The Siege of New Terra (Star Sojourner Book 7) (21 page)

The cell was dark, except for a ray of sunlight that filtered through the small, high window and fingered her with warm light as she lay curled on the cot, her raven hair covering her face, her hands clasped together between her knees. She wore one shoe. The other was under a chair beside a bare wooden table.

I went to her and kneeled. “Sophia, it's me, Jules.” I gently brushed back her hair. “Babe, it's
me.
”

She lifted her head. Her eyes were dull, her lips, parted, as though she had just risen from a deep sleep. “Jules,” she murmured. “This is just another cruel dream.” Tears slid down her face.

“No, babe, I'm real. I've come to rescue you.” I lifted her hand to my face and smiled. “See? Real me.” I put her other shoe on her foot and lifted her to her feet. “We have to go, before we're discovered.”

“Oh, Jules, I didn't dare hope.” She wrapped her arms around me. “Hope would've killed me.”

A wail of alarms announced the discovery of the dead mercs.

“Come!” Evrill called from outside the cell. “There'll be time enough to get acquainted.”

Trumbril, and Grothe, the tall Kubraens, entered the cell. I handed them three guns. “Give one to Zik. You two keep the others.” I kept one for myself.

Wygrum and Furro, the two slender Denebrians, with long, brown fingers clutching their green coveralls in distress, pursed their round, furrowed mouths and wailed softly as they waited in the hall. Denebrians are a gentle race, so passive, I was afraid they'd hesitate to kill, even at the risk of their own lives.

I tried to help Sophia out of the cell. She tripped and we both fell.

“Grive her ta me!” Trumbril lifted her easily over his shoulders.

“This way!” Zik waved us toward a back door, glided there, and opened it.

About a hundred yards of flat nothing lay between us and the hovair, parked beside the
Sword of Terror
, on its pad. Mercs poured out of the cafeteria. Others, already inside the bunk tent, shouted and gestured for the rest to come there.

We crowded the doorway, hesitating. The mercs were spreading out. We were in range of their beamers.

“Threy know exactly where we are,” I said. “We've got to make a run for it.”

“We could surrender,” Wygrum offered.

“We could be executed,” Evrill said.

“Wygrum,” I said, “you didn't see what's back there. They'll want our heads. Literally.”

“We didn't do anything,” Furro, the other Deneb said as I went out the door.

“Do what suits you!” Zik leaped through the doorway, almost knocking me over, and stretched seven of his eight jointed tentacles in a wild gallop toward the hovair, the stingler held high, firing blindly around himself.

We'll be lucky,
I thought,
if he doesn't shoot one of us.

Trumbril ducked through the doorway with Sophia held tightly over his shoulders, his long ridged legs and slab feet pounded the ground as he raced for the hovair with his companion Grothe beside him.

I fired at the charging mercs and ran behind Trumbril to offer Sophia some protection.

“I hope the hatch is unlocked!” I shouted to Evrill, who caught up to me. “Where's Wygrum and Furro?” I called and glanced back. “Oh, no!”

They stood, their arms above their heads, and faced the approaching mercs.

“Those two idiots will be killed!” Evrill wheezed and ran past me. It seemed that we Terrans are among the slowest runners.

Grothe reached the hovair and yanked on the hatch's bolt. He turned, his slitted eyes wide. “Locked!”

A flash of blue light burned the hull. Smoke rose from it.

I reached the craft, panting, and tried to yank open the hatch. Another blue beam burned through the hull so close I felt its heat.

The mercs were closing. Big Mack stood in a jeep that raised a plume of dust as it roared toward us. “Take them alive,” he screamed into a mic that blasted his voice over speakers across the flats. “I want to kill the bastards myself.”

Evrill pushed me away with a strength I didn't know she possessed, and spread her hands over the hatch. Her disc eyes clouded. I felt the residual energy of her psychokinetic power as she called upon forces that made the air vibrate.

The hatch swung open.

I jumped inside and helped Trumbril get Sophia into the deck, then grabbed Evrill's outstretched hand.

Zik shoved her aside. She fell and he scrambled inside.

Grothe screamed in pain and clung to the open hatch.

“He's been hit!” I cried.

Trumbril picked up Evrill and I lifted her into the deck, then I helped him pull Grothe inside.

The high whine of the speeding jeep drowned out Big Mack's booming words, but I caught the tail end as he shouted“–drawn and quartered by four jeeps!”

Trumbril leaped inside.

“Don't damage the ship!” Mack called to his men through speakers as I slammed the hatch shut and locked it.

“Who knows how to fly this confounded thing?” Zik asked from the cabin door.

I pushed him aside and slid into the pilot's seat.

“Watch out!” he said.

I started the engine. “Trumbril,” I called, “is Sophia all right?”

“She ish right in all,” he answered, “but Grothe ish na so swell.”

“There's a first-aid kit in the upper compartment,” I told him and lifted the hovair into the sky.

Through the forward viewport I watched Mack and a handful of his men spring the main hatch of the
Sword of Terror,
and pile inside.

Huff!
I thought. I had to pick up Huff. He would wait faithfully for me to return, no matter how long I took to get to him.

I watched the
Sword
lift off its pad. Starships are powerful, but ponderous on-planet. This was the proverbial cat and mouse game as I skimmed treetops and ducked between canyon walls while
Sword
was restricted to higher air spaces. I thought I lost her and banked east to the road where Huff hid as he waited for me. “Sophia,” I called back, “are you OK, babe?”

She came into the cabin holding onto rear seats and kissed my head. “My hero. A half hour ago I thought my life was over.”

“No way. Not while I'm alive. How's Grothe?”

She shook her head. “He was hurt pretty badly. The burn entered his lower back and exited through his side, but –”

“Let me guess. Evrill worked on him and he's doing better.”

“You know about her healing powers?”

I nodded.
And her destructive powers,
I thought but didn't say.

“Do you think Big Mack will kill the two Denebrians who surrendered?”

“Wygrum and Furro,” I told her.
Quartered between four jeeps,
Mack had said. “Naw, they're worth too much as slaves on the virtual block.”

“There are still colonies that use slaves?”

Sophia's homeworld, New Lithnia, now had illegal arms plants that must still need strong backs for the heavy work. “I've heard there are.” Dammit! In the open terrain around the road, the
Sword
had located us and was closing.

Sophia stared out the forward viewscreen. “They're coming after us.”

“Oh, yeah. But that doesn't mean they'll catch us.” I banked the craft west and lifted her into the afternoon sky, away from
Sword.
“Come into the cabin,” I called to the group, "and strap in. It's going to be a roller coaster ride. Soph, take the co-pilot's seat. Huff's hiding somewhere along that road. He's expecting us back in a jeep. It will take a Terran to handle the controls of this baby if
Sword
manages to…?

“Don't say it! Just don't say it.”

“OK, I won't.”

Zik, Evrill, and Trumbril holding up Grothe, took the rear seats. I heard grumbles as the four aliens tried to adjust harnesses designed for Terrans.

I headed down between the sheer walls of a narrow canyon with
Sword
close behind. It took all my concentration to hold the craft away from the walls.
Too narrow,
I thought,
for the cautious Sword to follow.
Perhaps a touch too narrow for us.

“Merciful Mother of Our Sweet Asses,” I heard Zik exclaim. “If Mack doesn't kill us, you will!”

“At least with me you've got a chance,” I told him, “now be quiet.” I ventured a quick glance at Sophia. She sat stiffly, her hands clasped to the armrests, her eyes wide as she stared at the viewscreen. “It's OK, babe,” I said. “Believe it or not, I know what I'm doing.”

“I choose to believe,” she gasped.

“Dammit!” They were waiting for us when we reached the end of the canyon and it closed up.

I lifted the hovair in a vertical ascent along the flank of a high white peak. As we climbed the air into those reckless heights, the sky turned midnight blue. Clouds swarmed over peaks below us. Herds of white unicorns and wild draks parted like a stream that forks at an island. They were running from us, but we were running from a real danger.

I lifted the craft in an upward surge that tore holes in the sky and vibrated the hull. The pressure tanks kicked in to afford us a more reasonable PSI.

Sword
banked away. I could only pray that she had given up the chase and returned to their base camp to prepare for the voyage to New Lithnia tomorrow.

Below, trees thinned and disappeared. Here there were ragged places where the hovair could hide.

I brought her down to a ledge under a broad overhang of ice with crystal sheets that clung to the rim like folds of lace, affording us added protection from view, and cut the engines.

I smiled at Sophia. “We're not out of the meat grinder yet. If they find us, we'll have to take flight again.”

She smiled back. “I know.”

We sat quietly, waiting. Even Zik had no comments on our situation.

I prayed that Huff hadn't decided to return to the Orghe camp, now turned village, and lead the mercs there. If my instruments picked up the
Sword
heading toward the village, I'd have to engage the starship in a game of chase to lead them away.

I thought of mother birds back on Earth, feigning broken wings so that predators would follow them away from their chicks. I had over two hundred chicks, and my team, to protect.

I shook my head as I thought of Wygrum and Furro, and pictured their lanky bodies torn apart like the four mercs in the bunk tent, more like shredded straw men. Is that what we'd find after Mack and his mercs left the planet and we inspected their base camp? I didn't think I could bear to see that sort of carnage again.

I rubbed my forehead. I wished I were home on Earth, kicking back in Joe's den with a roaring fire in the fireplace, my daughter Lisa, and Sophia, by my side, drinking a cup of hot earthbrew against the winter that had invaded my soul.

How old was I? I suddenly wondered. Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? Being an abandoned orphan, I wasn't sure. When would I be too old for these dangerous missions and could give age as an excuse?

“Are you OK, Jules?” Sophia asked.

I nodded.
Just great!
But I wished I could stop my knee from shaking. “You?” I reached out and touched her cheek. It was wet.

She took my hand and kissed it. “I'm all right,” she said softly.

“How's Grothe?” I asked.

“Much bretter,” Trumbril answered.

“That's great,” I turned to look at Grothe. He sat limply in the seat, his long legs sprawled out, his slitted silver eyes bloodshot around the pupils, a bandage wrapped around his ribs. Evrill sat beside him like a diminutive doll. “You look better, Grothe,” I lied.

He smiled, folding the skin of his cheeks, and put a shaky hand on Evrill's arm, covering it with broad fingers. “She ish my angrel.” He patted her shoulder.

“You had us worried,” I told him.

"I had mysrelf also worried too, Captrain Julesh.

“I guess so.” I unstrapped, told the others to do the same, and went into the main deck.

Now, if the
Sword
was off our tail for good, things might be looking bretter…I mean better.

* * *

The “mouse” stayed in hiding under the overhang all that long afternoon. Trumbril was on watch in the cabin, Zik squeezed into the tail and observed from a porthole. Grothe was asleep on a cot. His ivory, ridged skin looked even paler than usual. His breathing was heavy. His thick charcoal hair had streaks of dried blood where he'd pulled on it in his agony. At over seven feet, he was too tall for the cot. His legs were folded to one side.

The hovair had a sous chef, but it was designed only for humans. Sophia and I made two steaks, mashed potatoes, and her favorite veggie, broccoli. I hate the stuff. We sat at the small table and ate, while Evrill, also at the table, just watched.

“Sorry,” I told her, “even with a digestall, you couldn't eat this food.”

“No bother or guilt feelings,” she said. “I require no nourishment for ten more New Terra days.”

I glanced at Sophia. “Bet that cuts down on the food bill.” The smell of broccoli was getting to me. “You know, Soph, the wedding might be off if I have to spend the rest of my life breathing in that smelly stuff.”

She laughed and speared another floret. “I'm worth it, dear.”

“So, Evrill,” I sipped earthbrew, “if we get out of this mess with our skins still attached, do you want a ticket back to Equus?”

She clasped her hands on the table and her thin lips quivered.

I glanced at Sophia.

“Evrill,” Sophia said softly, “we know you were banished. That's not a secret.” She put her hand over Evrill's folded hands. "If you need someone to vouch for your good deeds…? She looked at me.

I nodded.

“Jules and I will both put in a good word for you.”

“It will take more than a good word,” Evrill said.

“What will it take?” Sophia asked.

“For both of you to come to Equus and plead my case.”

“What are you accused of?” Sophia leaned forward. “If it's all right to ask.”

Evrill slipped her hands out from under Sophia's. “A mortal crime.”

Sophia glanced at me. We waited.

“When I was of breeding age,” Evrill said, “and with a quicker temper than I have now, one of my mates…we formed a child together, a beautiful child with golden eyes and perfect features.”