lounge

© 2007 Saje Williams

 

There's no place like it on Earth. Or anywhere in the Confederacy of Human Worlds, for that matter. It's a place where the terminally weird gather to find companionship, friendship, and redemption. Here, magic meets high technology and humanity looks at itself in the mirror of infinite possibilities. Located on a side-street not far from the legendary Haight Street in San Francisco, the Magitech Lounge is a place of wonder for normals and preternaturals alike.

Jack's an ordinary enough fellow, a former time-traveler with a unique perspective on life. He didn't set out to make his lounge a place of refuge for the paranormal, but that's what it's become. A place where rogue immortals might wander in and the person in the mirror might not be just a reflection.

Welcome to the Magitech Lounge, where being a freak isn't only accepted, but expected.

“Tales from the Magitech Lounge,” the newest novel from the keyboard of futuristic urban fantasy author Saje Williams, is the first book in his new Infinity: Empire series.

 

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Tales from the Magitech Lounge
:

 

Call me Jack. Most people do.

I started out as a time traveler, but I had to give it up. Not only is it illegal, but it's dangerous to the continuum. One cannot go around creating new universes willy-nilly, and that's the most probable result of time travel.

I became a time traveler completely by accident, stumbling across what I assumed to be a unique device while exploring some ancient ruins in South America. The device had apparently been left there by another time traveler, whom, I'm sure, wasn't thrilled when I accidentally hijacked it.

Unlike many such devices, this particular gadget, which looked a lot like a small pyramid crafted out of blue glass, could cross both time and space with equal efficiency. It dumped me in the American West in the year 1884.

That was the first of many stops and it's possible I'll share them with you at a later date. But this particular story is not so much about my travels as it is about how my travels ended, and how I ended up where I am today.

The year is 2260. The place, San Francisco, California, in the former United States. The exact locale is on Haight Street, less than three blocks from the legendary Golden Gate Park.

I'm probably lucky to be alive, considering that no one told me that time travel was illegal until I ran into a group who took it upon themselves to police the activity. I'd skipped back to a time just around the second year BC in an attempt to meet Jesus Christ.

Apparently that's not an uncommon thing for time travelers to do, so this aforementioned agency keeps a monitor in place to watch for our arrival. I was snatched off the dusty road within minutes of setting out to find the guy.

Two people seemed to pop out of nowhere, each grasping one of my arms, and frog-marched me into an alley between two mud huts. One, a remarkably tall fellow (he must've been seven feet if he was an inch), shoved me against a wall as the other, a short, elfin-faced woman, went through my pockets and frisked me in a so professional a manner that I didn't even consider making a lewd comment about it. That should tell you how freaked out I was.

“He's clean,” she said finally, glancing up at her companion. “Where's your time machine?” she asked me.

Shocked to my core, I saw no option but to answer honestly. I'd been running around in the thing for nearly a year by this time and hadn't ever run across anyone like these two. I had the feeling that if I jerked them around, I'd live to regret it.

“You take care of him, I'll go get the machine,” the woman told her partner.

The big guy nodded.

“What's all this about?” I asked him as the woman dashed away.

“It's about you being in big trouble,” he told me soberly. “Time travel is illegal, dangerous, and really, really stupid.”

“Okay,” I said. “When was it made illegal?”

This took him by surprise and he gave me an odd look. I noticed then that the whites of his eyes were literally silver in color, the iris an extremely pale green. I couldn't quite tell, but there was something weird about the pupil as well.

He never did answer me, but I found out on my own later. Time travel was made illegal in 2236, years before I ever found my time machine. I'd been breaking the law the whole time and had no idea.

Yeah, I know. Ignorance is no excuse. I have discovered, however, that stupidity makes a
great
excuse. Sometimes.

As it turned out, he was a lycanthrope. A were-tiger, to be exact. He and the elfin woman, who was indeed an elf, were agents of an agency called Hex which had taken over monitoring time travel from another agency known as TAU.

None of this was known to me at the time, nor would it have mattered. I'd rarely been as scared as I was at this precise moment. Not even when I'd been hunted by a posse in the old west for a train robbery I hadn't had anything to do with. All I needed to do then was make it back to my machine and escape—which was apparently no longer an option.

I wasn't sure what the punishment would be for unauthorized time travel, or who'd decide my fate.

As it turned out, I had very little to worry about. Hex's first mission was to eliminate the time machine and return me to my own time. Rather than facing punishment, I discovered that my adventures had impressed someone important, namely the legendary Jasmine Tashae.

Now keep in mind that the people of my time
know
about other universes, and are at least aware of rumors surrounding the interworld agencies. Not much, I'll admit. And most of us don't spend time thinking about it. The “monsters” that appeared just before the Cen War back in the early part of the twenty-first had pretty much been acclimated into our society. Vampires, lycanthropes, mages, and the various kinds of “supers” had become part of the landscape. Jasmine Tashae—known by most only as “Jaz”, or, alternately, “The Lady of Blades”,—had been a major player in that war. Her name was in the history books along with such luminaries as Deryk Shea, Nemesis Breed, and the vampire Raven.

After the Cen War, most of the old national boundaries dissolved, or new unions were formed. This precluded the eventual formation of a single world government, but not before the most intractable were assisted off the planet. They went on to colonize other star systems. Some had wanted to escape through the worldgates into other universes, but the newly formed interworld agencies didn't want malcontents from Earth Prime flooding the metaverse. They made it abundantly clear they were willing to back up that preference with force, if need be. So with the help of Deryk Shea, now the richest man on Earth, a fleet of colony ships was constructed and launched into space, aiming for potential homelands spread out amongst the stars.