The Swords of Gregara - Jenala, a sci-fi romance (11 page)

“It matters not whether you believe it.
 
Perdor believes it and he wants you trained.”

“Water. 
 
I need water,” he said. The ground cold on his naked buttocks.
 
 

The woman, whatever her name was, handed him a metal cup filled with a brownish liquid. 
 
He drank it, needing it regardless of its unappetizing color. Now he remembered what she said. 
 
Honora
. 
 
But who was she? 
 
For that matter, where was he?

He looked around him and saw only a small room, with two openings.
 
Where there should have been doors instead were just empty archways in the walls, one leading outside the building and one to the inside. 
 
Coming from the outside was the din of metal hitting metal

“Tell me where I am,” he commanded over the noise.

“You’re on Gregara. 
 
You’re now a slave owned by Perdor, Valmud of the Tokina tribe.”

“I am no man’s slave.”

She shrugged. 
 
“Whatever you say.
 
 Now get up.”  
 

He ignored her demand. 
 
Like hell he was going to just acquiesce to her orders! 

“Why do I need a sword? 
 
Give me back my blaster and I’ll show you a fight.”

“You try my patience.”
 
Her voice never raised.
 
If anything it got softer.
 
“Technically there are no blasters allowed on the planet but they are everywhere. 
 
Regardless, they are not allowed in the arena. 
 
Only swords, spears and nets. 
 
It’s totally barbaric but what can you expect from barbarians?”

He finally looked up at the person belonging to the voice. 
 
A tall woman with white-blond hair, braided, laying over one shoulder and the iciest blue eyes he’d ever seen, stood before him. 

“You. 
 
I released you from the chains last night.”

“It wasn’t last night. 
 
It was two nights ago. 
 
Thank you for that but it doesn’t change the fact that I need to train you for the arena.”

“What arena? 
 
What’s a valmud?” he stood up not caring that he was naked. 
 
He had to get out of here. 
 
He shook his head trying to understand and shake the confusion and the residual drugs from it. 

 “It’s not a valmud. 
 
It’s
 
the
 
Valmud. 
 
The leader of the tribe. 
 
Learn that now and save yourself grief later. 
 
He watches us.”
 
She nodded toward the archway leading to the outside.

He looked up the wall at the boxed seating. 
 
There sat a slender, dark skinned man in a purple shirt and brown pants. 
 
He had short hair and no beard.
 
 He looked ordinary. 
 
Nodding at Honora, he got up and left.

After the Valmud’s brief nod, she came over to Joridan and stood toe to toe. 
 
Forcing him to look at her.
 
 Look into beautiful blue eyes that held no warmth. 
 
Gaze at her perfect pink mouth as she talked to him. 
 
He had to still be under the effects of the drugs. 
 
Why did he care about such things? He closed his eyes, shook his head, opened them again and concentrated on her words. 

“I will explain this once,” she poked him in the chest with the index finger of her left hand. 
 
“No more. 
 
You better hope your head clears before I finish. 
 
Perdor loves the gladiator games. 
 
They are the favored entertainment of the Tokina. 
 
Once you are trained, you will go to the arena with me. 
 
Perdor does not send you into the arena without proper training. 
 
He wants the fights to be entertaining, not a slaughter. 
 
You are to be paired with me. 
 
We are the new “fighting giants.” 
 
We’ll fight together against all that Perdor wishes.
 
It could be men, it could be animals.
 
Because I have no wish to die, you
 
will
 
learn how to fight, with a sword.”

Joridan was sure he must be losing his mind. 
 
Either that or Krios had abandoned him and he’d ended up in hell. 
 
Or maybe it was heaven. 
 
Where else would a beautiful woman be training him how to use a sword?

He closed his eyes, scrubbed his hands over his face, slid down the cold stone wall and tried to remember what happened? 
 
What the hell happened?

He remembered being on Centauri.
 
General Anton Coridian was leading his forces through a canyon to Zelton Slavarien’s fortress with the intention of arresting him for treason.
 
They didn’t know Slavarien’s forces lay in wait as Anton’s brigade entered the canyon in front of the fortress.
 
The troops came at them from all sides as Joridan and the rest of his unit approached.
 
Blasters annihilated them as they walked forward into the trap.
 
Friends disappeared before his eyes, hit with the full force of a blaster.
 
They were instantly incinerated and nothing remained, their bodies literally blotted from existence.
 
He’d seen movement to his left he remembered.
 
General Coridian was down not twenty yards away.
 
Not obliterated, thank Krios, only stunned.
 
He watched two enemy soldiers pick up Anton’s body.
 
He shouted.
 
One of them looked over at him and fired.
 
That was the last thing he remembered.

SNEAK PEEK

RED NIGHT

by

Michele Callahan

Chapter One

Timewalker Taken:
Alexa, Seventeenth Daughter of Aryssa

Mission:
Present Day, Earth - Destroy the Red Death

Talent:
Invisibility

Despite years of warnings, Alexa was not prepared for the freezing shock of her journey to Earth. She wanted to scream in agony, but she had no air to breathe in this in-between dimension. Her mother had explained the frigid reality of the time strands, how her naked flesh would feel as if it were being systematically stripped to her bones by endless shards of splintering ice. This one-way trip to the past would last less than a minute. One minute in her own personal Purgatory, and her sins had been many. So, she gritted her teeth and waited. Waited for the agony to subside. Waited for the nirvana of soft green grass brushing at her skin like a thousand tickling fingertips.

Her mother had been Taken, and her mother before her, and so on, since the Archivers had begun recording the Chronicles Of Time. Death or Service.
 
That had been her ancestor’s choice nearly four hundred years ago, and the eldest daughter in each generation now owed the Archiver a life.
 
The family gift -- invisibility -- had been handed down from mother to daughter for seventeen generations. Her heritage swelled her head and chest with pride. But the unrelenting grip of her ancestry also squeezed her with arduous pressure, demanding she not fail. She did not want to be the first of her line to bring her name dishonor. However, a far heavier burden threatened to pull her into the suffocating quicksand of fear. Billions of lives were at stake. Billions.

She would not fail. She was ready. Her mother had ensured that, taught her how to use her gift to cloak her presence, prepared her for the call of the Archiver and the freezing strands. The Taken were never called upon to ride the strands of time unless the assignment was of catastrophic importance. There was no such thing as an easy task. She had also warned her daughter not to fall victim to the pounding of the blood, the passion of her Gift, until it was safe to do so. The distraction would endanger the strand of time she must now, and forever after, walk upon.

Forever. In a strange world.

Alone.

Panic rose in a crescendo to choke her. Then, as quickly as her roller coaster ride through this icy hell began, it was over. Precious air flooded her starving lungs with heat. She lay semi-conscious on the soft ground and tried to get her bearings as a torrent of warm rain crashed down upon her. A single tear escaped and mingled with the rain on her face. Reality squeezed her heart so tightly she feared it would stop beating. She had arrived, unscathed. There was no going back.

Earth, Midnight, May 6, 2013. Unless the Archiver had erred.

Heaven help her then. Heaven help the world.

****

Never once, in all the years of her rebellious youth, had she ever been a thief. How ironic that now, when the fate of this world hung in the balance, everything she had was contraband. She leaned back into the taxi’s sticky plastic seat and hoped the crisp white cotton Capri pants and shirt wouldn’t be ruined by the filth. A twenty-dollar bill burned in her pocket to pay the cabbie. Alexa sunk her teeth into a huge red apple and hoped the fruit would provide enough energy to keep her going for a few hours. Doom Central was calling her name.

Alexa laughed out loud at her own joke and ignored the cab driver’s questioning glance. The overworked cabbie should be used to seeing all sorts of odd things in a city the size of San Antonio. But even here, she knew she was unique. Her waist-length hair was braided and so pale it gleamed silver. Her eyes flashed a vivid blue in a heart-shaped face. Father had always said she was sixty-two inches of trouble wrapped up in a deceptively innocent looking package. The thought made her want to laugh. And cry.

Too soon the cab driver dropped her off at her destination, one of a handful of Biosafety Level 4 laboratories in the country. The lucky place which, in three days time, would be the epicenter of the end of the world. Earth 8 had died a slow and painful death. It took just under five years from the first diagnosed case of “Red Death” for ninety-five percent of the world’s population to be wiped out. And it all started here. No-Where-Ville, Texas.
 
A party like any other…a night colored red with blood.