A Warrior's Return (25 page)

A blanket came out of somewhere and was
wrapped around me. I clung to it, as I realized how bad my teeth
were chattering. I was going to chip off all my teeth at the rate
my jaw was hammering away.

Suddenly I was in the front seat of an SUV
with Katie across from me in the driver seat, “Oh you poor thing!”
Katie exclaimed as she cranked up the heat.

Oh blessed heat!

“Thank you!” I managed to chatter out.

After several long minutes the convoy of
vehicles began to move down an old logging road. We were all going
to get away. It was hard to imagine how that could happen, but it
was.

Dimly I heard Eleanor mutter from the
backseat where she lay with her head on Talaric’s lap, “At least
the ruddy landing gear deployed this time!”

I lay on my pile of blankets and literally
stared up at the ceiling wishing for relief of some kind, anything
to get free from my miserable condition.

We were held up in an abandoned apartment
building in a port city in southern Europe. We stayed low and kept
to ourselves as the world outside went crazy.

I had gotten sick on the journey here and
after three days of intense high fever, of which I feared of
becoming like my sister, it finally broke only to leave me with the
worst cold of my life. I simply couldn’t breathe and snot was
everywhere.

There was no end of the wretched yellow
stuff! It was in my head and in my chest and I despaired of ever
feeling well again.

It was morning. I had managed to make it
through yet one more dark night. I heard a rustle by my side and I
glanced over and saw that it was Talaric kneeling down beside
me.

He had been my one bright spot through this
ordeal. He was just so wonderful! He had nursed me, fed me, even
kept me warm at night. When he hadn’t been able to help his mother
had been there. She was wonderful too.

He had a syringe of some red looking
substance in his hand. He pulled my arm out from under the blessed
warmth of the blankets.

I protested less out of the loss of heat in
lieu of the fear of the needle in his hand, “Relax honey, you have
a really bad sinus infection and you need this!”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Something that will help, it’s an
antibiotic. There rare these days as they mostly don’t work
anymore. But I doubt you’ve ever had one before or at least not for
a very long time and it will probably work just this once and see
you back up on your feet in a few days.”

“What did you have to do to get it?” I asked
worriedly.

“Don’t ask.” Was all he said, as he injected
me gently with the contents of the syringe.

“You shouldn’t risk yourself like this for
me Talaric! You can’t……”

His fingers over my lips stopped my worry
filled words. His kind warm eyes stared down into mine, as I felt a
connection deeper than anything physically possible form between
us, “Yes I took a risk to get the medicine and I’d do it again in
an instant if it meant that your heart will continue beating. What
good is preserving my life without you by my side to enjoy every
second of it with? Life without you would be a cold empty shell of
an eternity of solitude filled with the responsibility to keep
breathing until peace finally came in the form of the grave. I will
always risk my life for you, of this you can be sure of Evangelina!
Now you need to get your rest. I promise that you’ll be back up on
your feet soon honey.”

He leaned forward and kissed me on the
forehead and then he was gone. I couldn’t help the tears that
welled up or the deep sobs that escaped me. Why was I crying?

I really needed to stop. I was half choking
myself and making it harder to breathe than it already had been.
Krista slipped in beside me and helped me turn over onto my
stomach. She pulled my upper body up onto her lap.

My face turned out to the side on top of one
of her thighs, as her hands rubbed my back in a circular motion
that helped me to breathe easier.

“Cry all you want darling! I know I am!”

I glanced up to see tears washing down her
face and I didn’t even know why.

“Do you know how much I have longed to see
the tender and self-sacrificing heart of my firstborn son that he
had as a child, but lost as a young man, only to come back out with
the strength of a warrior behind it! Do you know how many countless
hours I’ve prayed to God that I would see my firstborn son not only
right with God, but also happy in life and fulfilling every goal a
parent could ever have for their child? Thank you Evangelina! Thank
you for being a part of the restoration of my son into the man that
I always prayed that he would be!”

She was thanking me!

“But I’ve done nothing!” I choked out on a
sob.

“Oh yes you have my dear! God has brought my
son around its true, but you have been a part of His Divine plan of
restoration. You saw something in my son that inspired you to not
only change from who you were, but also risk everything to pursue
after him. You gave him the faithfulness of your heart and the
promise of a lifetime of being able to rest in your arms. You gave
him the chance to form a relationship based on trust and love,
which has made him stronger and more complete as a man. Every man
has the deep seated need for the companionship of a woman. It’s how
they were created to be. I know my son’s heart is in good hands
with you and I’m just so grateful to have you Evangelina!”

I pushed my face deeper against her loving
every moment of closeness and acceptance by her of me. She
continued to comb her fingers through my hair and I quieted down,
loving the caring touch of a mother.

“When are you two planning on tying the
knot?” Krista asked warmly.

“I hope it’s soon! Everything’s just been so
crazy!” I said.

“I know. It’ll slow down though once we get
back to Thunder Ridge. I think you’ll like it there. It’s a
beautiful place. A place of security. Admittedly I’m like you in
that I would prefer it to be a lot warmer, but perhaps that’s why
we were gifted with such hot-blooded males, to keep us warm at
night.”

I really hadn’t planned on it, but I fell
asleep listening to her talk of Talaric’s home and I dreamed of
experiencing it with him.

Several days passed by and Talaric had been
right, I did feel much better and I was close to being fully
recovered and grateful for it. We had been cooped up in the small
series of rooms for ten days now while Sparky and Ellanara, who had
commandeered one of the rooms worked around-the-clock trying to
decipher the location of the ancient battleship with only the
crystals and the map to go by.

They accepted no interference from anyone
and we left them alone for the most part, but I could tell that
Talaric’s patience was wearing thin.

The Europe outside was a different place.
There was open dissension being shouted about and picket lines in
the streets over a long list of crimes. Ellanara had wiped clean
the memory databanks of the research facility under the chalet,
except for key items of interest, which she phrased into news
headline like stories and released to the world at large across the
internet.

The stories exposed a wide range of
atrocities that the research-based facility had been responsible
for. The stories ranged from assassination plots to plotting and
carrying out terrorist activities, even cyber crime.

The worst offense outlined however, was the
proof that the biological pacification drug AR 11, which had been
used on rebellious citizens in Europe and in various places in the
rest of the world had been an action with disastrous consequences.
The residents of the cities that had been sprayed with the drug
were rendered in a semi unconscious state for days. Only thirty
percent affected by the drug managed to recover. The rest died as
they simply lacked the ability to take care of themselves. They
died wherever they sat staring vacantly out into space.

Those that had survived were rendered
infertile for life. The rebel movements were effectively pacified
for forever and the dictatorial martial law governments ruled the
day with little or no opposition to their centralized control over
all sectors of life.

There was also evidence that the facility
had done contract research on the effective placement of tactical
dirty bombs, which they had sold indirectly through a third-party
loosely affiliated with the terrorist group that claimed
responsibility for the destruction of the entire eastern seaboard
of the United States.

The attack on the US had led to retaliation
by the US that left the entire Middle East a charred fallout zone
were little had survived.

The amount of destructive creativity that
had issued forth from this facility in the shadows, had led to a
public outcry worldwide for justice. The government of the European
Coalition had no choice but to release the researchers and
scientists to what remained of an equitable criminal justice
system, with the clear implication by the people picketing in the
streets that those involved be made to pay for their crimes with
their lives.

The tumult and unrest caused by the broad
release of information had been a uniquely perfect way of providing
a smokescreen for our escape. Ellanara hadn’t released everything
though to the general public.

She held back all of the information
pertinent to what had aptly been named the Stargazer Project. It
was a multinational joint venture on the most secret of levels.
Most of the information in concern to it was not accessible as it
was stored in off-line databanks. Ellanara had been able to find
out some alarming things about the project though.

The project had received a massive input of
technology far beyond anything they had possessed before from an
Orlandian source such as the one Talaric had encountered. There was
a massive pooling of resources and man power with the purpose of
adapting to the new technology and the construction of space craft.
Worst of all was one of the heralded technologies given by the
Orlandian system.

It was a technology that they had worked on
during their long absence from the land of the living. The
technology was called Vapor Gate Points of Contact. It was a means
of space travel, but it didn’t use water, instead it used
electrolyzed gases in the atmosphere to form the gate channel.

It had limitations to it, only small sized
craft could be used and it still needed a planetary beacon array to
lock on to. They could take off from anywhere on the surface of the
planet though, as they employed a shifting trajectory analysis to
estimate for variations from the older established water vortex
channels.

Travel was much faster through them as well
and they could not be blocked by an active outgoing signal, no
matter how powerful it may be.

I had never seen Talaric so depressed as he
was, when he had heard Ellanara say all of what she had revealed.
Our focus previously had been to find the bar-Seth and reactivate
the jamming sequence, but now that did us little good. It was no
longer an effective means to keep the Orlandian plague bottled up
on Earth.

The enemies first objective was to destroy
Talaric’s homeworld, which the Orlandian technological entities had
assured their new found faithful was the limiting barrier to the
peoples of Earth dominating the entire galaxy beyond.

They had bought into the hate message
entirely and had committed everything in a joint partnership that
stretched across nations.

Even as Ellanara’s words had seemed to crush
both Talaric and his father, she had left them with a ray of hope.
She had said then that if we could still find the bar-Seth and were
able to reach Talaric’s world before the enemy did, then we would
have a chance, if we could destroy all the beacon arrays. Without
the beacon arrays the enemy craft would be unable to lock onto
Talaric’s world.

Reversely the people of Talaric’s world
wouldn’t be able to leave their world in the absence of beacon
arrays. Seizing the opportunity presented by even the slimmest of
opportunities Sparky and Ellanara had worked around-the-clock day
after day within their sequestered room, while the rest of us had
tried to provide them with the long grocery list of items that they
constantly demanded.

I frankly was very curious as to what
strange creation had occurred within the other room. Katie had
tried to peek in once and the doors had slammed shut on her nose.
Talaric’s frustration was such that he was ready to rip the door
off its hinges.

That afternoon the door opened and stayed
open. Sparky and Ellanara stumbled out of the room looking like
death warmed twice over. Talaric was on his feet instantly followed
by the rest of us.

“Have you found it?” Talaric asked with
exuberance.

Both members of the mad scientist duo
gestured for us to enter the room. We filed dutifully into the
strange looking room. Sparky took a moment to answer, as he cleaned
his glasses.

“Yes, I think we have.”

This explained what had happened with all
the metal roofing and aluminum tinfoil that we had been tasked with
gathering. The walls, ceiling, and floor reflected the glowing
holographic image of the Earth spinning on its axis slowly in
scaled-down model.

Complex mechanical contraptions in the
ceiling and on the floor seemed to be the source of the image that
seemed to hang in mid air. That explained all the power
requirements. Six generators had been pounding away in the basement
of the abandoned apartment complex for two days now.

We circled around the spinning globe waiting
to hear what had come of so much effort. Sparky glanced at
Ellanara, “Would you like to explain it to them my dear?”

“No, it was your discovery. You should have
the honor.” Ellanara quickly said graciously. Sparky looked tired,
but he was also beaming with pride.