The Helavite War (2 page)

Sounds like a sweet place for R
& R.

Forested, tree
dwellers.

He says the welcome mat is always
out.

Jake threw a few things in his pack. He
tossed the pack in the planet pod for the trip down and called to
Kay-o, a pet dar-dolf, something like a cross between a wolf and a
bear. Jake picked up Kay-o as a prize in a game of chance, about
two years ago. He had been trying to teach him manners ever since.
The dar-dolf did not take well to discipline and he had very sharp
teeth. However, even though he had a habit of chewing up Jake's
best gloves every time he got a new pair, Kay-o was a loyal
companion and a real scrapper in a fight. He'd saved Jake's bacon
more than once.

Kay-o planted himself confidently in the
pilot's seat as though he intended to fly the pod himself.

"Come!" Jake patted the passenger seat
invitingly.

Kay-o settled down in a half lying position
in the pilot's seat, the sheer bulk of his massive, hairy body
spilling over the edges of the chair. Even in this simi-reclining
position he was still tall enough to be able to see out the front
viewport. Jake thought for sure he detected a slight glint in the
dar-dolf's eyes.

"Kay-o! Come!" Jake commanded, in what he
hoped was a more forceful tone. He followed the command with a tug
on the dar-dolf's stout harness.

Kay-o's eyes narrowed to slits and he
emitted a deep rumbling growl.

Jake removed one of his gloves from its
place tucked under his belt and tossed it into the passenger seat.
Kay-o obediently hopped over grabbing Jake's glove triumphantly in
his paws. The mercenary thought he saw a sparkle of mischief in the
beast's eyes as he tore into the leather of the new glove with his
huge canines.

"Enjoy it while you can," he muttered to
Kay-o. "I swear that's the last one you get." Jake took his own
position in the pilot's seat and powered up the thrusters for the
descent to the planet's surface.

When Jake got within scanner range he
started looking for the settlement. There was none. Lots of green,
but no people. His father's log was never wrong. Something must
have happened. Jake decided to land and investigate. There was
nothing he loved more than solving a good mystery.

He set the planet pod down on the shore of a
crystal blue lake at the edge of a grove of trees. The planet might
not be inhabited, but it was a lovely place for a good rest. He and
Kay-o piled out of the pod to start their reconnaissance.

They found a tree dwelling almost
immediately. There had been no effort made to conceal it. Jake was
walking around the trunk of the tree wondering how to announce
himself when everything happened at once.

He saw a young man, hardly more than a boy,
step through the bushes at the edge of the stand of trees. He was
tall and slender. He wore britches and a loose fitting tunic of
tan, with knee high boots of a soft fawn color. The kid was holding
a knife in one hand, a bunch of reeds in the other. He had been
gathering, not hunting. The boy was startled to see someone at his
home. He stood transfixed, rigid in surprise, at the edge of the
clearing under the trees. All of these details plus his beautiful,
blue cat eyes, that stared out of an otherwise human looking face,
Jake took in the few brief seconds before Kay-o sprung out of
nowhere to attack the boy. The dar-dolf's sheer power and weight
took the boy by surprise. His knees buckled and he was knocked to
the ground. Kay-o saw the knife as a weapon. He went for the boy's
throat, his teeth sinking savagely into the kid's shoulder. The boy
screamed in pain and took a valiant stab at the dar-dolf, the knife
glancing off the chain-mail coat Kay-o wore. This action reinforced
the dar-dolf's feelings that this alien being was hostile. Kay-o
went in for the kill.

"Le-go!" Jake screamed. "Le-go! Back!" He
hollered, as he tugged violently at Kay-o's harness. "Down!"

Jake's commands to Kay-o were interspersed
with kicks and curses. Eventually, he had to physically pull the
raging dar-dolf off the boy and leave him lying there bleeding
while he secured Kay-o in the planet pod. The dar-dolf had gotten
his taste of blood. He was all for finishing the job. Flushed with
anger, Jake dragged the snarling beast back to the pod. He couldn't
be too angry with Kay-o. On Titan III there was a similar
situation, but the guy in the bushes was an armed Adruvian and
Kay-o's actions then saved Jake's life. After all, Kay-o was only a
dumb dar-dolf. Sometimes, he had a hard time distinguishing friend
from foe.

By the time Jake made it back to the boy the
lad was lying in a pool of blood, ashen colored and cool to the
touch, but still alive. He had grabbed the first aid box from the
planet pod. The mercenary went to work with that cool
professionalism that only came from experience on the battlefield,
many battlefields.

He'd seen a lot worse injuries. This kid
looked strong and healthy enough. If an infection didn't set in
from the dar-dolf's filthy bite, he'd be okay. Even if an infection
did develop, Jake had some antibiotics he'd saved for an emergency
and in his opinion half killing a friendly was an emergency. Jake
kept expecting someone else to show up while he was dressing the
kid's shoulder. He was working on an explanation so they wouldn't
lynch him, but no one came. Either they were out gathering and
hadn't heard the commotion, though Jake thought that unlikely, or
there wasn't anyone but this boy here as his instruments had
shown.

Once the kid's wounds were bandaged Jake
decided to get him into the house in the tree. He had no difficulty
slinging the unconscious lad over his shoulder. Jake's body weight
was probably twice the boy's. And, he had another four to six
inches of height on the boy, too. It was the climb up that hurt.
His leg still bothered him when he stressed it.

He laid the boy on a pallet in the corner,
covered him with a blanket of some unusual cloth and then started
to look around.

It was a simple place, but more than
adequate. There were rush mats on the floor and over the windows.
These were pulled back for the morning air and light. There was a
pit carved in the middle of the wood floor, lined with clay and
used as a fireplace, and there were cushions beside it made of the
same unusual material as the blanket. The utensils on the low floor
table by the fire pit, one wooden bowl, one wooden cup, indicated
that Jake's guess was right, this boy was alone.

Now that the emergency was over, Jake was
starved. A reaction he often experienced after a crisis situation.
He began to check the place for edibles. There were a group of
storage baskets at the back of the room and he scrounged through
them as quietly as possible in order not to disturb the slumbering
boy. There was something that looked like a black potato, but
smelled like an onion, something that looked like a cross between a
carrot and a turnip, and some purple ball shaped objects that
definitely were the potatoes of this planet. He juggled his
assortment of vegetables in a loose embrace to the fire pit. Well,
all he needed was some meat and he could make a decent stew. He
checked to make sure the boy was still sleeping soundly, then
descended to go hunt.

When Jake returned to the planet pod he
found Kay-o had calmed down enough to let him out for a run. The
beast was curled up in the pilot's seat, glove between his paws,
snoozing.

At the edge of the lake, he washed the boy's
blood from the dar-dolf's face, than commanded him to
'
Seek
.' This was a universal
command. It could result in Kay-o flushing out rabbits, quail, the
enemy, or another friendly. But, Jake didn't have much fear that
another accident would occur. He was relatively sure the only
inhabitant of the planet was safe up a tree.

What had happened here? By signs that Jake
was very familiar with he could tell that there had been a battle
maybe ten to fifteen years ago. He ran his hand over the tree
trunks where they were blaster scorched. He scuffed his boot across
the laser dimples in the ground from ship to ground firing. Had
they all been killed by some invading force? As hardened as Jake
was it made him shiver to think that Kay-o almost killed the last
of a race. Earthlings were very destructive in the past. Many
species came to an end at their hands. Now they were almost
fanatics about the preservation of diminishing civilizations. Even
though Jake was basically a hired gun the thought that he was
almost a party to, and the cause of a whole culture's demise, made
him sick to his stomach. He'd have to make sure the boy was well
enough to take care of himself, before he moved on.

Arr was dreaming again. The same nightmare he always
had, trees on fire, Henu screams,
The
Others
disintegrating his people as they fled. However,
this time when
The Other
looked his
direction he looked very different, and then a ferocious beast
appeared over him holding him down. He was desperately struggling
to keep the beast from biting his face off. Arr woke up in a cold
sweat with his head and heart pounding. At first he didn't know
where he was. He ran trembling fingers through sweat dampened hair
trying to get his bearings. His home with Nor had not been here.
When he heard the breeze whispering through the trees it all came
back to him and his heart slowed to a normal beat. He heard a
movement by the fire pit and angled his head to look. There was a
man squatting by the fire, stirring something in a pot. It was the
man in his dream. He was the largest man Arr had ever seen, both
tall and very broad across his shoulders. He was dressed in a
black, tight fitting suit that looked like a second skin and he
wore boots and a cap of the same color. His hair was brown with
grey at the temples and his dark beard was flecked with grey and
red. He wore a weapon on his right thigh and had one glove tucked
in his belt.

Whatever he was cooking smelled familiar and
yet different in some way. With the smell came the realization to
Arr that he was very hungry. He had started gathering early,
without a morning meal, wanting to repair the leak his roof
developed during the previous evening's light spring rain. By the
slant of the sun through the tree house window he could tell it was
late afternoon.

The man rose stiffly from his squat and
rubbed his left leg as though it pained him. It was at this very
moment that Arr's stomach growled. It growled so loudly that the
man looked up and grinned. "Was that your stomach? I thought Kay-o
had learned to climb trees."

The man spoke an odd tongue, but it, like
the smell, was also somehow familiar. Nor told him some members of
the trader family were very adept at learning new tongues quickly.
He said their father spoke several. Perhaps Arr was remembering
back to his father's stories and one that was about this race of
beings.

The man was talking again as he spooned out
some of the delicious smelling concoction in his pot.

"I'm really sorry Kay-o took a piece out of
you. I'd say he was sorry too, but he's a dar-dolf. They're never
sorry!"

He came over with a slight limp to his step
and assisted Arr up into a sitting position against the wall. He
handed him the bowl and went back to the fire to fill the cup for
himself. All the while he rattled on in a tongue only now beginning
to form words in Arr's head.

Jake ladled out some stew for himself,
grabbed a cushion from beside the fire and turned to go back to sit
with the boy. Even after what the kid went through he didn't seem
afraid. Instead he sat there propped up against the wall looking at
Jake with those curious blue cat eyes. Jake wondered if those kinds
of eyes gave you a different outlook on the world.

Jake flopped down on the pillow on the
floor, only wincing slightly when his leg connected with the hard
wood.

"The name's Jake, Jake Harcourt." He shifted
himself into a more comfortable position. "I really am sorry about
Kay-o giving you such a fit, but he's trained as a Protect
dar-dolf. He saw that knife you were carrying as a weapon."

He thought the boy was listening to him, but
just not talking. It was hard to tell. The kid was so intent on
shoveling in Jake's stew.

"What's your name?" Jake pointed a finger at
the boy's chest.

There was no response.

"Me.... Jake...." Jake pointed a finger at
himself. "You?" He asked again pointing at the lad. The kid just
buried his face deeper in his bowl. "Well, listen to me. I sound
like dialogue out of a B-Rated vid." Jake said, with a bemused
smile.

Still no response. It was a bit unnerving.
Jake talked even more when he was nervous than when he was calm, so
that meant he was talking non-stop.

When he handed the boy his bowl he noticed
what looked like a tattoo on the palm of his right hand. He started
to comment on it, just to have something to talk about, but thought
better. So far the only reaction to Jake that the boy had was to
devour his stew.

Jake was telling him about the battle over
the galnon crystals. He got to the reason for coming to this
particular planet, when he quoted from memory his father's log
entry about the trader Raa. The boy's head popped up from his
stew.

"Raa? My father was Raa!!" He said very
clearly.

Jake was more than surprised. He thought
from the reactions he was getting that the kid might be deaf and
certainly didn't speak English.

"So, you do speak English." And he was the
son of the trader Jake's father had met. Jake always seemed to be
bumping into people his father knew.

"Speak more English." Arr said in
excitement.

Arr was listening to Jake's every word as he
satisfied his hunger. He found, to his delight, that his mind
processed the man named Jake's language as he spoke. He literally
learned by ear. Once the word was spoken it was cataloged and there
for instant retrieval. Learning like this was an exciting
experience and he wondered why Nor did not tell him how wonderful
it was.