Trapped On Talonque: (A Sectors SF romance) (6 page)

“Reminds me of my days at the Academy.” Haranda’s voice was proud and a bit nostalgic. Nate was relieved to see the pilot’s improved morale but concerned because men such as the thuggish Kalgitr played a brutal game, willing to disable or kill their opponents in order to win, and Haranda was clearly in a collegiate intramural mind-set. He and Thom could hold their own in such a game, calling on their hand-to-hand combat skills, but the cadet’s training in martial arts had been minimal at best.

After ten days of drills and practices, the trainers ordered a scrimmage. Nate’s team had to play a full game for the first time and in short order lost miserably, not making a single goal. Disgusted at the level of play, Atletl exhorted them constantly with what Nate guessed were choice curses.

“Can’t blame the guy,” he said to Thom in Basic while riding to the palace in the evening, chained in their cart. “We screw up and he dies with us.”

“He’d better elevate our level of play to match his, then.” Thom massaged his arm and shoulder. He scowled across the cart at Atletl, who rolled his eyes and pretended to be fascinated by the bracalx. “This is so crazy, you know?”

“It’s a chance.”

“Not much of one.”

Nate couldn’t argue.

But as they ate their dinner, sitting cross-legged on their beds, Atletl gave them their first piece of good news, which he’d been told by a trainer impressed with Haranda’s skills. “If a team can win ten straight games, these superstitious people say the god has favored them. The lure of the accomplishment is why Kalgitr and his men don’t care if they kill their opponents in the process of winning and why they play so rough even in our scrimmages—he wants all of us to be afraid of them. The entire team would be set free, rewarded with gold and wives and never have to play in the ball court again.”

“I know which girl you’d have your eye on if we won ten times,” Nate said. Atletl’s fondness for flirting with Celixia every chance he got was a running joke among the team.

“You don’t think winners have to choose one of the ‘birds of prey,’ do you?” Thom opened his eyes wide. “Those women are scary.”

Nate laughed. “His heart is set on our guardian priestess, Celixia. Don’t you pay attention to these things?”

“If he gets to pick Celixia, who’s left for us?” Thom said.

Atletl took the teasing good-naturedly but shook his head. “Don’t joke about the priestesses of Huitlani. They’re married to the god. They may take lovers, but not mortal husbands. And the lovers don’t live long, because Huitlani is a jealous god.”

Haranda, apparently not interested in this topic, distracted Atletl, diagramming a new play with dishes and utensils and asking his opinion about how well it would work.

“What are the odds anyone has ever claimed this fabled ‘win ten games, go free’ reward?” Thom asked Nate off to the side as Haranda and Atletl talked ball-passing strategies.

“Kalgitr’s sure trying. Did you see him snap that guy’s arm today? If this pipe dream of winning ten and going free helps the kid cope with his constant state of funk, then I say let him believe,” Nate said. “He’s been much more stable since we got sentenced to training. And he’s a natural at this damn game. Lucky for us.”

Thom persisted with his pessimistic assessment. “Nobody can win ten straight. To win so many games would be like doing ten missions in a row behind the Mawreg lines and living to tell about it. Not gonna happen, not in this lifetime. If we’re going to get out of here, it’s going to have to be some other way.”

“I know.” Nate leaned back on his bed, trying to find a comfortable spot.
 

Lowering his voice even further, Thom asked, “Have you been able to contact the lady again?”

Nate shut his eyes. “No. I’m not sure what enabled the first dream. Maybe it was the fact I’d been in her presence the same day for a few moments. I’ve been trying, believe me.”

Information from Bithia might be essential to their survival, but he had no idea how to force himself to dream a specific set of events, much less ensure he met her in the dream. He’d been hoping she’d reach out to him again, but as far as he could tell, she’d made no attempt. The small ration of wine in the evenings wasn’t facilitating any dreams, if it ever had. He returned to their quarters so exhausted each night from the rigorous training that he’d fall asleep before he could try to reach her. Often he felt her presence as a light touch in his mind, almost the equivalent of glimpsing her from the corner of his eye, but she never responded to his questing thoughts.

Not tonight. I’m going to make this work tonight and come to you, lady.
 

Drawing on techniques he’d been shown once as a kid, he slowed his breathing and visualized himself walking through the tendrils of the strange fog toward the lights of her chamber. His mind kept trying to wander, full of worry over the intricacies of the life-or-death game he was learning, or making frustratingly inadequate plans for escape. He took a moment to refocus and shake off his worries. Drawing a deep breath, he counted to ten, closed his eyes and relaxed into the scene he was painting for himself.
Think of it as preparation for a mission and she’s the objective.

The military frame of reference helped.
 

He stood in the gray-green mists, a strong sense of pleased anticipation flickering through his consciousness when he realized he was going to see Bithia.

“Bithia?” Nate called her name as he stepped through the fog. There she was, lying on her immense high-tech couch, motionless save for slowly opening her lavender eyes. He walked across the chamber, the mist falling away, until the inexorable, invisible barrier guarding her halted his progress.

Eyes wide, she stared at him. “How did you get here? I didn’t summon you, so maybe you’re learning to use the psychic potential I sensed when we met.” The furrows in her brow smoothed, and her lips curved in a wide smile. “I’m glad to see you, and it’s pleasant to hear my birth name. I’ve missed the sound.” For a moment she studied him from head to toe. “I’m surprised you remain alive. My congratulations.”

“What’s going on here? Why are you a prisoner of low-tech killers like these people?”

“I might ask you the same question! If your only wish is to remind me of my hopeless existence, always at their beck and call, then go away and let me sleep. Oblivion is my only escape until I can die, or force Sarbordon to kill me in his endless quest for answers and omens. There’s nothing else for me.” Expression annoyed, she closed her eyes.

Nate waited, expecting the dream encounter to end, as the first one had, once she shut her eyes. When it didn’t, he realized she must still be conscious.
Hiding from me. But I need answers.
He studied the delicate planes of her face, finding her compellingly attractive. Her mere existence was intriguing. No matter how many worlds the Sectors explored, how many artifacts and abandoned installations the Archaeology Service dug through, no one had ever seen so much as a painting or a statue or a hologram of an Ancient Observer. The AO took great care to leave no representations of themselves, although many worlds had legends about them. He accepted Haranda’s verdict that Bithia wasn’t a member of the specific forerunner civilization that fascinated the Sectors, but he wondered if she was aware of them. And what of her own people and their accomplishments? She was definitely from an era predating his own.

“You’re still here—” Her surprised voice, with a hint of amusement, interrupted his ruminations. “Staring at me.”

“I’m not leaving until I have to, until the encounter really ends. I’m not sure I could, even if I wanted to, since control of this process appears to rest for the most part with you. And you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen on any world, well worth staring at.” He couldn’t believe he’d made such an inane remark.
Like an idiot cadet on his first date.
She had an unsettling effect on him, maybe because their minds were linked. He imagined what her skin felt like, how soft her hair might be—annoyed at himself, he wrested his imagination away from Bithia’s form.

“Stubborn, I see, not to take my hint and withdraw,” she said, the pleased expression on her face blunting any hint of criticism. “Actually, I’m glad you stayed. It’s been so long since I had someone to talk with who was from offworld.”

“How many years have you been—?”

“In this place? I’ve no way to know. Tell me, do you know of the Aralapanni? Or the Serennian?” The names she uttered were nothing he recognized, and even in a dream in which he shared a language with her, the syllables carried no meaning. Bithia watched him closely with those great, shadowed eyes and nodded. “You don’t know these great peoples, do you? Not even legends to you? Then truly we must have passed from the galaxy, and all our knowledge with us. And this tale of Ancient Observers I pluck from your mind means nothing to me. Certainly not my people, nor any of the races I know.”

Nate was frustrated by their lack of any common reference, aside from the planet upon which he now stood, equally alien and hostile to both of them.
Start there
. The current situation ought to provide enough of a foundation for them to relate to each other.

“I don’t know how you got here, but our ship crashed,” he said, leaning against the barrier and crossing his arms over his chest, settling in for a chat. “We were being chased by a Mawreg client race—enemies of our entire species. To escape we had to go into hyperdrive too close to a blue giant star, ended up out of control in this system and crashed.” He touched his forehead where the last remnants of the bruise remained. “I was knocked out in the crash, and these thugs grabbed my men when they were crawling from the wreckage and dragging me to safety.”

“Where did you crash? And who are these Mawreg?” Despite her prior claims to want nothing but untroubled sleep and oblivion, Bithia seized on new information with the hunger of a highly intelligent creature denied fresh mental stimulus for a long time. “Can you visualize one for me?”
 

He did, in automatic response to her question. The memory made him nauseated. How the Mawreg looked was wrong in all respects.

Bithia didn’t react with instinctive repugnance to the Mawreg, at least as glimpsed in his hastily shut-off memory. “Hideous, yes, but unknown to me.”

Nate had seen them up close, which few people ever survived, much less retained a hold on sanity, but that was in another life.
 

“Another life?” She plucked the phrase from his mind. “You believe in the recycling of the spirit through time?”

“No, you misunderstand me.” He chuckled.
Have to get used to her ability to instantaneously read my private musings. Or develop a mental block to keep her out.
The second strategy didn’t hold much appeal. He liked hearing her musical voice in his head. “I’m an officer in the Sectors Special Forces, usually working behind enemy lines to carry out assassinations, sabotage installations, accomplish military objectives. Another life than the one I’m leading here on this cursed planet. Here, I’m in training for the sapiche playoffs.”

“I don’t know this Mawreg. Fortunately for me, judging from what you say and remember of them.” Bithia frowned. In the resulting “silence,” Nate’s irritation grew. She could pick any thought of his at will, but he could only “hear” what she chose to “say” to him. After a contemplative moment, she sighed. “I came to Talonque, this world, of my own choice with my father’s expedition. He was an explorer of great renown among our people. He also wanted to help the people here learn and grow more civilized.”

“We leave indigenous planetary populations alone, unless they’ve already reached a specific level of civilization,” Nate said. “We learned the hard way a few too many times that it’s no good to go in with what the Sectors can offer if you’re dealing with people who haven’t yet evolved technical sophistication. The population gets the wrong idea—”

“Think of you as gods?” Bithia asked wryly. “I believe we were learning the lesson. I can certainly testify to it now. A growing number of my people liked the idea.”

“But not you?”

“No. Even before I was forced into this career as the all-knowing goddess T’naritza. Nor did my father approve of such a concept. But his associates Tedesk and Syrmir, well…” She fell silent. “But bringing the novelties of a new world home to my people engendered much profit and fame. My father wasn’t immune to the lure of both but wouldn’t dream of presenting himself as a god. The truth mutates unrecognizably over time, doesn’t it?”

“What happened? Why did you get left here, in this way?”
How do you stay sane?
He guessed the machine kept her in a form of suspended animation or cryo sleep between summonses from those who worshipped her. He speculated that the device must have a beneficial effect on her mind, to keep her from overwhelming despair.
 

The dream ended before she could answer, much to his chagrin. The guards kicked his bed, ordering him and the others to rise for another endless day of drilling and scrimmage.
 

Thom gave him the eye as they ate breakfast mush and fruit. “You saw her?”

Nate kept his voice low as well. “Yeah, but the dream was too short to learn much. She’s never heard of the AO or the Mawreg, and I’ve never heard of her people. She came on a scientific expedition, as near as I can figure out. I don’t know how she got trapped.”

“Nothing useful, then.” Thom dropped his spoon into his empty bowl.