Blood of Denebria (Star Sojourner Book 4) (5 page)

“It means, cousin,” Agrari responded, “that I regulate the stores of food for the general good.”

“Come on, kid. Chancey's right. We're wasting our time here.”

The sun threw yellow casts of slanted light as it dipped into late afternoon. The air was still humid, with the pungent smell of thick bushes and weeds as we walked toward the ship, parked beneath a tall tree for camouflage from the air.

Without vehicles, the silence of the city was only broken by buzzing insects busy at day's approaching end. We were at the perimeter of Korschaff. Across the wide stone street, a government compound of tall, unadorned angular buildings of black wood and stone spread out to the foot of a mound of shale.

“Spartan, isn't it?” I commented.

“It has the charm of a dead Altairian hodge-snucker.”

To our right, the lowering sun warmed rows of stores where Denebrians strolled, all wearing the inevitable green coveralls and yellow, straw hats. The children seemed lost under the wide-brimmed hats.

“Munchkins,” I said and chuckled. But my smile faded as I thought of my six-year-old daughter Lisa, living in Denver, planet Earth, with my former wife Althea and her new husband. Althea is Joe's daughter. I missed my little girl. We had grown close during our dangerous encounters on planet Halcyon. “I wonder how Lisa's doing?” I said and bit my lip. “I'll bet she's growing like a weed.”

Joe nodded. “If we get our hands on an SPS, our second call will be to Althea and my wife. You can talk to Lisa.”

“There's something I always wanted to explain to you, Joe.”

“About leaving your wife and infant daughter to spend five years chasing a mammal on Syl' Terria?”

I nodded. It was a subject that was taboo between us. But this was as good a time as any to breach it. I stopped. Joe did too and turned to me.

“It was because of Ginny,” I said. “I was afraid I'd do something stupid and get Lisa killed too.

“Well, I figured that much.” He started walking again and I followed him. “I told Althea the two of you were too young for marriage,” he said, “and you were too reckless. Still are.”

He stopped again and I walked into him. “Those years,” he said, “when Al was hoping you'd return, and telling Lisa about her dad, I was glad you didn't show up at our door. I don't know what I would've done to you.”

The look in his eyes made me take a step back. “I was scared, Joe. I thought that somehow or other, I'd get Lisa killed too.”

“That was plain stupid!”

“It was a gut feeling I couldn't shake.”

We started walking toward the ship again and I wondered about Althea's new husband. “What's Charles like?”

“Solid as a brick shit house. Just about as boring, too.”

“Sounds like the kind of tag who'll take good care of Lisa.”

“You would've taken good care of her.”

I shook my head. “I don't know, Joe. There's something inside me that yearns for the excitement of taking risks. I take chances even when I don't have to.”

“Ain't
that
the truth.”

As we walked, I thought of my young sister Ginny. She'd been killed when I crashed a hornet cub into the Rocky Mountains. I had been a reckless teenager and Ginny begged to see the peaks she called The Three Sisters. We were orphans and I'd wanted to please her, so I took the hornet cub to heights it was never meant to reach. When it crashed, Ginny was thrown out the door and I couldn't grab her in time. She slid down a rocky outcrop. Her face as she reached for me and screamed was an image that haunted my dreams, even though Sye Morth, a Loranth friend between lives, had assured me in tel links that her kwaii, her soul, was in another body on a far planet. One that was inhospitable to humans. Spirit, that enigmatic entity from Halcyon, had demanded that I leave her in peace. He was in touch with Great Mind and I honored his directive.

“I tried to talk Al out of the divorce,” I told Joe. “I wanted her and Lisa to come to Syl' Terria.”

Joe stopped again. “And leave everything she knew for that godforsaken rock?”

I shrugged.

“It's
done
.” He waved, as though brushing aside old memories. “Let's get back to the ship.

“You know, the only way we're going to find an SPS is—“

“Going behind BEM lines and locating one of theirs.”

I nodded as we approached the ship, parked under a towering, green-leafed tree for camouflage from the air. “I've never seen such an earthlike planet,” I commented. “Parallel evolution. But that begs the question, Joe. With their isolationist policy, the Denebrians don't cater to alien menus.” I ripped a leaf off a low branch and studied it as we walked. It was veined and very similar to Earth's deciduous leaves. “Another good reason to get help from Alpha in a quick hurry, as Chancey would say. I'm half starved. The other half of me is vying for thirsty and tired.”

Joe reached into his pocket. “While Sojourner was making jumps like a kangaroo on steroids, I managed to grab our supply of digestall. Here's one of them.” He pulled out a wrapped package.”

“Damn, Joseph!” Digestall. We could eat almost anything the Denebrians had to offer.

“I stored the rest in the ship,” he said. “A good month's supply for the four of us.

“How about the kit for checking alien poisons?”

“That, too.”

I chuckled. The BEMs never thought to search us. I guess when you don't wear clothes, you don't have the concept of pockets.”

“There's a lot of things they're clueless about. It works in our favor.”

“You know, Huff has a belly pouch. He stores candy bars in it.”

“How'd you ever get mixed up with that fur ball?”

“Long story, Joe,” I said as we climbed onboard the ship. “He's a good-hearted tag. I wish you and Chancey would show him a little more respect.”

Huff was awake, picking parasites off his fur and eating them.

Joe threw me a look.

The four of us went to a local bar and grill for supper. A female Denebrian behind the counter, by the bulges in her coveralls around her chest, silently watched us walk by and toward the booths.

Mammalian,
I thought.

The bar consisted of a row of liquefied vegetables in different colored bottles that adorned the shelf behind the counter. Names were scrawled in Stelspeak for their new friends, the BEMs. The bartender, a short tag by Denebrian standards, perhaps six feet, with olive green skin, stared at me at eye level, then turned his back and purposely ignored us as he wiped glasses from the dish drainer.

It was early for supper and only a few patrons sat at booths, their dishes piled with green vegetables and slices of yellow gourds. When you're a vegetarian you have to eat a lot of food to get enough nourishment. They kept their heads down as they ate, and tried to ignore us. Only their children, peeking out from under floppy hats, showed open curiosity.

“Hey, Shorty!” Chancey tapped the bar with a fist. “Shit! I could've had a V8.” He slapped his forehead.

The bartender slowly turned. His nose slits flared. The skin between his shaggy brown brows wrinkled.

I chuckled as we took seats at a booth near the swinging kitchen door to be away from the other customers, and opened menus.

I sat back, feeling the effects of the past few days. “I don't know if I'm more thirsty, more hungry, or more tired,” I said. “It's a toss-up.”

“We'll go back to the ship after supper.” Joe opened a menu. “I want you to get a good night's sleep.”

“Me too.” I gently touched the welts on my left cheek.

“Do they still hurt?” Joe asked.

“Not if I leave them alone.” I opened the menu and studied it. The grill served vegetables unliquefied. You could have them deep fried, boiled, sautéed, or rolled in krunci crums. “Dammit,” I muttered, “I could eat a horse.”

“And I,” Huff announced, “could eat two tailless squigglers, even without salted ice.”

“Ah feel like I'm back home at Mama's,” Chancey said, thickening his Harlem accent as he studied the menu. 'Eat yo vegetables, child.' We should've grabbed the food stores from Sojourner.” He folded the menu in disgust.

“There was no time to grab them,” Joe told him. He took out the packet of digestall, opened it and handed us containers of the pills, then dropped four into our empty plates and unzipped the poison-test kit.

The waiter came by, a young male dressed in the inevitable green coveralls, with a white cap on his plated head, and a tray of dirty dishes. I raised my hand, but he continued by as though our booth was empty, and strode into the kitchen.

“That tag ignores us one more time,” Chancey said, “an' I'll go fry us up some okra and hominy grits myself.”

“You can fry hominy grits?” I asked Chancey.

“How do I know? I hate southern food.”

I stared out the window where a farmer, dressed in green coveralls, strolled down a stone road, pulling a stretcher without wheels, full of long green plants and yellow gourds.

“It's a travois,” I said and slipped my bottle of digestall into my jacket pocket.

“What the hell's a travois?” Chancey asked.

I nodded toward the passing farmer. “They don't have the concept of wheels.”

“That's the least of what they don't have,” Chancey said.

Joe glanced over my shoulder, toward the front door. He spread his hands across his open menu. I saw his shoulders hunch and his jaw tighten.

“What?” I said.

Huff sat beside me, running a clawed paw down the menu's list of offerings.

“Are all your stinglers fully charged?” Joe asked quietly.

Chancey, sitting beside Joe, glanced up and froze as he stared past me.

“Don't turn around!” Joe ordered as Huff turned to peer over his shoulder. His lips drew back in a Vegan grimace. “BEMs!” he said aloud.

“Duck!” Joe yelled.

I slid under the table and heard the zap of a hot beam flash over my head.

Joe cried out.

“Joe!” I yelled and coughed on burning material from the booth's backrest.

“Joe's hit!” Chancey said. “I don't think it's bad.”

“Dammit!” I said. “Huff, you OK?”

“Here is OK,” he whined and crawled beneath the table. “For this now moment.”

I unholstered my stingler and stuck my head past the booth, on hands and knees. The BEMs were crouched between a booth and the counter. “How many of them?”

“Five,” Joe rasped out.

“What the hell are they doing in Korschaff?” I said.

“You heard Agrari,” Chancey answered, “they're visitors.”

“Jules friend, keep the floe above your head!” Huff made a grab for my jacket, missed and fell into me. I slid out from under the booth and was flattened to the floor, with Huff on top of me. My stingler bounced across the carpet.

“Son of a crote!” I yelled as a hot beam burned the carpet just past my hand. “Get off me, Huff!”

He backed up and dragged me under the table by my pants. I pulled the second stingler from behind my waistband and spun the ring to hot. The four of us were pretty crowded under that table.

“Wait a minute,” I said to the others. “Let me get my bearings. Maybe I can link and see what they have in mind.”

“I can tell you what,” Chancey said. “Kill us and take back their ship.”

“Who's got the comkey?” I asked.

“I do,” Chancey told me. “They're not getting into the ship without it.”

“The backup key?” I asked.

“Under a rock near the ship,” Chancey told me.

Uh oh,
I thought as the BEMs began to systematically burn the backs of the seats on my side of the booth. Small flames flared. I pushed against Joe in an attempt to move away from them and smelled burning fur. Huff whined as flames singed his outer coat. I took off my jacket and snuffed out the flares as they sprouted.

“Like rats in a cage,” Chancey said.

“Take the jacket.” I shoved it at Huff.

He hooked it with a claw and studied the backrest for fires.

“Be quiet now,” I told them all.

I closed my eyes and blanked out the turmoil around me. A burn like a hot poker was suddenly pressed against my side. For a panicked moment I thought I'd been hit. But no, it was Joe!

I had no time to comfort his mind or reach into his pain centers. I lowered my mental shields, like grinding plates that submerged into black water. I probed.

This isn't working, brothers, a BEM sent. The seat material resists fire. We must charge them.

Some of us will be killed!
another sent on a note of panic.

Yes, the first one responded. But if we return without Older Brother's ship, we will all be fed to Bountiful, a tentacle at a time.

“They're going to charge!” I whispered. “They mean to kill us and get the key. Get ready. How's Joe?”

“I'll live,” he squeezed out.

“OK. Quiet now,” I said. “I'll tell you when they're coming.”

Wait, a third BEM sent. I could feel the keenness of his focused mind. Three of us will crawl out the front door and go round the building. Then, on my signal, we all fire at once. The booth they occupy will heat up from both sides and it will flush them out.

Crossfire,
I thought.

What was that? the first BEM sent. I heard crossfire.

The telepath is linking, the third one told him. No matter, he will still feel the heat and smoke of our beams.

“Crossfire!” I told my companions and caught my breath. “Three of them are going around to the back of the building.”

“Chancey.” Joe groaned. “Can you push this seat aside?”

“Let's see.” Chancey jammed his muscular shoulder against their seat and pushed. I heard a brace beneath it snap. Joe and Chancey fell as the seat slid backward.

“C'mon,” Joe said. “Chancey, give me a hand.”

Our seat was still in place, blocking the view from the counter, I grabbed my jacket, tied it around my waist, and followed the others as they crawled past the broken seat and through the kitchen door. The male waiter was gone. The outer metal kitchen door, a massive affair, stood open. I kept my mind a blank as I pointed to a tall, rectangular window.

“Go, Chancey,” I said. “I'll cover you.”

I ran to the door, swung it shut and threw the bolt, then ducked behind a crate of rotted vegetables and watched the door as Huff and Chancey got Joe out through the window.