Shadows of Golstar (48 page)

Owens was the first to speak. “The forest is changing;
I think it’s starting to thin out. So it looks like we’ll be reaching the end
of our cover pretty soon. Damn, we really don’t need this right now.” He
glanced at his wrist. “And if anything, the magnetic field is even stronger.”
The wrist-comp had reverted to a simple chrono-display. Apparently, it couldn’t
cope with the changing flux and had shut down the compass function on its own.
When he tried to reactivate the function, it would not stay in the compass mode
for more than a few seconds before quickly reverting back into a basic
timepiece.

Sharné
had been looking around. Her face took on a tiny frown
of concentration. She looked at Owens. “Have you noticed that not all of the
forest has diminished, only this area where we are walking?” She pointed to her
right, “That part of the forest actually seems to be getting thicker.”

Owens looked at her quizzically and then where she
pointed. He looked and saw what she meant. “You’re talking about that line of
trees, those big conifers we talked about earlier; they’re not thinning out
with the rest of the forest.” He shook his head in mock disgust, “And I’m the
one who’s supposed to be the investigator.” He said this knowing his mind had
been on other things; things associated with a recent kiss.

He looked to his left and saw a similar picture. The
tall trees did seem to getting more crowded. He saw the huge towering trees
were no longer masked by other types of trees in the forest. Only the shorter
trees and ground foliage had thinned. He looked back from where they came and
once again in the direction they were headed. Then he observed something else.

Owens remembered his initial thoughts regarding the
giant trees, how evenly spaced they appeared. He saw he had been correct. More
than ever, without the various species of smaller trees and other foliage
masking a clear view, the conifers now seemed to be evenly spaced, like an
orchard. He frowned.

“Sharné, do you notice something else about those
trees?” Owens asked.

She shook her head.

“Let’s walk a little farther,” he suggested. And they
headed in general direction of their original course. They walked for another
half-hour before he had them stop.

She was looking all around. “Yes, I believe I can now
see what you were intimating. It is the giant trees. The trees are laid out in
a pattern, are they not?” A note of excitement entered her voice, “They appear
to be planted in straight lines, and if I am not mistaken, the spaces between
the rows are gradually diminishing.”

“Exactly,” Owens confirmed. Now that they were in more
open space, they could see many more trees, in the distance. “In fact, it looks
to me like the trees are arranged in rows, like spokes in a wheel, all
converging on a central ‘hub.’”

Sharné frowned. “I was not aware of this. My education
exceeds that of most citizens. I am a member of the royal family, a holder of
high office and I was not given such information on these trees. There have
been a number of government-sponsored visits to Selane. How did they not notice
this before?”

Owens responded cautiously, “Actually, I have to think
they did. They had to; even a cursory survey above the planet’s surface would
quickly reveal the pattern. And this pattern is comprised of trees that predate
your people’s entry into the system. That tells me the spoke-wheel pattern and
whatever is at its center is there by some deliberate design. And if that
is
the case, I can certainly see where such information might be considered
sensitive.”

Sharné had been honest when she had said the tree
pattern was new and unexpected. But his latest conjecture had a chilling
effect. What could it mean?

Owens, oblivious to her dread, pulled his eyes away
from the trees and looked over at her. Sharné’s eyes were widened and a delicate
hand was to her mouth. Misinterpreting her expression for simple amazement, he
said, “Yeah, I know it’s a pretty big leap of logic, but it’s as good as any
other, at least until we get a look at area where the spokes meet,” he added.

“I…” She could not think of what to say.

He said, “I’m sorry Sharné, but to me, it looks like
the information was deliberately withheld, perhaps kept a state secret. I just
can’t see any other answer. As to why you were excluded, I can’t begin to
guess.”

She said, “What you say may be true but the rationale
escapes me.
 
Truly, I should be privy to
such a state secret and…, and I am not.” A sudden thought struck her. She
asked, “Has that… that feeling returned?”

She surprised him. He hadn’t expected that question.
She had quickly made the logical bridge between this ‘intelligent design’ and
the unexplained feeling he experienced earlier. He had almost forgotten it.
With the mystery of the trees, he pushed it completely to the back of his mind.
But with her just mentioning it, the feeling came crashing back, stronger than
ever.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Now that you mention it, it is
back and seems to be stronger than before. It feels like something is beginning
to move, like that rustling I mentioned, but now it’s more intense.”

She was alarmed to see him wince. He squeezed his eyes
shut and then opened them.

“Sorry, it’s a little disorienting. It’s different
this time and it doesn’t seem to be fading. I feel… it seems to be pulling me.”
He swayed slightly as if weakened.

Sharné
looked at him with apprehension and asked anxiously,
“Where? Where is it pulling you?”

He shook his head, trying to clear it. “It’s hard to
think. Wait…” He lifted his arm and pointed, “That way, I think we should go
that way.” His voice sounded strained.

To her dismay, she saw that he was pointing in the
direction of the ‘hub.’ The trees predated the humans that settled in the
Golstar system. Could they truly be part of an alien artifact? Could whatever
it was at the ‘hub’ be responsible for Owens’ sudden erratic behavior?

Before she could frame an answer, multiple energy
beams suddenly erupted from nearby trees and struck the ground around Owens,
one hitting him square in the chest. His body was immediately engulfed in a
blinding flash of light. When Sharné's vision cleared, she saw Owens lying in a
crumbled heap, the chest of his survival suit a blackened ruin.

“Owens! No!” she screamed.

There was shouting coming from where the weapons fire
originated, but they barely registered on her consciousness. She stood
paralyzed, staring at Owens’ motionless body. She heard one voice much closer
than the others call out quite plainly, “He was hit! He was hit square on. The
bastard dark-bringer is finally dead, righteously scorched by the Light!”

“No!” she sobbed. “Dear Founder, no!”

Her paralysis left her and she rushed over and knelt
down beside Owens’ body. He was not breathing. She reached out to touch his
still face. Before her fingers made contact, she felt hands grab her roughly
from behind and was jerked forcefully to her feet.

Tears blinded her eyes. She heard a man’s coarse
voice, as if from a distance. “Load the cursed body on the back of the
carrier.”

Another voice asked, “Who is the woman?”

“I do not know who she is or why she accompanied him,”
the man with the coarse voice responded. “But for now, do not harm her. We will
bring her back with us. I am sure Linden will want to interrogate her.”

She was shoved forward and forced to follow the two
men dragging Owens’ body. The man behind her kept a hand weapon pushed hard
against her spine. Owens’ weight was considerable and in starts and stops, the
men pulled the inert body by its heels towards a small four-seat, open cockpit
vehicle.

After some struggling to get Owens’ body onto the
small cargo platform at the rear of the ground-bug, the two mutineers climbed
into the front. Sharné and the man still holding the weapon pointed at her were
already seated in the rear. The vehicle took off with a jolt and then gradually
eased into a relatively smooth ride. She noticed they were headed in the
direction of Owens’ ‘hub.’ Even in death he was still being drawn there. Fresh
tears tracked down Sharné’s cheeks and she fought the dark blanket of despair
that threatened to smother her.

In spite of what happened to Owens, she knew she had
to keep her wits about her and tried to focus on the mutineers. She saw that
the thick-haired driver was using the vehicle’s com unit, talking with someone.
She could not hear his words over the buffeting wind-noise, but from time to
time he would laugh loudly. After a while, he turned off the com and shouted
that they were almost at the base camp.

The man in the front passenger seat turned around and winked
at the man beside Sharné, who was now casually holding his weapon on her. The
front passenger’s face split into a wide, toothy grin. His head bobbed up and
down excitedly and he shouted, “Can you believe our good fortune? He had the
entire planet to conceal himself and what does he do instead? The dark-bringer
practically walked up to us and begged to be killed! I think it was my shot
that brought him down. Linden will finally be pleased. We are heroes!”

The man beside her barked a cynical laugh. The driver
joined in and the front passenger giggled. On hearing her captors’ glee,
Sharné's grief was momentarily pushed aside by a flood of anger. They laughed
at killing Owens, laughed at the death of the only one who might have saved
them. They merrily celebrated their ambush, their cowardliness. They were
fools. She wanted to lash out and burn them with the same energy weapons they
had used to fell Owens. She could barely contain her growing hatred, but she
had the presence of mind to remain outwardly calm, while her thoughts seethed.
Because of them, the crew of the
Light
Saber
and now Owens were
dead.

Owens, her thoughts immediately returned to him. How
could he be gone? He saved her life more than once and suffered injuries in the
process. He seemed almost indestructible. He had come into her life for so
short a time, yet in that short time, she had grown to love him; she finally
admitted to herself. They had kissed only once, yet his loss left a chasm in
her soul. With these thoughts, grief, lurking in the shadow of her mind, crept
forward and again tried to pull her back from anger and into a pool of despair.

She refused to submit to it. She stubbornly pushed the
darkness out of her mind and instead tried to take stock of her situation. It
is what Owens would have done. But she could not stop thinking of him. She
could still feel his incredibly strong arms holding her while he ran through
the disintegrating
Light Saber
, his heart thundering with exertion as he
carried her to safety. She had grown to depend on his strength, but now she
must rely solely on her own. She rubbed the fresh tears from her eyes and
looked about.

The vehicle was traveling relatively unimpeded.
 
There was little in the way of underbrush and
it almost seemed the path they were traveling was graded. She could easily see
the spacing between the trees was gradually diminishing and the rows had indeed
continued to converge. As they approached their destination, she saw Owens had
been right. The spokes did come closer together in a single area; the spacing
between them narrowed to about fifty meters. The lines of trees finally ended,
creating a large circle. Within the circular area was a smaller one surrounded
by a tall, stone wall.

As they neared the wall, she felt there was something
familiar about it. It dawned on her that the reason for its familiarity was the
type of stones and their placement. To Sharné's eye, it looked like it was
built employing techniques similar to those used on Berralton. Even the
materials used to construct it were akin to those used on Berralton. Otherwise,
it appeared quite unremarkable, almost commonplace. As they drew closer, she
saw that the wall looked to be about seven meters in height. Some of the walls
that comprised the Palace were well over fifteen meters.

What was unusual was its existence on an uninhabited
planet in the middle of a forest. Furthermore, she noted its image wavered in
the fading afternoon light, a typical telltale sign that the wall was protected
by a force-field. She wondered why. What was behind the wall that would require
such protection? Even with this discovery, she felt a pang of disappointment.
Owens must have been mistaken. This obviously was of human construction, not
the alien artifact he had envisioned.

She saw a large gate, a single heavy, metal door,
which had swung wide open. A hastily erected campsite was located near the
gate. It was presently unoccupied. They approached the gate from an angle and
whatever the wall protected remained hidden from view. The vehicle came to a
stop about ten meters from the opening.

The driver turned around and exclaimed to the man
holding the weapon on Sharné, “They made it in and Linden did not say a single
word of it when I was talking to him on the com. I suppose he did not consider
it essential we be told. Whatever it is in there, it is important enough to be
guarded by a wall, force-field and a gate with the seal of the Grand Patriarch.
But I guess
we
were not important enough for them to tell us what they
found.”