Spears of the Sun (Star Sojourner Book 3) (11 page)

Night crept in to cover my tracks as I lay on cool grass under a canopy of trees and breathed in the smell of winter flowers. The stars above, sharp as spears, began to unroll in that great scroll of sky. “Huff, take care of yourself,” I whispered as the roar of waves told of a storm out at sea.

It had been a long day of hiding out in the woods while Rowdinth's government hovairs crisscrossed the sky and reminded me that there were those who would use my tel powers for some very unethical purposes.

I hadn't found Chancy or Carmen, and that worried me. Were they lying dead somewhere in these woods, brought down by Rowdinth's Elite Guards? I reached out with a tel probe for the hundredth time, but all I touched was a small predator stalking a prey creature. I withdrew. I don't argue with nature, but I don't get my kicks linking with animals who are chasing their supper. My stomach grumbled its disagreement. A good mock steak with some mashed potatoes and a salad would've been very welcome about now.

What did they serve for dinner aboard an Aristos-Class starship? I wondered as I stood up and brushed off my pants. If I couldn't contact Joe Hatch by SPS, then I'd take a chance on evading Rowdinth's police at the spaceport and hop a flight for planet Alpha.

As I limped toward the shore, I pictured Joe grumbling to his colleagues at W-CIA,
Why the hell doesn't he call, the irresponsible crote!
I smiled. “Wait till I tell you, Joe,” I grumbled back, “that I found the lab.”

At the high water mark, with waves crashing at my wet boots, I turned and counted steps back to the underground community's hatch. OK,
918
steps. I turned toward the lights of Gorestail, and committed landmarks to memory as I walked a straight line to the jetty. Now I could find the hatch to the tunnels again, and hopefully, a surface lab entrance for Joe and his W-CIA team to storm.

My ankle sent slivers of pain up my leg. I picked up a suitable branch to use as a cane as I skirted a shabby, one-road village. But a cheering crowd of Vermakts drew me closer to the lights of the central square.

“I'll be a rat's ass,” I muttered as General Rowdinth himself, dressed in a black and silver uniform, gestured and shouted from a platform surrounded by the crowd, who seemed mesmerized by his shrill speech, delivered with pounds of his fist on the dais.

I climbed the steps of a second-floor building and hid in shadows for a better look at this bizarre event.

The lunatic knew how to work a crowd. I had to give him that. But he spoke in Vermaktese, and it was Greek to me. With every calculated pause, the crowd roared and tried to move even closer to their deranged leader, but Vermakt police milled around the platform and held them back.

I leaned on the branch and listened as the people broke into what I took to be their National Anthem. Rowdinth led them with extended claws, like some macabre conductor.

Damn! If I'd had a long-range weapon, I'd have taken out the fucker here and now, but a stingler would just wound some Vermakt people between us.

I don't know what propaganda Rowdinth used to inflame his followers, but I'd a feeling that we Terrans, who'd been instrumental in keeping Fartherland out of the United Worlds, were not being praised for our attitude toward Fartherland's indigenous people. I sympathized. From what I'd gathered in conversations on Alpha, the Vermakts had not been treated fairly when gold was discovered on Fartherland. They were non-technological, and that has always put races, even on Earth, at a great disadvantage, if not in danger of genocide.

On cue from Rowdinth's raised hand, a color guard marched through the crowd bearing a huge silver and black Vermakt flag with Fartherland's star system emblazoned on it, and that enormous bronze bust of Rowdinth. I paused to watch as Vermakt children in white robes threw flowers to the crowd from a wagon drawn by an old ground hovar.

With broad theatrical gestures and a piercing tone, Rowdinth told his followers in stelspeak for any aliens and Gorestail reporters in the crowd, how the Vermakt race was descended directly from heaven and how the people were destined to rule the known worlds. He demanded vengeance in the name of God on the inferior alien races who stripped Fartherland of its gold riches, especially the Terran rat-eaters.

Rat eaters?
I thought.

With each pause in his diatribe, the crowd cheered wildly. The general was a madman, but why did the Vermakt people fall for such obvious rhetoric? Had he touched upon something in the basement of their psyches that wanted recognition and power?

Could be.

I wondered if the general were on a campaign route of Vermakt villages, whipping up enthusiasm with grandstanding for the coming war, should he acquire the gold bullion he sought to build his war machine. If his rogue scientists perfected the dark-energy weapon he bragged about, even without Alpha's gold-bullion depository, he could conquer and strip the colonies of their reserves.

I shook my head as Rowdinth changed his stance and his tone to a religious sermon in the modulated intonations of the high priest of a new religion. Did his people know what a sick mind was leading them toward war, I wondered. If he weren't stopped, his own race would suffer too. It sent a shiver through me as I went down the steps and stayed to the shadows of crumbling fibrin shacks. I left the village and headed for Gorestail, more determined than ever that this lunatic leader of his race had to be stopped.

It was past midnight when I reached Gorestail and the harbor. People still strolled the winding streets. Boats creaked, held in their berths by tie-downs. The water, with its translucent blues and greens in sunshine, was as dark now as the shadow of a prowler. Choppy waves told of the breakers assaulting the open coastlines.

I paused to study the distant lights of the spaceport. I'd never make it there on foot. The more I walked, the more my ankle objected with shooting pain. I hoped Darby couldn't sit on his arse, as he called it, for the next month!

A soft breeze with the promise of spring brushed my hair across my neck and I felt that itch again behind my ear. This time I dug at it with a nail and managed to scrape off the crusty skin. It stung and blood dripped down my neck, but maybe I was free of it. I wiped off the blood on my pants. Whatever had bitten me, probably while I slept, had left a calling card I couldn't ignore.

Uh oh. Two heavily armed Vermakt police, a male and a female, their pear-shaped bodies clothed in black and silver uniforms, strolled down the dark path. They were hermaphrodites, but I got the impression that they had a dominant gender.

I lifted my hood over my head, pulled down the jacket to cover the stingler, which was a no-no in town, and leaned on the rail, as though studying the waves that lapped stones below.

“Out late, no, Terran?” the female called as they walked past.

“I guess,” I called back. “Couldn't sleep.”

“Try dreaming about your homeland,” the male said in a deeper voice. “You might not have it much longer.”

“That's below the belt,” the female said as they continued on, but the male just chuckled. His ample backside, the “pear” in pear-shaped, made an easy target for my stingler. But only in my dreams.

I watched a shuttle blaze across the sky like a meteorite as it headed for the spaceport. Perhaps that one would be my ride out. “Shut up!” I told my ankle as I continued to walk and it complained again.

The whine of a small ground hovar.

It slid to a stop beside me.

“Are you walking to the port?” the Vegan driver leaned out the window to ask me.

“I'm trying to. Do you have room?”

The female Vegan in the passenger seat motioned to three furry children in the back. “Slide over, my darling cubs.”

“Thanks,” I told her.

The kids watched me with open curiosity as I climbed inside, and stretched their snouts to sniff me.

“Now watch your manners,” Mama bear told them.

I grinned at the adorable kids. “Hi, tags.”

“Hi, Terran,” the tallest one responded and wagged her muzzle in a Vegan greeting.

I sighed as I sat back and closed my eyes. “Are you on your way to planet Earth?” the driver asked casually.

I decided he was just curious. “No, Alpha. I have some government business there about ordinances on the gold mines. Going home to Kresthaven?” I asked, to be equally friendly.

“Yes,” the woman answered. “We also are on business for our homeworld. We negotiated for a Vegan interest in a mine that will bring credits to Kresthaven and help feed our people.”

“That's important work,” I said and closed my eyes and promptly fell asleep.

I awoke when the vehicle jerked to a stop.

We were at the spaceport. It boasted one building that looked like a termite mound of native soil and stone on steroids.

The shuttle had landed. Terrans and aliens strolled out of the terminal with backpacks and suitcases and looked around curiously.

I helped the Vegan family unload and carry their suitcases as we headed for the main entrance. Vermakt police stood guard near the doors and scrutinized the passengers as they walked to rented hovairs in the parking lot, and eyed those entering the terminal for an outward bound.

Two Vermakts guarding the main doors were busy discussing the possibility of pay raises for the police department. I stayed close to my Vegan buddies and walked casually past the two and into the building.

“Thanks for the ride,” I told the Vegans. “Bye, tags.” I waved to the three kids and went to buy a ticket for an outward bound.

SHUTTLE NOW BOARDING the holo announced as it drifted under the ceiling. VEGA ALTAIR DINEA ALPHA EARTH

I went through the portal, where my stingler was automatically discharged. I hate that, but I can understand the reasoning behind it. Not only was it illegal to carry a weapon through town and the spaceport, but automatically discharging any weapon prevented ships from being hijacked.

I boarded the shuttle and beat an Altairian to the last window seat. He muttered as he plunked down beside me. The gases inside his bubble helmet stirred and clouded his lime-green features.

I never liked Altairians, besides my encounters with Zorga. They seem to think that “grumpy” and “disdainful” are virtues. He flipped open an i-something, I can't keep up with the devices, and watched a holomentary of his home planet, narrated in his native tongue. It was Altairian to me. But I found myself intrigued by the stark gray and charcoal landscapes, dotted with thick, slime-green ponds. Altairians rested on the slick surfaces. It was strange to see them without their helmets. In the distance, buildings like bent crosses leaked green light.

He slid me a look and I turned and gazed out the window as the shuttle taxied down the tarmac. I love the whine of powerful engines as a space craft lifts in contradiction to the law of gravity. But then many objects in space, including black holes, concentrate gravity into monsters that eat stars and solar systems as they drift through the galaxy.

Uh oh,
I thought as the craft suddenly slowed, banked, and landed on a side runway. Engine trouble.

“Vert fie!” the Altairian muttered and snapped shut his i-holo device.

Passengers looked around, shook their heads and whispered to each other. But they fell silent as the captain, a well-built Cleocean, opened the cabin door.

“The sorry I am, all fellow races of the star systems.” He stared at me. “But there has been a slight delay.”

Christ!
I thought. Had the police discovered me after all? My hand went reflexively to my stingler as the captain approached and leaned over the Altairian's helmet. “Terran sir Jules Rammis,” he whispered, “please accompany my walk.”

“I have a ticket,” I told him and tried to keep my voice even.

“Yes. Please accompany me now to the hatch.”

I took a breath and tried to relax. “What's the problem, Captain?”

“This craft cannot take off, Terran sir, until you disembark.”

“Just go with him!” the Altairian said. “Before you make me late for my wedding!”

Pity the bride,
I thought. I stood up and glanced toward the main hatch. It was the only way out. The captain waited for me to go first. As I walked past the Vegan family, they kept their heads lowered. I was beyond embarrassment. I laid my hand again on my discharged stingler. Habit always wins out. But what awaited me on the other side of that door?

The captain reached around me and sprang the hatch. I fell back into him as I stared out at…nothing.

The lit path to the terminal was empty. I glanced at the captain. “They await your arrival within.” He gestured toward the terminal.

“Oh. Well,
bon voyage
, Captain.”

“To you also, Terran.”

Whatever,
I thought.

As I walked toward the terminal, I heard the hatch snap shut behind me.

I turned and limped toward an outside gate of the small spaceport. Who but Rowdinth's police could abort a shuttle takeoff and order a passenger to disembark? But why hadn't they confronted me at the shuttle?

Why was I looking a gift horse in the mouth? A forklift! My ride. I hurried toward it and climbed into the seat. Yes! The key was still in the ignition. I started the work vehicle and drove toward the gate.

Behind me sirens!

A ground police car sped across the tarmac. This was the tortoise and the hare as the forklift lumbered toward the gate.

Wait a minute. I swung the vehicle around and raised the fork. It protected me from their fire, if they were inclined to fire.

I headed for their patrol car. They turned the vehicle to try to avoid a crash, but I turned too and smashed into their right fender. The forklift rocked. I crowded the car as it ground sideways, and lowered the fork until it was under the car's belly. Then I engaged the fork and lifted the vehicle until it toppled onto its side.

“Eat that, fuckers!” I shouted as their wheels spun in air, and turned the forklift back toward the gate. As I said, my ride was a tortoise, albeit a very powerful one.

The two police tags crawled out of their downed vehicle and ran after me, their weapons drawn. But they wouldn't burn me. Would they? My sought-after tel powers had given me carte blanche, so to speak, in the past. Of course stun settings were another story.