Laura Jo Phillips (54 page)

“Don’t make another damn sound,” he ordered.

Hope and Grace just stared back at him until he turned away from the window.  Then they looked at each other.

Hope thought hard.  Obviously she wasn’t going to be able to call anyone if the guard’s hearing was that good.  There had to be a way to use the vox to get help.

She looked at Grace, lying on the floor beside her, then beyond her.  The room was long and narrow, with several twin sized beds set in two rows along the walls, like a dormitory.  Even from her position on the floor, she could see that the beds were not empty.

Hope stood up, glanced once at the window in the door, then walked slowly toward the first bed, already knowing when she reached out to touch the woman lying motionless on top of it that she would not find any sign of life.  She touched the cold flesh lightly, then jerked her hand back.  She moved along the narrow path between the beds, looking at each woman.  There were eight beds, and six of them were occupied.

Hope didn’t touch any of the other women.  She didn’t have to.  As she walked beside each bed it was obvious to her that the women were dead.  Until she reached the last bed and realized that the dark red hair spread out on the pillow was familiar.

“Aisling?” she gasped softly as she hurried around the final bed, her heart in her throat.  Unlike the other women, Aisling didn’t appear to be dead, but Hope wasn’t sure.  She reached out slowly towards Aisling’s arm and touched her lightly.  Tears of relief sprung to her eyes.

“Aisling, wake up,” she whispered, shaking her shoulder.

“She must be drugged,” Grace said from the other side of the bed.  As soon as Grace finished speaking, they heard voices from outside of the room.  They stared at each other fearfully, then turned and hurried back toward the door. 

“Darck wants these women out to the transfer zone, right now,” a deep voice said.  

“Yes, Sir,” said the voice of the guard that had hollered at them a few minutes earlier.  There was a long silence, and Hope decided she had to risk the call.  She tapped the vox.

“Hope?” Clark asked, tense with shock.

“Clark, I don’t know where we are, but we need help,” Hope said speaking softly.

“We’re on our way,
aspara
,” Clark said.  “We’ll be there in just a few minutes.”

“Okay,” Hope replied.  “Just hurry, please.  Something big is happening here, and they’re planning to take us somewhere.”

“Where?” Clark asked.

“I don’t know,” Hope replied, struggling to hold panic at bay.  “They’re outside the door right now, talking about taking us to a transfer zone.”

“Hope, no matter what happens, we will find you, I promise,” Clark said.  “Don’t give up.”

“Never,” Hope agreed. 

Clark turned to Jackson and repeated what Hope had told him.  Jackson moved into the cockpit of the VTOL.  “Can we go any faster?” he asked.

The pilot glanced up at him for a brief second, then immediately put his attention back on the controls.  “I’m sorry, Sir, I’m redlining the engines already,” he said.

“How long before we get there?”

“Just under three minutes,” the pilot replied.  

Jackson went back to share that information with his brothers, feeling more helpless than he ever had in his life.

***

Jarlek stood on the outside edge of the transport circle, glancing nervously at the two strange looking males who had transported down from the Xanti ship. 

“I am Magoa,” said the larger of the two.  “This is my son, Slater.”

“I am Jarlek,” Jarlek replied stiffly.  There was something about the appearance of these two males that set off alarm bells in his head.  But it was too late to change his mind now.  If Za-Marliq’s latest message was correct, the Directorate was on their way at that very moment to destroy them.

“I apologize if we seem abrupt,” Magoa said, “but the Xanti ship we arrived on is being fired upon as we speak by an Earth orbital defense station.”

“Don’t they have Blind Sight?” Jarlek demanded fearfully.

“Yes, of course,” Magoa replied with a little smile.  “Apparently Earth has discovered a way to get around it.”

“That means this compound is no longer hidden,” Jarlek said. 

“That is correct,” Magoa said.  “I would advise beginning transportations at this time.”

“Yes, of course,” Jarlek replied.  “Darck, get your ass over here, now!”

***

“Darck wants those women right now!” a third voice yelled.  “Which one of you morons has the key to this room?”

“I think Darck took it,” the second guard said.

“No, I have it,” said the first voice.

Hope and Grace looked frantically around the room, searching for a weapon, a place to hide, anything.  Aside from the beds and two metal chairs against one wall, the room was bare.

Hope thought about using one of the metal chairs as a weapon, but discarded the idea.  It was an old fashioned folding chair, too unwieldy to use as a weapon. 

“Hurry the hell up!” the third voice snapped angrily.  “I can hear Jarlek screaming from here and the Xanti have already begun transportation.”

“I got it,” said the first voice. 

Hope’s eyes went back to the chair and she got an idea.  She hurried to it, picked it up and carried it to the door, then hesitated, trying to figure out how to make this work.  Grace appeared beside her and guided Hope’s hands on the chair.  Together, they set it in front of the door and tilted it backward, lodging the top of the chair’s back beneath the doorknob.  As soon as they stepped away from the door the lock clicked and the doorknob turned. 

Hope gasped as the feet of the chair began to slide across the tile floor as the door was pushed against.  She went down on her knees and grabbed the front of the chair, pushing back against the door.  A moment later Grace joined her.  Hope scooted over and they both pushed against the chair in an effort to keep it from sliding across the floor.

“Move out of the way!”

Hope looked up and saw a furious reptilian face glaring at her through the window.  She dropped her gaze to the doorknob, determined not to let the chair slip in the slightest degree.  There was more yelling, and a lot of banging on the door, but Hope blocked out their words.  She focused completely on holding the chair, refusing to allow it to move.

Suddenly a new voice began shouting, then she heard the sound of breaking glass followed by the low buzz of an energy weapon.  A moment after that she heard the sound of pounding footsteps retreating in the distance.  Then silence.

Hope risked a glance up at the broken window, relieved that the guards had apparently left.  She turned toward Grace with a smile, her breath catching in her throat as she watched her friend slump to the floor, drenched in blood.

***

Jackson ordered the pilot to set down in an area that looked no different than any other portion of the terrain.  Sand, rocks, brush, no sign of life whatsoever.  The pilot was under orders to obey whatever Jackson said, so he obediently prepared to set the VTOL down.  Twenty feet from the ground he was astonished to see a huge, walled in compound containing forty to fifty buildings suddenly appear from nowhere.  He immediately sent their exact location to the half dozen VTOLs coming up behind them as he selected a landing site in the middle of what appeared to be a street, and set down. 

Jackson, Clark and Rob were out of the VTOL before it was fully on the ground, along with half a dozen armed soldiers who immediately spread out around the VTOL in a defensive position.  Clark glanced at his hand terminal and pointed toward the southeast corner of the compound.

Jackson nodded as he took a moment to survey their surroundings. There were lots of houses, but no people.  He started off in the direction Clark had indicated, glancing back over his shoulder at the sound of several more VTOLs breaking through the camouflage shield.  They rounded a corner and found themselves before a long structure that appeared to be some type of community building or auditorium.  There was a large area of bare ground in front of the building with a big circle marked on it in white.

There were perhaps twenty people inside the circle, and at least that many more gathered around it, all of them loaded down with various suitcases, bags and boxes.  Even as the Bearens watched, the people inside the circle disappeared, transported away in an instant.  As soon as the circle emptied, the people standing around it hurried inside for their turn to be transported. 

For one moment, Jackson was torn.  The Brethren were escaping, and from the looks of things, this was the last group.  But at the same time, their Arima was in need of them.  She had to take precedence.

Jackson started to turn away from the circle when a cold shiver raced through his body and his nose began to burn.  Magic.  He spun back and saw a deep red and green glow on the far side of the crowded circle.  Not just magic. 
Wrong
magic. 

As he watched, the multicolored glow expanded rapidly, solidifying into a twenty-five foot long sugea with two narrow snake-like heads.  One was a moldy green, the other the color of dried blood.  Jackson, Clark and Rob instantly called their bearencas, the best defense they had against any magical creature.

The two-headed sugea rose up behind the crowd, threw back both of its heads, its wide open mouths revealing hundreds of long needle sharp teeth, and spit twin columns of roiling fire into the sky.  The people in the circle began screaming, some of them cowering where they stood, others starting to bolt away, when suddenly they all disappeared.  Now there was nothing between the bearencas and the sugea but an empty circle, and a wide expanse of bare sand.

Jackson, Clark and Rob reared up on their hind legs, stretching to their full, eighteen foot height as they threw back their heads and roared their challenge to the sugea.  The depth of their combined voices caused the ground to vibrate beneath their huge paws, and broke several nearby windows.  The sugea’s twin heads hissed loudly, then it took three awkward looking steps before leaping skyward, it’s leathery wings lifting it effortlessly into the air . 

“Its going for the VTOLs,”
Jackson sent to Clark and Rob. 
“We can’t let all of those men be destroyed.”

Jackson went down on all fours, turned around and raced back the way they had come, gathering as much Air power as he could.  “
Clark you take the green one, I’ll take the red
,” Jackson sent as he ran.  “
Rob, feed us your power
.”

“
Our magic is not strong enough to protect all of those VTOLs and the men in them,”
Clark sent back calmly.

“We don’t need to,”
Jackson replied. 
“This thing is Narrasti.  Our magics repel each other.”

“In that case, this should be easy,”
Clark replied. 

Jackson smiled inwardly as he slid to a stop near the VTOLs, his razor sharp claws digging furrows into the ground as his eyes tracked the two-headed sugea.  He fashioned a shield of solid air, pulling some power from Rob, sensed Clark following his lead, and waited.  Just as the sugea dropped over the area where the VTOLs had landed, Jackson threw his shield in front of the mouth of the red head as Clark did the same to the green head.  The flames that shot from the gaping mouths vanished instantly, as did their Air shields, and the sugea faltered. 

Jackson prepared a new shield and waited, his bearenca crouched on all fours, his hackles raised in a line down his back as he watched the sugea circle once again.  This time it targeted Jackson, Clark and Rob, but they were ready for it.

As the two gaping mouths opened to shoot flames at them, Clark and Jackson thinned their Air shields, spreading them out so that they were as large as they could make them, and wrapped the sugea in them.  The sugea roared furiously with one head, and spit flames with the other as it tumbled toward the ground.  Jackson felt his shield disintegrate, but he calmly watched as the sugea continued flapping its wings, trying to get as far as it could from them as possible before it fell from the sky and out of their view. 

Jackson turned once more and raced back toward the center of the compound, hoping to catch the Narrasti before they were able to get inside of that transport circle and escape.  As fast as he moved, he knew he was too late when he came around the last corner and saw the two humanoid figures struggling to their feet on the far side of the circle, one helping the other. 

They stumbled into the circle just as Jackson roared and put on an extra burst of speed, but he could not enter the circle, and the Narrasti knew it.  A moment later the circle was empty, and silence fell. 

“
Hope is still here, and we need to get her, now,”
Clark said, as close to panic as Jackson had ever heard from him. 
“They’re going to blow this place.”

Even as he sent the words to Jackson’s mind he was already racing for the house where Hope’s vox signal was coming from.  Jackson turned and raced after him, Rob at his heels, all of them knowing that there was a good possibility that they would find Hope’s vox, but not Hope. 

It only took them seconds to reach the house in a far corner of the compound.  Clark slammed into the door with his shoulder, causing the wooden door to explode into splintered chunks.  They all shifted back into their human forms since their bearencas would not fit through the doorway, and raced inside.