Halcyon Nights (Star Sojourner Book 2) (9 page)

At the module's launch bay Sharkie scowled as he shoved a backpack and two bedrolls at me. “This constitutes all our have. You unplease? You voca with Captain!” His accent was Gangrian, a cold rocky planet with few amenities.

“What's missing?” I called to his back as he strode out the passageway.

He didn't answer.

I shoved a hand into the backpack as I waited for the module's systems to be checked out. My hand closed on the cool slim metal of a flash stingler with a beam ring that could stun or kill. Well, perhaps Gangria isn't as cold a place as I'd imagined.

Lisa shut her eyes and sucked her thumb as I carried her to the module. What was she trying to deal with, within her six-year-old mind?

No matter his power, that silver slimeshit alien had a lot to answer for!

It was night in our little corner of Halcyon, snowy winter night. The module, stuffed with crates that left us little room, and smelling of astringent cryogenic chemicals on wet dog fur, lowered toward the surface through scudding clouds. Far below and to the southeast, the huddled lights of Laurel shimmered in the boundless wilds of this alien world.

The automated craft headed for a region unbroken by lights.
Where the hell had Bjorn sent us?

The trip down was cold. They keep the module's interior at freezing for the cargo and I couldn't reach the thermostat past all the crates. I'd helped Lisa into warm clothes and gloves from her travel bag. Now I tucked stray curls under her jacket hood and smiled.

“I feel cushy, Daddy.”

“Cushy?”

“That's what Mommy says when she dresses me to play in the snow. 'Stay cushy, Lissie'. I made a snowman and Mommy gave me raisins for his eyes and I got two sticks and…” She wiped her eyes. “I got two sticks – Daddy, when can we go home? I don't like it here.”

“Lisa.” I hugged her close. “If I could take you home right now, baby, I'd do it. But I promise I'll stay with you. No matter what happens – “I held her face between my hands. “I'll always be here for you. Promise.”

She lowered her head and played with the strings of her hood. “Ok, Daddy.”

I kissed her nose and smiled. “OK, Lisa.”

I used my stingler to pry open crates within reach. I'd read the stamped labels on the outside in the small, overhead light: Parts to assemble air and ground vehicles, tools, appliances, vis holo sets, comp cubes. And a lot of other stuff we couldn't use. I'd skinned my hands trying to drag the crates aside to get at others.

I found heavy blankets, though, and we kept two. The memory of Sharkie's leer came to haunt me as I sifted through my backpack of meager camping equipment, then lifted out a wrist locator that worked off a compass. When I turned it on it projected a small holomap that could be scrolled by a stem on the unit. There was even a Halcyon-time watch attached to the wristband. All that was lacking was a thermometer and my body gave me a pretty good estimate of the temperature.

Not bad. I strapped on the band and sleeved my hands into the gloves. Through the porthole I saw a narrow circle of white snowfields that glimmered below us in the under fat snowflakes as a storm raged. I might be able to build an igloo that would blend nicely with the scenery. With our blankets for flooring and rocks warmed with the hot setting on my stingler, it wouldn't be half bad. But where to from there? How to contact Laurel?

Perhaps when the storm abated, I could make a sled of sorts with the blankets and branches and pull Lisa as I walked to Laurel. Perhaps we'd come across a road that led to town and ground vehicles heading that way. It was a lot of perhapsing.

In any case, we had to leave the module ASAP. As soon as Bjorn's mind cleared, he'd contact the czar, and the czar's people would know exactly where to look for us. If they thought I were an I-DEA agent, their orders would probably be to fire on sight. I looked at Lisa and the pain in my gut intensified.

OK, silver being, or whatever you prefer to be called. What now?

Now is too soon to know
, he sent.

Then a small request. Let me know if the czar's minions are on their way here! Or is that also beyond your ken?

He did not deign to answer. Perhaps he was feeling sulky too.

The module settled to the ground with a thump and a sigh of hydraulics, sending up swirls of snow. I rubbed fog from the porthole and squinted out. In the sweeping light of the red beacon atop the craft's dome, I saw only a narrow view of that open field. There were no lights beyond, no structures visible, just a serpents' den of coiled ground roots that lay intertwined like fat, wet black snakes.
Strange plant life,
I thought, that could melt snow off their trunks.

A bleak feeling settled inside me, more wintery than the view. Had Bjorn blinked awake and reprogrammed the module to touch down in this desolate area on purpose? By now he might have contacted the czar. I glanced at Lisa and tried not to broadcast the thought, but these wilds, in the midst of a blanketing storm, were a great place for an execution.

I swept the compartment with the flashlight and located the beacon lever to shut off the outside light. But there was no way to reach it past piled crates and I wasn't about to fire at it in these tight quarters, even on the stingler's lowest setting.

Tikkie crawled to Lisa and flopped his sticky head onto her lap. He was still struggling up from cold sleep.

“Hi, Tikkie,” Lisa said and hugged him. His tail lifted and dropped.

I'd told her she could rename him and Tikkie was the result. She patted his wet head and whispered something to him, as though all the threats in her young life were tolerable, as long as she had her dog.

I wondered if this adventure of ours, provided we both survived, would make her a stronger adult someday, or mar her for life. I was afraid it might turn her bitter. Althea was fond of saying that all we do is provide our children's spirits with a passage into life. They arrive with their own imprinted personalities. Al knew instinctively what I'd learned from Sye Morth, my Loranth friend who'd been in geth-state last time we'd talked.

I sat down beside Lisa, shifted position against the loading tracks that ran back and up to the main hatch, closed my eyes and opened my mind to that great sadness which was the silver being.

Nothing. Damn him. He knew we couldn't stay here. Why wasn't he making contact?

A moving light! Below clouds. A small aircar dropped into the clearing with a whine of its single engine. It bounced, skidded, threw up a tail of snow and slid to a stop. The pilot jumped out and ran toward the module. Had Laurel seen us and sent help?

The shriek of an approaching air manta, low in the sky!

The pilot stumbled, got up and raced toward the module.

“Uh oh.” I pictured the ship's missiles destroying the module if it were after the pilot. “Uh oh.” I hooked the flashlight to my belt, scooped up Lisa and sprang the hatch.

The manta streaked into view with a roar that shook snow off the module's dome. Arctic air took my breath as I scrambled down the base ladder with Lisa wrapped in a blanket.

“Daddy. Tikkie!”

I jumped to the ground and snow folded over my shoes, was flung aside as I ran for the black root system hugging the frosty ground. Ahead, opaque distances. I turned, saw the pilot dash toward the module. Blue light snapped from the manta's wings. The running figure screamed and I realized it was a woman. Her arms flailed as she fell. Her body spasmed and sprayed up snow. Snow that misted around her still form.

I sat down heavily in the shadow of tangled roots, clutching Lisa to my chest, and hid her face from the sight of the body lying in the snow. Wind slapped my jacket collar against my cheek.

“Daddy!” Lisa gasped. I was squeezing her too hard. I loosened my grip. Had they murdered the woman for stealing crystals, or perhaps for just attempting to leave this idyllic world? Then again, did she have information they didn't want to reach other worlds? Or Interstel?

The manta circled, lifted in a harpy shriek, climbed into the storm and was gone.

Silence burned holes in moaning wind. Lisa cried softly against my chest. I patted her head and kissed her cold cheek.

How could Interstel have allowed this to happen?
Interstel serves Interstel
, the silver being had said. I knew its agencies were understaffed and spread thin. I'd heard talk of graft and lost files of criminal activities on the outback colonies, but I'd always thought it was just the usual criticism of government. Wouldn't the Worlds Government on planet Alpha regulate its own branches, including Interstel? Now I wasn't so sure. If Interstel could be bought, then who could a poor silver tag count on for help but me and my six-year-old daughter? Who indeed!

How far were we from Laurel? I studied the aircar. Would be nice to use it, but then again, someone, perhaps the czar's people, would be coming to claim it. Vehicles had to be imported to the planet in parts and were very expensive items. The woman might have stolen this one. I thought on igloos, or a crude lean-to for the night, fashioned from branches and blankets and camouflaged from mantas.

A sucking sound. Something cold and sharp caressed my thigh! I stood quickly, holding Lisa away from it, and slipped the stingler from its holster as a root-branch snaked around my leg.

“Daddy, there's a – “

“I know!” I burned the tendril and shook off the convulsing limb. Another root-branch reared from under snow and sprang toward us. I seared its root and it toppled. Snow melted around it as I beat a slippery retreat into the clearing with Lisa held tight in my arms. My thigh stung as though feral teeth had raked it.

A forest from hell!

“It was, uh, just a log,” I told Lisa when we reached the module's legs and crawled underneath. “But let's not go in there again, OK?” she said.

“OK, Lis'.”

A predatory jungle? Why not, if the soil were deficient in nitrogen, and if nitrogen was something these alien plants required. Slow for predators, though. Could be the cold. Still, it's a terrible thing to confront a being who wants to eat you, whether it's your mind, your body, or your soul the creature desires.

I know.

Somewhere within that banshee wind, a growl began and grew into the distinctive thud of powerful air freighter engines. The czar's people come for their merchandise? I carried Lisa behind the module's skirt and we huddled there. The snow was slushy from the warm exhaust. But for such a god-abandoned locale, this place was sure well-traveled!

“Daddy, can we get Tikkie now?”

“Not yet, Lis'. Not yet.” I prayed he was still too groggy to try the ladder. I didn't want our visitors to know there was life on board, if they didn't already know it. Ice crystals whirled in diffuse light from the module's interior. I rubbed my frozen hands and stretched the fingers. They burned as blood pumped back into them.

The heavy thud of engines deepened and I unholstered my stingler and set it on hot. The ship was a class F-11 atmospheric freighter. It lifted a haze of snow as it settled near the module.

“Lis', stay very quiet,” I whispered when a crew of three men and a woman swung out through the freighter's hatch. Exterior lights caught gold insignias on their dark uniforms as they moved around their vehicle.

“Colder than a miner's ass on level six!” I heard one of them exclaim.

I held my breath as I strained to hear any mention of us. I heard none and wondered how long the mindlock on Bjorn would last.

The four shuffled around their freighter. One shouted instructions to its pilot as they guided the backing vehicle to the module's main lock. Pools of light flashed diamond sparks across the snow.

One man checked the dead pilot. I turned Lisa's head away as he hefted her body over his shoulder, stalked to the ground woods and threw her in. But I couldn't protect her from the sucking sounds that followed.

With a jolt the freighter locked onto the module's hatch. Doors rolled open. I heard the rumble of a conveyor belt as crates were automatically loaded from the module into the freighter. How conceited of me to think the module had set down here just because of us. I felt relieved, though I had no idea where “here” was. But the frying pan is, after all, preferable to the fire. Fire would've been nice, though. A few stars gleamed through shedding clouds as the storm prowled north. The howl of wind faded to echoes. But the storm's footprints left an icy night.

“Hey, dreamsuck,” one of the crew shouted to another when they were finished loading, “contact the czar's hauler and tell them to come on in now. And make sure The Laurel Wreath gets the story of this dead runner for tomorrow's paper. The boss wants those vine weavers in town to know what happens when they interfere with his business. Let's close up the freighter and point her to Wolf Ridge. Daniel, get the car!”

So the czar ran Laurel too, or at least its government? I rested my head against Lisa's hood and watched Daniel trot to the aircar. The trouble with being pacifists, as I imagined Laurel was, is that when you meet predators you have no defenses. Turn the other cheek and that gets slapped too. Who had said that?

I'd hoped the czar just held the crystal mines, and now this place called Wolf Ridge, possibly his base of operations. Wolf Ridge… Sort of rang of high stone walls girdling high stone buildings, and parapets spiked with rail-A cannons, and invincible robots at high bronze doors. Then the native Kubraens were our only chance for sanctuary. According to Lisa's cube back at her grandparents' house, their closest village was located twenty kilometers northwest of Laurel. The other villages were hundreds of kilometers away. How did the Kubraens feel about Terrans? We'd find out. If we were lucky enough to make it to their village.

Daniel drove the aircar back. They clamped it to the freighter's tow bar and started across the clearing with a rumble of engines.

I closed my eyes and let out a frosty breath. What had Lisa and I to do with dream czars and illegal crystal mines? More important right now, that tag had said to contact the hauler, waiting somewhere beyond the clearing, and tell it to come in. Which left some hope that the vehicle was automated. Though robots, too, could discern and send messages.

Circus!
I thought when the freighter was gone. Was our misery just circus for that slimetroll alien who had summoned us to Halcyon?

Lisa pulled off a glove and put her warm hand on my cheek. “You're so cold, Daddy.”

I smiled and kissed her hand. “I'm all right, Lis'.” I crawled out from under the module.

She followed. “Where you going, Daddy?”

I heard the fear in her voice. ”No place, baby.” I slipped her glove back on. “I just have to get Tikkie.”

He was heavier than he looked as I carried him down the module's ladder and set him on his feet.

Guess I'd fed him pretty well back on Earth. He lifted his leg and peed against a stud.