Finding Jess (First Wave) (2 page)

“You don’t understand… something is
wrong here. She knows we’re nearby. I don’t know how but she does, and she’s
trying to tell us something.” Amun argued turning back to watch his brave girl.
He knew with every part of his soul that he was right; she was trying to tell
them something. And she knew he was here.

Niklosi sighed, the fight gone out
of him at Amun’s words. Obviously, there was more to his feelings for the
female than Niklosi had first thought. After what his friend and commander had
gone through to prove he should be with Cari, they had all vowed to be more
understanding if one of them found their mate.

It was becoming clear to Niklosi
that this was one of those situations. Although happy for Amun, he cursed the
timing because having him acting like this on a mission could put them all in
danger; even the female. They couldn’t afford to make a mistake. Drawing a deep
breath he tried to calm and center himself before continuing.

“Ok, what makes you think that she
knows we’re here?” He asked with surprising calmness in his voice.

“Watch her… just watch her, and
you’ll see what I mean.” Amun said never taking his eyes off of his beautiful
Jess.

Niklosi let out another sigh, and
figuring a few minutes of watching the girl wouldn’t hurt he stepped up beside
Amun and Gibly and looked across the field at the female.

She had been able to get all of her
tangled hair out of her face now, and he could clearly see her mouthing
something. Hearing something behind her, she stopped and whipped her head
around to look behind her before turning back around and mouthing something
again.

Looking up he could see her eyes
moving slowly along the tree line where they were hidden behind the thick
foliage. A shiver ran down his spine at the thought that somehow she did know
they were there. Did she have some gift she didn't tell Cari about? How could
she know they were there?

The longer he stood there and
watched her, the more convinced he was that she not only knew they were there,
she was trying to tell them something. And by the way, she continued to check
on the Relians behind her; he knew it wasn’t good.

“When she knows they are farther
away from her; she actually voices whatever she is trying to tell us. If we got
a little closer, we may be able to hear her.” Amun suggested hoping that
Niklosi would agree. He needed to hear the sound of her voice. He knew that
what she was saying must be important, or she wouldn’t be taking the risk of
getting caught. However, that didn’t matter to him nearly as much as just
hearing the sound of her voice.

Niklosi scanned the tree line
between where they were and where he figured the best place was to possibly
hear what she was saying without alerting the Relians to their presence.

“Listen to me carefully Amun. We’re
going to move along the tree line and see if we can get close enough to hear
what she is saying. You stay the hell with me. I mean it. If you make even the
smallest of mistakes, you can get all of us, and her killed. I need to know
you’ll listen to me and do what I say before we do this.” Niklosi turned Amun
around to face him. He searched his face to try to see if he was even listening
to him.

“I do understand Niklosi. I’ll do
what you need me to do in order to save her.” Amun was serious, there was
nothing he wanted more in any universe than to have her with him and safe. To
help her heal, body and soul from whatever horrors she’d been through in her
young life.

Niklosi looked into his eyes for a
few more seconds before sighing and bending down so that he could look at
Gibly. Around twice the size of an Earth pet cat, Gibly had a thick, soft coat
of jet black fur and black eyes that almost looked too large for his face.

“Gibly, I need you to be as quiet
as possible and for you to stay as close to us as you can. Do you understand?”
He felt like a complete idiot squatting down and talking to a cat, but he
really didn’t have a choice. He just hoped Gibly understood.

Gibly stood up and put his front
paws on one of Niklosi’s bended knees and bowed his head to him. Taking this as
a sign that the animal understood, he continued as he stood up.

“Follow closely, and no matter what
happens do what I say.”

He walked quietly along the tree
and shrubbery line with cautious steps, avoiding any obstructions that may give
them away and was relieved to see Amun and Gibly doing so as well.

*****

“Anything from Balduen yet?” Ivint
asked again.

“No, sir. I think we need to
consider sending in a team for him.” Reven suggested, more worried about
Balduen the longer they went without hearing from him.

“What the hell is going on?” Ivint
huffed in frustration, running his fingers through his hair.

“Scaden, assemble a team. Randor,
you’re the most familiar with the area…”

“I’ll get ready now, sir.” Randor
said standing up.

“Father! Get them out! It’s a trap!
She’s trying to warn us that it’s a trap!” Cari yelled standing so quickly her
chair tipped over behind her.

“Amalaya, are you sure?” Scaden
asked putting his arms around her to calm her.

“I’m positive! I don’t know
anything more than that… I’m sorry. We have to get them out of there, pull them
back or something and try a different way to get her.” Cari said emphatically.

Scaden looked at his father and saw
the frustration etched in the wrinkles in his forehead and was grateful that
this decision wasn’t his to make. He watched as his father went to open the
comm to Niklosi’s team.

“Sir! We’re being hailed!” A bridge
officer shouted through the ship’s comm to the conference room.

“By who?” Ivint asked startled. Who
the hell is in this quadrant?

“Sir, it’s a Relian battle
cruiser!” Was the last thing anyone expected to hear.

“Get Niklosi out of there
NOW!!!" Ivint yelled to Scaden as, he, and Reven ran from the room to the
bridge of the ship shouting orders as he went.

“Initiate Battle Station Protocol
NOW! Ready all Tact Teams! Contact our men on planet and put them all on high
alert!”

*****

Amun could have sworn that it had
taken hours to get close enough to hear her, but he knew, in reality; it only
took minutes. Her beautiful, almost musical voice was at odds with the
seriousness of her words.

“It’s a trap! They know you’re
here. They know you’ve been following them. There are three of them trying to
surround your men, you must go!” She repeated the same thing over and over
again.

Amun couldn’t believe how
incredible she was. Her full lips were dried and cracked from lack of
hydration; it had to be painful to continue trying to speak. Even so, there she
was risking her own life to try to warn them. He couldn’t let her continue to
put herself through that.

He started to speak to her when
Niklosi slapped a hand over his mouth and glared at him, when Scaden’s voice
came over the comm.

“Get out of there! It’s a trap!
Fall back to a safe location and be ready to port if necessary!”

Unable to speak so he wouldn’t give
them away, Niklosi tapped the appropriate response into the comm and pulled his
hand-off Amun’s mouth.

Using hand signals he told Amun
that they would stay by Jess and port out if necessary, but he was sending the
team away. At Amun’s nod, Niklosi tapped the instructions to his team into the
comm and waited for the reply.

When he knew the team was heading
to an alternate location, he turned his attention back to the camp and Jess.
She was continuing to repeat her warning, obviously still unaware that they
were so close.

They watched quietly as the largest
Relian that had tied Jess to the post moved towards her. Amun tensed as the
human looking creature drew closer to her, and Niklosi squeezed his shoulder in
a silent warning not to do anything to give away their position.

Niklosi saw the other two Relians
take up defensive positions, their weapons drawn and knew something was about
to happen. He slowly drew Amun down to the ground to lie on their bellies in
the underbrush, and leaned part of his body on Amun’s. He was relieved when he
saw that Gibly had not only lain down with them, he laid on the other side of
Amun; on his shoulder.

He and Gibly ignored Amun’s glares
and turned their attention back to the camp and watched the Relian untie Jess
and stand her in front of him. Grabbing her roughly by the hair, he pulled her
head back and placed a long, sharp blade at her neck.

Niklosi held tightly to Amun,
throwing a leg over him as well in order to keep him from running out there to
Jess. After a few minutes when nothing happened, and he made no move to harm
her, Amun relaxed a little. He looked up at Niklosi with a confused look on his
face, not sure why he was standing there with her like that. He wasn’t calling
out to them or harming her with the blade; he was just standing there.

Niklosi lightly shrugged his
shoulders letting Amun know that he didn’t know what was going on either, but
was just as curious. He knew this was a setup, which had been very clear with
where they had originally put Jess. Jess herself had confirmed that it was a
trap. However, he couldn’t figure out what exactly they were doing. It was
almost like they were acting out a play; none of it was adding up or making any
sense.

Amun tensed slightly when the
Relian bent down and kissed her temple gently and whispered something in her
ear. He straightened back up, and faster than they could comprehend, he cut her
throat and dropped her to the ground. Walking slowly back towards his other
companions they ported out one by one.

Niklosi jumped up and without
thought to where the other three Relians might be, ran to where Jess lay
crumpled on the ground. Gibly beat him and Amun to her side by seconds.

“Where’s your personal med kit?”
Amun asked Niklosi as his knees hit the ground by Jess’s head. He already had
his kit open and was grabbing a mediband before Niklosi reached his side.

Niklosi reached into one of his
uniform pants pockets and pulled out the kit as he looked down and saw the
blood pouring from the wound in her neck. Gibly lay next to her hand on the
other side of her, her hand reaching to pet his head a little.

Niklosi could see her face become
paler, her dry lips cracking and bleeding as she tried to smile at Amun, who
was desperately holding a mediband to her throat in vain. The wound was
obviously too great for the Nano technology to repair before she bled to death.
With the full med kit with the rest of the team, the bands were all they had,
and it wasn’t going to be enough.

Neither man noticed the small spark
of light from her hand.

Chapter Two

Everyone in the conference room had
followed Ivint onto the bridge and waited while Ivint and Reven had a private
conversation. Nodding their heads, they separated and Ivint straightened his
shoulders and stood to his full six feet, eleven-inch height, his blue eyes
flashing in anger.

“Open the comm.” He ordered
gruffly.

They watched the image appear on the
video screen. Although unable to determine the creature’s height, it was
obvious that it was large. It almost looked like one of them with its shoulder
length black hair, dark-brown eyes and chiseled features. However, no one was
fooled by the normal look of the creature.

“Ah, High Councilor Torenson I was
so hoping that I would be able to speak with you. It makes it much easier to
get things done when you can cut out all of the underlings in the middle isn’t
it?” The smirk curving his wide mouth made Ivint want to hit him.

“I don’t have time for your games
Kalai T’Alq, what do you want?” Ivint responded, ensuring that his irritation
was reflected in the tone of his voice.

“Well, for one I’d like for you to
get your ships out of my galaxy after you get your teams off of my planet and
return my property.” Kalai said with another smug smirk.

“What are you talking about Kalai?
Can you try to pull off a semblance of intelligence long enough to make some
sense?” Ivint knew that instigating him was not a good idea right now, but he
needed as much information as he could get as quickly as possible. Kalai was
incredibly vain, and the dig would wound his pride enough to make him say more
than he should, giving Ivint an advantage. He hoped.

“You insolent fool! I will enjoy
seeing your arrogance stripped of you!” Kalai’s face flamed red with anger, his
face contorted slightly as he lost control of his shifting ability. He visibly
struggled for control before finally regaining his sneer.

“As we both know you are aware, we
claimed this planet a long time ago and have retained control. You have placed
people on our planet without our permission and killed some of our men. And you
have kidnapped one of our slaves. We want our slave back and any bastard she
may have born since her captivity with you. Your people are to get off of our
planet, and you are to leave this galaxy and not return.”

“If you do not comply, then we will
be forced to consider this a formal declaration of open war. Considering that
you have broken even your own laws in doing this, how many of your allies will
stay your allies when they know what you have done here?” The gleam in Kalai’s
eyes was starting to get to Ivint, and he clenched his fists in an effort to
calm his anger.

“You do not have any formal claim
on this planet or their sentient people. Therefore, you have no claim on any
person on that planet. Since the inhabitants have formal governments in place
you cannot impose your will upon them nor seize control. If you did have
control, you would have already opened fire on this ship. Granted, you may have
people in place all over the planet, but you control nothing.”

“Again, I asked you to speak
intelligently to me Kalai, not weave childish fantasy stories for me. If this
is all you’ve got, then I’m going to have to go, I have adult things to do.”
Ivint feigned a nonchalance he didn’t feel.

“We may not have total control of
the planet yet, but we will! And we have enough control right now and enough of
the women you need to kill them all if we want to! I’ll give you twenty-four
hours to leave the planet and the galaxy or this is what is going to happen to
every one of your people on the planet, s with your women and children. Her
death is on you.” Kalai fairly screamed the last before the transmission turned
to a video of Jess being held by the hair with a knife to her neck.

Everyone watched in horror as the
knife was drawn across her throat, and she was thrown to the ground before the
transmission was completely cut.

“Get me the video from the comm Niklosi
placed NOW!!!” Ivint ordered.

The screen lit up to show Niklosi
and Amun bent over Jess’s prone body in the field. Scaden held Cari as she
began to sob. Ivint bowed his head with sadness as he listened to Niklosi tell
Amun he thought she was gone.

“Ready the MedLab.” Ivint ordered
after hearing Amun say he was going to take her to Adaria, knowing it was
useless after seeing the poor girl’s throat cut. He knew Amun would try anyway.

“Scaden, Randor, Gracus and Reven;
I want you all in the conference room.” He didn’t even wait for them to
acknowledge his order before storming out of the bridge.

Scaden handed his sobbing mate over
to her great mother before following his father off the bridge to the
conference room next door. His father had his back to him as he stared at the
image on the video screen of Niklosi and Gibly kneeling over the puddle of
Jess’s blood on the ground. What he saw startled him.

“Yes, sir.” Niklosi replied to the
High Councilor’s order.

Ivint turned to Randor, Scaden and
Reven and sat at the table, waiting for everyone else to follow his lead. Once
they were seated, he began.

“This is a tragic day, and we will
mourn the loss of our own after she is properly prepared for burial. Right now,
we need to concentrate on what we’ve learned and plan our next course of
action.”

“We learned a lot from that idiot
Kalai, but not enough. And we need to find Balduen; I don’t think it’s a
coincidence that we lost communication with him right before all this
happened.”

“The most important thing we’ve
learned is that we do have more women and children on the planet. We didn’t
lose them all, thank the Father.” Randor added.

“Yes, that is wonderful news. Now
we need to find them, and we’re going to have a problem with the Relians in
doing it. He made it clear that they don’t have total control, and we know that
from Randor. If they really were confident of their position with their allies
on the planet, they would openly fire on us now. So for some reason they know
that it isn’t in their best interest to come out blatantly to the people of the
planet. Which works in our favor.” Ivint replied.

“We will continue trying to contact
our lost people on the planet and try to find these women and children. We’ll
remain as covert as we were before, but this time we know there is a larger
presence on the planet than we thought, and they have allies.” Reven added.

“Kalai was right about one thing; I
need to contact the rest of the council and the alliance.” Ivint said.

“Why? We’re not violating anything
and his claims of ownership on the planet and its people are bogus, and we know
it.” Scaden asked.

“None of them would recognize the
Relian claim on any planet, but they need to be made aware of why we will not
leave this planet to them even if it means a declaration of open war. We have
no idea what impact this might have on their people, and they have to be
warned.” Ivint said as Niklosi and Gibly walked into the room.

“Niklosi, I trust your team is well
and back at the original base?” 

“Yes, sir.”

“Gibly, it’s nice to see you again.
Would you like to tell us all when you began to speak?” Ivint leaned down to
ask the small creature as he picked him up and placed him in the center of the
conference room table. Ivint ignored everyone’s strange looks at him while
Niklosi just smiled.

“When brave girl made me the
pretty.” Gibly said clearly, moving his neck from side to side to show a
beautiful collar of green and white gemstones and a gleaming white metal.

Scaden, Randor and Gracus all stood
up in shock and came to look at the collar on the animal.

“How is that possible?” Gracus
asked in awe.

“I’ve never seen a gift this
developed without a mate. I have no idea how powerful she must have been to
craft something like this.” Randor said just as shocked.

“Her loss will be felt heavily on
us all.” Ivint added sadly.

“She with Amun.” Gibly said.

Everyone shook their head sadly as
Reven spoke. “She’s gone, my friend. She didn’t survive the wound.”

“She alive with Amun. She strong
and brave girl.” Gibly said confidently.

Ivint gave him a long look before
asking into the comm, “MedLab give me a report of the female’s condition.”

“Sir, all we know right now is that
she’s still alive. We don’t know how, but she’s hanging in there. Amun is still
working on her.” A MedLab tech reported.

“By the One! How is that possible?
We all watched him cut her throat open.” Reven asked in surprise. He’d never
seen anyone survive such a wound.

“We’re going to find out. Niklosi,
you did a wonderful job. There was nothing you could have done, and you were
there faster to her than I could have imagined. We’ll discuss later why you
were so close to the female and not your team.” Ivint said with a smile, which
let Niklosi know he wasn’t going to get into trouble for not being with his team.

“Go to MedLab and get me reports on
the female’s condition as it changes. Check with the team sent after Balduen as
well. I need to speak with Reven and the Council and will join you later.”
Ivint said dismissively.

*****

Jess couldn’t believe that they had
actually followed her. She hadn’t believed Cari when she said that she would
come back for her, she’d heard it before from others, and they had always moved
before she could be rescued. That’s if anyone had really ever tried. She liked
to think that they had.

She couldn’t see them at all, but
she knew they were there. She could feel them. Actually, she could only feel
one of them; she just assumed he wasn’t alone. She’d been able to feel him
since the day Cari was rescued.

She couldn’t explain it, but since
that day, she’d felt like there was a rescuer of Cari’s that she had somehow
bonded with her even though she had never seen any of them. She could swear
there were times when it felt like someone was caressing her and sending warm
thoughts and feelings towards her.

It was more likely that she’d
finally cracked and gone insane. It took long enough; she thought. She could
have used this kind of delusion years ago, not when this is finally going to be
over, for her anyway.

Jess looked behind her worriedly
when she heard footsteps and had to fight not to flinch at the sight of Julou
V’Dua coming towards her. It was time.

She didn’t resist him when he
untied her and pulled her to her feet, or when he pulled her head back roughly
by her hair and placed the blade against her neck. There was no point in
fighting the inevitable. She would live or die in this moment. She just hoped
that if they were here, that they didn’t get hurt trying to save her.

Julou leaned down and whispered in
her ear, “Remember what I said little one. And no matter what, don’t move.
Please.”

“I won’t Julou. Thank you… for
everything.” Jess whispered back to him.

He gently kissed her temple and
with his voice breaking, he whispered, “May your God save us both.” He drew the
blade quickly across her neck before he changed his mind. Willing himself to
feel numb, he fought against the urge to help her and allowed her body to fall
to the ground.

The pain wasn’t as bad as she had
expected it to be; more like a dull burning. She could feel the blood running
down her chest and the impact of the ground when she hit, but after that,
things seemed to happen more in a hazy kind of unreality.

A beautiful Black Panther had come
up to her and licked her hand; its large black eyes twinkling with
intelligence. Then the man she’d known was there was by her side and applying
band aids to her neck. She petted the soft looking fur of the panther,
realizing only distantly that her gift had risen instantly. The energy it took
made her feel even lighter headed, making it seem like it took forever to turn
her head to the man kneeling above her.

She looked up into the kindest and
most beautiful pair of brown eyes she’d ever seen. His black hair fell in adorable
waves across his forehead as he looked intently at her neck. She couldn’t help
but smile at how seriously he looked.

She felt herself being lifted up
into her hero’s arms… a flash, and she felt more disoriented, then another
flash, and she felt a soft, warm mattress beneath her.

If her head hadn’t already been
spinning, the activity around her would have made it start. Her hero yelled
orders, and she felt multiple hands on her arms and legs. She really wanted to
open her eyes and look around, but they just didn’t want to cooperate with her.

She could hear a gasp and soft
sobbing coming from somewhere behind her hero and wondered why someone was
upset. Was someone here hurt with her?

“Amalaya, I need to put you to
sleep for a little while, so we can make you better. Please don’t be afraid, I
swear I would never harm you. Cari is here and will be with you when you wake
up.” He whispered into her ear, before she lost consciousness.

“Anyone who doesn’t need to be in
here right now needs to get out, besides Cari and Councilor Lakatis.” Amun
ordered and waited until everyone, but his two assistants were left in the
room.