Halcyon Nights (Star Sojourner Book 2) (25 page)

Spirit groaned inside my head. ”He hit the hovar!” Willa screamed. “We're out of control.”

“Jesus and Vishnu!”

I ran to the entrance and threw myself down and rolled as I went through. A hot beam flashed over my head. I raised the stingler but couldn't fire. The hovar was upside down against a quivering glowing wall. Lisa and Willa crawled out from under the light craft. The czar's silhouetted figure was in front of them, using them for cover.

Don't fire in here!
Spirit sent.
I cannot allow a firefight within my being. I am already wounded and bleeding.

I lowered my weapon.

“I have no such compunctions,” the czar shouted and waved his stingler at Lisa and Willa. “And that is why I will win this little contest.”

“Because you're not a man!” I called in an attempt to goad him into facing me outside. “A man would meet me outside one on one.”

He laughed harshly. “
Mano a mano?
When I already have your daughter?”

Spirit!
I sent frantically.

“Only you,” the czar shouted, “can save your daughter and her friend” He gestured with his stingler. “Drop your weapon and walk slowly outside. Do not think to run!”

“All right!” I dropped the stingler. My heart beat like a bird wanting to break free and fly away from this unbearable reality.

“And if you try to use your tel power on me again,” he continued, “I will kill one of them. I will even let you choose which one will die.”

“No! I'm going.” I put up my hands and turned toward the entrance. My head was clearing. My vision too. I squinted in the sunlight. Had I increased my power with that agonizing send? My tel might well be the only thing left between killing him or having all of us killed.

“And don't look back!” he ordered. “You two,” I heard him say, “follow him.”

I came out of the cave like Orpheus coming up from Hades with Eurydice behind him. If I turned, my daughter or Willa, like Eurydice, might well end up in hell. ”What do you want from us?” I called back, as though I didn't know.

“To load my crystals into your manta,
stupido,
since you crippled my arm!”

“And then?” I walked toward the sunken manta.

Daddy,
Lisa sent.
I'll help you.

”No, Lisa, don't!” I lifted mental shields to stop her from sending. I paused at the edge of the moldy crack in the earth. Clods of fresh soil clung to roots that jutted through the slit. The earth smelled bitter, like a newly opened grave.

I turned my head slowly so as not to arouse the czar's wrath and saw Lisa and Willa walking toward me with the czar behind them.

“Lisa,” I said as she approached, “just stay quiet, baby.”

“Daddy, I – “

“Listen to me! Do exactly what the dragon tells you to do.” I exchanged anxious glances with Willa.

The czar's face was contorted with pain. He held his burned arm as he nudged Willa to the edge of the ditch with his stingler. “That's good advice for you, too,” he told me. “Shut up and turn around!”

I was afraid we was going to clobber with the rod end of his stingler, but he kicked my knee from behind and I fell onto the manta's hull. Fresh dirt clung to my jacket and pants. I stood up and inspected the craft. “The doors are buried,” I told him.

“Move away from the window!” he ordered.

I did.

He shattered the glass with the stingler set on cold beam, then spun the ring to hot and motioned for me to go through the broken window.

Jagged edges tore my jacket as I dragged myself inside the upright craft. I glanced around quickly.

No weapons. Dammit!

“That's right,” the czar called as he read my thought. “You think I would leave a stingler for you?”

“No.” I lowered myself to the back and stared at a pile of shimmering pink crystals. Empty sacks lay beside them.

“Are you waiting for an invitation?” the czar shouted.

I loaded four crystals into a sack.

“You.” I saw the czar push Willa toward the edge. “Get in the hole and throw the bags up here by my feet.” I heard him moan. “You son of a
puta
bitch!” he called down to me and held his burned arm. “If I didn't need your two good arms to load the crystals, I would burn one off and let you see how it feels.”

Willa slid down to the hull and climbed through the broken window. “Oh, Jules,” she whispered.

”I'm sorry I got you into this.” I handed her the heavy sack.

She took it and shook her head. “I got myself into this when I joined RECOIL.” She looked up.

“Now what are
you
waiting for?” the czar shouted. “Bring me the sack!”

She climbed back out through the window and lifted the sack up to the ground.

“You're a RECOIL soldier?” I asked her when she crawled back in through the window.

”More a messenger.”

I tried to smile. “What is it they say? 'Don't kill the messenger'?”

She tried to smile too. “Or her friends.”

How could I save them? My stingler was on the floor of the cave near the entrance. I didn't dare contact Spirit, not that he could help anyway. I filled another sack and handed it to her.

We were doomed, and Laurel was doomed. I suddenly felt weary. I had done all that I could, and still I had failed.

The pile of crystals dwindled.
Sand in an hourglass
, I thought. When the crystals were all on the surface, our time would run out. He would never let us live.

I glanced up at my daughter. My Lisa. I had failed her too. This manta would probably be our tomb. “Althea, I'm sorry,” I whispered.

Finally, the floor was empty. I took Willa's hand and we waited.

“Climb out of there,” the czar ordered.

I helped Willa out and followed, up onto green grass and blue sky. I snapped off a blade of grass and chewed the bitter juice as I put an arm around Lisa and kissed her head. Willa was on Lisa's other side.

The ground fire had burned out, or Spirit had stopped it. The smell of burning wood was pleasant, like a BBQ. Branches still crackled and smoked. Somewhere, a flock of birds chirped from unburned trees.

“Walk,” the czar said. “Or run if you like.”

I gestured toward the sacks. “Don't you want me to load them into my manta?”

“I can manage that,
cabrón,” he said and grimaced,
“even with one good arm. But thank you for the offer.”

Willa's eyes were glazed with tears but her head was high. I picked up Lisa and held her tightly as we walked. “Look, baby,” I whispered, “look at the birds! They're flying to their roosts for the night.”

“What's a roost, Daddy?”

I glanced at Willa. “It's a place where birds finally rest after a long day.”

How far would he let us get?

An instinct close to survival, but involving the entire species, kicked in and goaded me to act.
Your ancestors didn't make it down from the trees by lying on the jungle floor and giving up!

The czar had warned me not to use my tel powers again on him. But he was far away from his mega-dream system in the crashed manta and he couldn't hold a crystal, and his weapon, in one good hand.

What the hell was I waiting for?

Spirit? Why don't you tell him what's going to happen if he tries to make it off-planet with the crystals?

He is not concerned with the death of Laurel.

No. But he's pretty damned concerned with his own miserable life.

I have probed his mind in an attempt to help you and your people on Tres Cruash. He does not believe that I can harm him.

I hear you, son of puta,
the czar sent
. Have you made your peace with the devil, who spawned you?

I turned and shuddered as I watched him lift the stingler and aim at me, and Lisa, in my arms.

Wait. Czar. Just one more moment to make my peace with God.

He paused, then nodded and lowered the stingler. “One minute. To save your rotten soul.”

He was receiving, all right, loud and clear!

I put Lisa down and lowered my head. I stood between her and the czar as I clasped my hands as though in prayer. I imaged the red coil rising, like the burning spears of a naked sun, and tacked on an image: A flaming brand lashed out and seared through the burn on his arm. I forced the image to hold the brand there. Scorched flesh curled and smoked. Blackened bone cracked. He screamed and dropped the stingler, but I was too far away to reach it before he did.

Willa scooped up Lisa and ran behind a boulder.

“You bastard!” the czar screamed and staggered toward his weapon. “This is my reward for showing you mercy.”

I closed my eyes and focused inward. The coil rose with a power I'd never tapped before. A tornado roiled up behind my eyes, twisting and growing with my own energy. I heard a sound within me like an approaching freight train. My head burned. My eyes beat as though fists were striking them. I gritted my teeth and moaned as I intensified the image.

“Daddy! Run,” I heard Lisa shout.

The czar fumbled in his attempt to pick up the stingler, but I watched his hand close on it.

I threw the power. A storm of electrical impulses that seared like lightning bolts.

His head jerked back and he screamed. I watched him slump to his knees, the stingler in one loose hand. They say lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place. This lightning did. I yelled to endure the blazing pain behind my eyes. If it killed me this time, so be it. Perhaps Lisa and Willa, and Laurel too, would live.

I gathered my forces the way a general gathers his troops for battle as the czar staggered toward the boulder where Lisa and Willa hid.

“I will let you witness the death of your only child before I send you after her.”

A storm rose behind my eyes. I imaged roiling black clouds. Thunder drummed in heavy beats. Lightning pierced the ground with flaming spears. Within my mind, whole forests flamed as I mentally grasped a force I didn't know I had.

“Eat this,
cabrón!
” I shouted and squeezed my temples between fists as I threw searing bolts of lightning, like arrow strikes from an army of archers, against his head.

He lurched back and fell as though struck, which he was, and sprawled on the ground, his arms out-flung. If there were life left in him, I had to grab the stingler. My eyesight blurred to those warning flashes of red and a view as though through shimmering water. I reeled toward him, clutching my head. But I was moving sideways. My knees shook and wanted to give out. I willed them to carry me further.

He lifted his head. His hand closed on the stingler as he watched me approach. “I'll met you in hell,” he rasped.

“No!” I yelled and turned my back to him as he aimed. I closed my eyes and heard the snap of a hot beam. I waited for the death blow that would end my pain. When it didn't come, I opened my eyes.

The czar was on his back, unmoving. Smoke rose from his smoldering chest. I stumbled to him and kicked away the stingler. His eyes stared, unseeing.

I pressed my hands against my face and fell to my knees with a cry. The pain in my head seared like the singed flesh of electrical burns.

“Terran Julesh!” someone called from the cave entrance. “It is yo friend Briertrush.”

I squinted to try to focus. “Is that you?” I mumbled.

I watched him come out of the cave with my stingler in one floppy hand.

“Jules. Jules!” I felt Willa's hands bracing my shoulders.

But reality was my breath shuddering in my throat. I squeezed my fists against my temples.

“Daddy.”

Predatory claws prowled my brain. I wanted to smash my head against a tree. Anything to stop the searing brands behind my eyes. My stomach was nauseated from the pain. I gasped as flashes of red lightning tore paths in the ground.

“Daddy!” I felt her pull on my jacket.

“Help me, great Mind,” I whispered. “Help me to die.”
Spirit!
I cried softly within myself and rolled my head.
I can't stand it! Let me die.

You are already dying, son of Terra.

Make it quick. Please!

Lie down.

OK. All right.
I sobbed. I laid down on my stomach and moaned.
It doesn't help!

“Jules,” I heard Willa say. “I'm going to the manta to call for help. Come with me, Lisa!”

Rest your head on the ground,
Spirit sent.
The ground will be cool on your face.

I did.
It doesn't help. I can't take this!
I pounded a fist on the dirt and tried to jump up. Something held me down.
Are you doing that?

Yes.

There came a rumbling. The ground beneath me trembled. Through the red flashes I saw a wave burst from the mouth of the cave with a roar and overflow the river's banks.

I held my breath as silver fluid washed over me.

I did your work, Spirit. Help me.

Rest your head!

“OK!”

It will be over soon.

How soon?

Now, sleep, son of Terra. Let me heal you.

I lifted my head.
I can't sleep, Spirit. I want to die.
I gritted my teeth and tried to crawl away. To crawl out of this agony. Out of my body.

He held me there.
It will be over soon!

Hurry!

There came a tingling that started at the back of my neck and spread through my body. It enveloped my forehead like gentle massaging fingers that doused the brands as though they'd been plunged into cold water. The claws dissolved.

Healing sleep
, Spirit sent.

My muscles relaxed of their own volition. A blissful numbness settled over me. I sighed.
Am I dead yet?

I felt him chuckle.

There came an image of a great amorphous being who drifted among a tapestry of wheeling galaxies that churned across the infinite.

“Great Mind,” I mumbled. The source, whose reflections were planets and life, reached out to me with arms of love.
Take me.
I closed my eyes and surrendered myself to sleep.

“Please, Daddy. Don't die!” Lisa's words came as through a tunnel.