Spears of the Sun (Star Sojourner Book 3) Read online

  Chapter Six

  My fur itched all over my body from the rashes brought on by the heat. I wondered, as I scratched, if I had picked up parasites on this hot planet Fartherland that nourished all sorts of weeds and the bugs that inhabited them.

  Huff!” Zorba called me by my stelspeak name, “Stop scratching. Ye make more noise than a glutstik sucking its own quills!”

  “Sorry, Zorga. I itch!”

  I yearned for the sharp aroma and soft feel of snow, the taste of salty freshkill, the frosty ice floes that rock beneath your paws on enchanting white Kresthaven, stelspeak for my own home world, which is difficult even for me to pronounce.

  I didn't like this roof over my head. How could I know for certain that it was built strong enough? It lacked ice for strength, and after all, only Vermakts built it. They should have asked Terrans to build it. Terrans know how to build things that last even through ice blizzards and thunderous tornadoes that rip apart the strongest ice dens.

  I sighed as I stood flattened against a column in the underground parking lot which was under the ground of the Gorestail spaceport. Zorga leaned behind another column, hissing out breaths in his methane and ammonia-filled helmet. Drackin's eyes glowed as he crouched silently on his haunches, wings folded, in a dark corner. He must be a good hunter of fish, I thought.

  Hovairs and hovars and ground cars and zip jumpers, and even a hybrid water sprite were lined up in dark rows. What would it be like to ride the sea in a water sprite? It must be like riding the back of a great leviathan that plunged and leaped in the icy waters of Kresthaven.

  I sighed as I waited. I was not embraced by the Lords in this work I was about to do. But what choice did I have when most of the cubs had left the traditional ways of the Vegan tribes to work on city worlds with all their dreary comforts and gadgets. They would never know the joy of the hunt, or lapping freshkill blood mixed with hard-packed balls of snow. A tear wet my cheek fur. They had abandoned the oldsters, who starved without their helping paws. Some had already perished from failed hunts. I took this work, though it damned my soul to the depths of Lord Vorlof's Fiery Pit for eternity, to keep my small clan healthy with as much blubber as credits could buy.

  “Huff!” Zorba whispered, “he's coming!”

  Oh. There he is!

  The Terran Jules hummed as he strolled to his hovair. He was tall and narrow, with only a patch of yellow fur on the top of his head. I wondered if there were more patches beneath the black pants, the black sweater, and the blue jacket. Was he really comfortable in all those coverings? And leather shoes that reached to his ankles! He was appealing, though, the way exotic pets are appealing, and I had to smile as I watched him saunter to his hovair. Terrans are so well balanced on their hind legs, as though walking is a dance. Born to walk upright, I thought and sighed. I could only pray that the godless General Ki Rowdinth would not add this Terran to his museum when he had gotten whatever it was he wanted to get from him.

  The Terran called out “Open” to his hovair and the vehicle's door swung wide.

  “Good hovair,” he said and chuckled.

  His voice was soft and melodious. I chuckled too.

  “Now!” Zorga whispered.

  “Oh!” I went to all fours and leaped forward, with Zorga lumbering by my side on his hind legs, his broad tail slapping the ground.

  The Terran heard us and turned. He inhaled a sharp breath and slammed the open door against Zorga and me as we leaped at him. I was shaken, but my thick neck fur took up most of the shock. Zorga, with his bumpy, scaly skin, his bulky helmet, staggered sideways and crashed to the ground.

  “Ye damn Terran pritcull!” Zorga shouted as he got up.

  If the Jules made it into his vehicle and locked the door, we were lost! General Rowdinth would not be happy with our empty paws. I whined as I pictured my dead stuffed body hanging on a hook in his museum.

  The Terran Jules threw himself into the pilot's seat and reached out to close the door. I saw Drackin prowl from behind the vehicle and leap at him with a growl.

  The Terran cried out as Drackin dragged him from the hovair and onto the ground, and wrapped his strong arms around the frail human body.

  “Don't damage him, Drackin!” I cried.

  The Jules Terran fought as though his life depended on breaking free, with kicks to Drackin's hind legs and his soft underbelly. Considering General Rowdinth's bone-sharp temper and his uncaring for any life but his own, the Terran Jules might truly be fighting for his life. I hoped not. I wanted no part in the death of any intelligent being, including aliens.

  Drackin growled and tightened his grip.

  I felt a fuzziness in my mind. A thought rose up inside my head that was not my own. Let the Terran go! it came. I looked around. Let him go or you'll die! “Zorga?” I asked, “did you say something?”

  “It's the Terran,” Zorga said. “He's a telepath, numbtail. Remember?”

  Drackin must have felt the fuzziness too. He loosened his grip and the Jules Terran squeezed out of it. But I think Drackin's hunting instincts were aroused when the Terran broke free because Drackin growled and gripped him tighter. He spread a wing as though covering a prey he alone had brought down.

  A strong desire to let the Jules Terran go came upon me as an ache in my chest.

  “Zorga,” I said, “do you think we should let him go? Because I think we should let him go.”

  “When do you think?” Zorba said. “This will close down his mind probes.” He extracted a small bottle and a rag from his suit pouch and poured liquid onto the rag. “Take this.” He held out the dripping piece of material to me, “and hold it over its nose and mouth. We are not allowed to use a stingler stun setting on it.”

  I took the smelly rag and tried to hold it over the Terran's face. He fought me and managed to gasp in fresh breaths.

  I pressed the rag harder.

  “Not on its eyes,” Zorga said and reached into his suit pouch. “It doesn't breathe through its eyes!”

  The Terran bit my paw. I yelped and grabbed his head fur and held him down with the rag over his nose and mouth. I almost laughed at the two strips of fur above his eyes.

  After a few breaths, he moaned and his body relaxed. His eyes fluttered and closed, his muscles went soft, and when Drackin let go, he slumped to his front side.

  Drackin folded his pale wings and limped back to the dark corner with blood dripping from a cut on his hind leg.

  Zorga took out a syringe of blue liquid with a tiny round object floating within it. I watched, intrigued, as he slipped the sharp needle into the Terran's fur behind his right ear and pushed down the plunger until the syringe was empty. The Terran's body jerked, but his eyes remained closed.

  “What in the Sacred Lords of the Ten Oceans is that?” I asked Zorga.

  “An implant. The liquid will prevent pain or infection. It won't know it's wearing it.” He peered at me. “Of course, ye won't mention it to the Terran.”

  “Of course. What does it do?”

  “It is nuclear. It explodes and blows apart the skull and anything else for miles around.

  “It…when?”

  “When General Rowdinth pushes the blinking red button on his detonator. It also tracks the Terran's movements. The general wants to know where it is located at all times. He shoved the Terran onto his back.

  I felt as though tiny ice chips were storm-tossed within both my stomachs. What had I helped to do? I stood up and stared down at the still form. “Time is a river,” my people say, “and the ice floes are our decisions and our acts. One can no more make the ice float back against the current than a freshkill can get up and walk again.”

  Zorga roughly picked up one end of the Terran. I picked up the other end and we carried him to the open storage compartment of our hovair. He was light but slippery. I almost dropped my end.

  “Be careful!” Zorga warned. “It has a thin, flexible nose that breaks easily. Would ye care to explain to General Rowdinth that ye damaged
his prize?”

  I held the Terran tighter as we lifted him into the compartment. He lay curled and quiet as a sleeping cub. I sighed and closed the door, then locked it. After this night's work, how could I return to Kresthaven and look my clans-peers in their snouts again?

  I had lost my soul.

  Chapter Seven

  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 cau
ght 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.